Ukraine wants security guarantees for a minimum of 20 years from the US before it can sign a peace deal with dignity, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said ahead of talks with Russia and the US scheduled for next week.
Speaking in Munich on Saturday, he also called for a clear date for Ukraine to be allowed to join the EU. Some EU officials have put the date as early as 2027.
Speaking to the annual Munich security summit, Ukraine’s president said he hoped “the trilateral meetings next week will be serious, substantive, helpful for all of us but, honestly, sometimes it feels like the sides are talking about completely different things”.
“The Americans often return to the topic of concessions and too often those concessions are discussed only in the context of Ukraine, not Russia,” he added.
The issue of Europe’s frustration with a perceived US reluctance to spell out the security guarantees it is prepared to offer Ukraine in the event of a peace deal, and the need for the guarantees to be spelled out before an agreement is signed, likely remains the biggest wound in the badly fractured relationship between the US and Europe.
In a speech that was welcomed by European leaders keen to see any sign of a thaw in the relationship, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, put forward an offer to work in partnership with Europe.
However, this proposition, he stressed, was highly conditional and the US would go it alone if Washington’s highly Trumpian conditions were not met on climate, migration and tariffs.
Using a diplomatic tone that the US vice-president, JD Vance, shunned in his speech at the conference a year ago, Rubio said “Europe and the US belong together”.
He added that the US was ready to undertake the task of rebuilding the world order alone if necessary, but “we prefer it – and hope – to do it together with you, our friends in Europe”.
He made almost no reference to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, besides claiming that the US had pressed India to stop importing Russian oil, a claim Russia disputes.
At a press conference in Munich, Zelenskyy said the US had told him that if Ukraine withdrew from the Donbas, peace would come as quickly as possible, but he insisted this concession was not possible since Ukrainians live there.
He disclosed that the US had so far offered a 15-year security guarantee, but Ukraine wanted a minimum 20-year, legally water-tight agreement, setting out the specific help the US would provide to a planned European reassurance force due to be put inside Ukraine in the event of a peace deal.
Details of a so-called prosperity plan whereby the US would have access to Ukrainian mineral resources had not yet been exchanged, Zelenskyy said.
He also queried why the head of the Russian negotiation delegation had been changed, saying he feared it meant the Russians were playing for time, rather than shifting strategy.
Zelenskyy also complained about Europe having been practically absent from the table. “That’s a big mistake, in my opinion,” he said, a view that was shared by the Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi.
On Friday, Donald Trump called on Zelenskyy to “get moving” to reach an agreement with Russia.
Zelenskyy insisted that the elections that the US has pressed Ukraine to hold by 15 May can only take place two months after a ceasefire is declared, to ensure voters have adequate security.
Trump has been trying to put pressure on Zelenskyy to agree a deal within months, but has not spelled out the consequences if Ukraine is not sufficiently flexible for the US.
Zelenskyy also said the Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy plants would be raised in the talks in Geneva, adding that not a single energy plant inside Ukraine had now been left unscathed.
European leaders appear gloomy that a diplomatic breakthrough will be secured, with the consensus being that Vladimir Putin is not yet economically or militarily exhausted.
Zelenskyy said his ambition was to lift the number of Russians killed or seriously injured to 50,000 a month.
One European leader predicted at least another two years of war, and insisted Europe had the resources to sustain Ukraine for that long.
Zelenskyy also mounted a fierce attack on the Iranian regime for providing the Shahed drones that had caused so much damage inside Ukraine.
With as many as 200,000 protesters attending a demonstration in Munich calling for the Iranian regime to be toppled, Zelenskyy said: “We have never had a conflict of interests with the Iranian regime.
“But the Iranian Shahed drones they sold to Russia are killing our people and destroying our infrastructure.”
He argued that if Iran is given time, it will cause more destruction. “Regimes like the one in Iran must not be given time. When they have time, they only kill more.
“They must be stopped immediately, and this is exactly what should have happened with the Ayatollah after all the wars his regime unleashed and all the lives it took.”