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President Donald Trump has attacked Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy for refusing to recognise Russia’s occupation of Crimea, accusing him of harming peace negotiations with Moscow.
In a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, the US president described the situation for Ukraine as “dire”. “He can have Peace, or, he can fight for another three years before losing the whole Country,” Trump said.
“We are very close to a Deal, but the man with “no cards to play” should now, finally, GET IT DONE,” he added.
Trump was responding to a remark by Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Tuesday, when he told reporters that Ukraine would “not legally recognise the occupation of Crimea”, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014 and which is still internationally recognised as Ukrainian territory. “There’s nothing to talk about here. This is against our constitution.”
The US president responded that the statement was “very harmful to the Peace Negotiations with Russia”, adding that Crimea “was lost years ago . . . and is not even a point of discussion”.
His intervention came days after the US floated ideas for a possible resolution of the war that included Washington recognising Russian control of Crimea as well as at least acknowledging the Kremlin’s de facto control of parts of four regions in eastern Ukraine — Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — that it holds.
The Financial Times reported earlier this week that Russian President Vladimir Putin had offered to halt his invasion of Ukraine at the current front line and told Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, during a meeting in St Petersburg this month that Moscow could relinquish its claims to parts of the four eastern regions that remain under Kyiv’s control.
Vice-President JD Vance presented Kyiv with an ultimatum earlier on Wednesday, saying the US had issued a “very explicit proposal” to Russia and Ukraine, adding “it’s time for them to either say yes or for the United States to walk away from this process”.
“The current lines, somewhere close to them is where you’re ultimately, I think, going to draw the new lines in the conflict,” Vance told reporters in India. He said doing so would mean Kyiv and Moscow having to give up territory each side currently controls.
Vance said there would have to be “territorial swaps”, adding that in order to bring an end to the war, both sides needed to “put down their weapons, to freeze this thing and to get on with the business of actually building a better Russia and a better Ukraine”.
Trump’s and Vance’s statements came as Witkoff and secretary of state Marco Rubio abruptly cancelled their participation in a meeting in London of foreign ministers and national security advisers of France, the UK and Germany, the so-called E3, and Ukraine. The US envoy on Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, did attend.
But the Rubio-Witkoff no-show downgraded the status of the meeting, which some European officials had earlier seen as confirmation that they had finally secured a seat at the negotiating table on ending the war in Ukraine.
Ever since Trump had a surprise phone call with Putin in February and sent Witkoff to Saudi Arabia for direct US-Russian talks, European countries have worried they would be sidelined in the search for a peace deal.
An official familiar with the talks in London said concern was rising in the UK, France and Germany about the hardening US position on Ukraine and Trump’s loss of patience with the process.
They said the three countries were trying to find a landing zone for a deal which wouldn’t see Ukraine forced into breaching all its red lines, but could involve some movement by Kyiv towards ceding territory, as the end point of negotiations.
Zelenskyy has for some time been prepared to live with de facto Russian control of Crimea and the four eastern oblasts in return for western security guarantees.
But, with the support of European capitals, he has consistently refused to formally recognise Russian sovereignty over any of the territory, saying it would reward Moscow’s aggression.
While opinion polls suggest there is growing support among Ukrainians for a deal to end the war, there is strong opposition to formally ceding territory to Russia.
European governments say recognising Russian sovereignty over Crimea — the first territory in Europe seized by military force since 1945 — would undermine the rules-based international order.
“If America recognises, it is a reward for Russia for the war and any aggressor will think ‘OK, I can try’ and Putin will think ‘yep, I was right, the war is a good thing’,” a Ukrainian official said.
