Zelensky resorts to diplomacy in the Russian-Ukraine war after confronting Trump

President Volodymyr Zelensky returned to Ukraine on Monday after a thorbellara diplomatic mission that included both humiliation, by President Trump, and a warm hug of European leaders. He promised to use all diplomatic pathways to follow the end of the Ukraine War with Russia, but acknowledged that there was “a long way to go.”

Russia has not given any indication that it will accept any term other than the Ukrainian capitulation and the permanent conquest of a large strip of Ukraine, and Trump makes more clear the day that his intention is to be with Moscow.

The Ukrainians have insisted that they will not leave their weapons unless they receive security guarantees, supported by the United States, which would prevent Kremlin from regrouping and attack again.

After a disastrous meeting with Mr. Trump on Friday, in which the American president and vice president JD Vance rebuked him for being ungrateful, Mr. Zelensky received a sample of support from the democracies of Europe on Sunday, who promised to work with Ukraine to create a peace plan that he could later present to the United States.

Mr. Zelensky has said that American acceptance for a peace plan is important and seemed to go further in his efforts to soften things with the White House. “We are grateful for all the support we have received from the United States,” he told La Nación on Sunday night. “There has not been a single day in which we have not felt grateful.”

“There will be a diplomacy for peace,” Zelensky said. “And for the good of all of us standing together: Ukraine, all of Europe and necessarily America.”

It seems not to have been enough. On Monday night, the United States temporarily suspended all military aid to Ukraine, according to a senior administration official. The order is to immediately enter into force, affecting hundreds of millions of dollars in arms and ammunition in the pipes and in order.

The official said the aid would not resume until Trump determined that Ukraine had demonstrated a commitment to peace negotiations with Russia.

Once again, Trump seemed to be placing the burden of ending the war in Ukraine while saying that he believed that President Vladimir V. Putin de Russia wanted peace, despite the continuous aggression of Moscow.

A day before, in a series of coordinated interviews on American television on Sunday, senior administration officials Trump attacked the Ukrainian leader, often in remarkably personal terms.

National Security Advisor Mike Waltz compared him to “an ex -girlfriend who wants to discuss everything you said nine years ago, instead of advancing the relationship.”

The new national intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard, questioned whether Ukraine and the United States really share common values ​​and extended their criticism of European countries that gathered around Mr. Zelensky, saying that “we do not have with us around these fundamental values ​​of freedom.”

When the host of “Fox News Sunday” if Russia defended the same values ​​as the Americans, she said: “That is not really what we are talking about here.”

The Oval office meeting fed on Kremlin propaganda, which joined the battery on Monday.

The meeting showed that “the kyiv and Zelensky regime do not want peace, they want the continuation of the war,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov, journalists, said on Monday. Their comments connoted an hardener bond between Moscow and Washington while falsely portraying Ukraine as an aggressor, not willing to make peace. The attempts of Washington and Moscow “will clearly be not enough” to end the fighting, said Peskov. “An important element is missing.”

He implied that Russia could now press for a harder offer than during the failed peace talks at the beginning of the war, given Russia’s military gains. “Since then, 2 and a half years later, the situation has changed,” said Peskov. “Only the blind cannot see that or the deaf who don’t want to hear that.”

Mr. Zelensky sought to defend himself from being painted as the obstacle to peace, a criticism that many Ukrainians consider difficult to understand since their country has been under a fierce attack for three years.

Ukrainians almost universally want peace, but not peace at any cost. “We need peace, not an endless war,” Zelensky said once again when he returned to Ukraine.

But the bitter experience has worried the Ukrainians that a high fire without security guarantees only provides a brief respite so that the Russian forces regroup and attack again. They point out that Ukraine has been fighting Russia in the east of the Donbas region since 2014 and that Mr. Putin has violated multiple peace agreements aimed at ending violence there. The Russian leader also said that he had no intention of setting up a broader invasion of Ukraine until his tanks rolled around the border three years ago.

The insistence of Mr. Zelensky in pressing security guarantees was one of the things that apparently angry Trump.

While Mr. Zelensky now works with European leaders to create a peace plan, he once again there are some fundamental principles that are not open to negotiation.

“We need to proceed with the understanding of international law,” he said during a meeting with reporters in London. “We do not want anything that does not belong to us, but when you occupy something or when you violate the law, everything will return to you,” he said.

He stressed that Ukraine will never recognize the territories occupied as Russians: “For us, these will be temporary occupations.”

Russia, he said, would have to take concrete measures before any agreement.

“The high fire must begin with the exchange of prisoners and the return of the children,” he wrote his office in a statement. “This would be a step to demonstrate the genuine intention of La Paz de Russia.”

The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against Mr. Putin and accused him of war crimes, based on the kidnapping of Russia and the deportation of thousands of Ukrainian children during the war.

The French have also suggested a staged process, perhaps with a truce with respect to strikes on energy infrastructure on both sides.

For now, the fight continues as violently as ever.

Since Trump spoke with Mr. Putin two weeks ago, there has not been an alite in Russian attacks. Dozens of Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the last two weeks, according to Ukrainian officials, since Russia continues to launch nighttime attacks on drones and missiles.

At the same time, Ukraine has maintained its campaign aimed at Russian and gas refineries, hoping to deepen economic pressure on Moscow.

In an attack, the drones signed up for the UFIMSKY Refinery Plant, more than 800 miles from the nearest Ukrainian controlled territory. It was not possible to immediately evaluate the impact of the attack.

With the hope that the United States’s turn against kyiv can do for him what his army has not done, Putin has attached to his maximalist objectives in public comments in recent days.

Those include the desire to take control over large strips of land that their forces still do not occupy and that to the current rhythm of the progressive advances of the Russian army would take many years to capture.

Anatoly Kurmanaev Berlin contributed reports.