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The US has offered Ukraine a 15-year security guarantee, but Kyiv wants a period three times as long to deter future Russian aggression, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday.
The Ukrainian president called for a guarantee lasting as much as 50 years the day after a Florida summit with Donald Trump that both leaders said was significant but which failed to make a decisive breakthrough.
In a WhatsApp exchange with reporters as he returned to Europe on Monday, Zelenskyy said he had told the US president that 15 years would be too short to deter Russia in a conflict that began with the 2014 annexation of Crimea.
“I also told him that we would like to consider the possibility of 30, 40 or 50 years,” he added. A 20-point draft peace plan that Kyiv revealed earlier this month mentioned a security guarantee that would “mirror” the Nato alliance’s Article 5 commitment to mutual defence.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the security guarantee offer.
Russia on Monday accused Ukraine of attacking President Vladimir Putin’s residence with drones, saying this “definitive move to a policy of state terror” had prompted it to “reconsider its negotiating position” on the conflict. But Zelenskyy said the Russian claim was a “complete fabrication intended to justify additional attacks against Ukraine”.
Speaking at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach on Sunday, Trump said he had an “excellent” discussion with Zelenskyy that “made a lot of progress” towards ending the war in Ukraine.
The US president said he had held a “good and very productive” telephone conversation lasting more than two hours with Putin prior to his meeting with Zelenskyy. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote on X that Trump had held a second call with Putin on Monday.
“President Trump has concluded a positive call with President Putin concerning Ukraine,” she wrote.
European leaders have sought to strike a positive tone on the Florida talks, with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen welcoming the “good progress” made but adding that “paramount to this effort is to have ironclad security guarantees from day one”.
The German government on Monday raised doubt about Putin’s commitment to the process after heavy attacks on Ukraine over Christmas.
“It is now up to Russia to demonstrate that it is willing to move towards a just and lasting peace for Ukraine,” a German government spokesperson said.
Spanish defence minister Margarita Robles told Spanish public broadcaster RTVE that Europe must continue to support Kyiv. “That fair and lasting peace and its conditions must be decided by Ukraine, it cannot be dictated by Putin,” Robles said.
In his exchanges with reporters, Zelenskyy said sticking points remained around the issue of territory and who would manage the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which Russia captured in the opening phases of its full-scale invasion in 2022.
The Ukrainian leader previously said he would be ready to withdraw “heavy forces” from a possible “demilitarised zone”, or “economic zone” in eastern Ukraine, provided Russian forces mirrored the pullback. But he said on Monday there was “no detailed concept” about the potential zones.
“It is no secret that Russia wants this, in their fantasies they would like us not to exist on the territory of our own country at all,” Zelenskyy said. “But we have our own land, our own territorial integrity, our own state and our own interests. We will act in accordance with the interests of Ukraine.”
Additional reporting by Abigail Hauslohner, Laura Pitel and Carmen Muela