Zelenskiy Rejects U.S. Peace Proposal as Trump Presses One-Week Ultimatum

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned on Friday that Ukraine risked losing its dignity and freedom — or Washington’s backing — over a U.S. peace plan, which Donald Trump said Kyiv should accept within a week.

The U.S. president told Fox News Radio he believed Thursday was an appropriate deadline for Kyiv to accept the plan.

President Donald Trump later told reporters that time was short given the approaching winter and need to end the bloodshed and that Zelenskiy would have to approve the plan.

“He’ll have to like it, and if he doesn’t like it, then you know, they should just keep fighting, I guess,” he said.

“At some point he’s going to have to accept something he hasn’t accepted,” Trump said.

Recalling their fractious February meeting with Zelenskiy, Trump added: “You remember right in the Oval Office, not so long ago, I said, ‘You don’t have the cards.'”

Washington’s 28-point plan calls on Ukraine to cede territory, accept limits on its military and renounce ambitions to join NATO. It also contains some proposals Moscow may object to and requires its forces to pull back from some areas they have captured, according to a draft seen by Reuters.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance said late on Friday that any plan to end Russia’s war in Ukraine should preserve Ukrainian sovereignty and be acceptable to both countries but that it was a “fantasy” to think Ukraine could win if the U.S. were to give Kyiv more money or weapons or impose more sanctions on Moscow.

“There is a fantasy that if we just give more money, more weapons, or more sanctions, victory is at hand,” Vance wrote on X.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who has refused to budge on Russia’s key territorial and security demands, said on Friday the U.S. plan could be the basis of a final resolution of the nearly four-year-old conflict. He said Kyiv was against the plan but neither it nor its European allies understood the reality of Russian advances in Ukraine.