Volodymyr Zelenskyy calls for 50-year US security guarantee for Ukraine

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The United States has offered Ukraine a 15-year security guarantee, but Kiev wants three times longer to deter any future Russian aggression, Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday.

The Ukrainian president called for a guarantee of up to 50 years the day after the Florida summit with Donald Trump, which the two leaders said was important but failed to achieve decisive progress.

In a WhatsApp conversation with reporters during his return to Europe on Monday, Zelensky said he told the US president that 15 years would be too short to deter Russia in the conflict that began with the 2014 annexation of Crimea.

He added: “I also told him that we would like to study the possibility of 30, 40 or 50 years.” The draft 20-point peace plan unveiled by Kiev earlier this month mentioned a security guarantee that would “reflect” NATO’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 one of President Vladimir Putin’s residences with drones, saying this “final move toward a policy of state terrorism” prompted it to “reconsider its negotiating position” on the conflict. But Zelensky said the Russian claim is “a complete fabrication aimed at justifying additional attacks against Ukraine.”

Speaking at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach on Sunday, Trump said he had an “excellent” discussion with Zelensky that “made a lot of progress” toward ending the war in Ukraine.

The US President said that he had a “very good and productive” telephone conversation that lasted more than two hours with Putin before his meeting with Zelensky. White House press secretary Carolyn Levitt said in a post on X that Trump then had a second call with Putin on Monday.

“President Trump had a positive call with President Putin about Ukraine,” Levitt wrote. She did not immediately respond to a request for more details about the conversation.

The Kremlin said Putin told Trump that the alleged drone attack on the northern Russian president’s residence “will not go unanswered.”

The state news agency TASS quoted Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy adviser, as saying that Trump was “shocked and outraged” by the “crazy” attack, and that the US president added: “Thank God we did not give them the Tomahawks,” the precise long-range missiles that Kiev lobbied the United States for in the fall.

According to Uskakov, Putin told Trump that Moscow would “reconsider its position” on negotiations with Ukraine after the alleged attack, and that some agreements Zelensky had reached with the United States the day before gave Kiev “space to evade its obligations.”

In his conversations with journalists, Zelensky said that Moscow fabricated the alleged drone attack to justify not taking the necessary steps to end the war. He added, “Russia is doing it again, using dangerous statements to undermine all the achievements of our joint diplomatic efforts with President Trump’s team.”

European leaders sought to adopt a positive tone in the Florida talks, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen welcoming the “good progress” that had been made, but adding that “more important than this effort is obtaining strict security guarantees from day one.”

On Monday, the German government raised doubts about Putin’s commitment to the process after violent attacks on Ukraine over Christmas.

A German government spokesman said: “It is now up to Russia to demonstrate its readiness to move towards a just and lasting peace in Ukraine.”

Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles said Europe must continue to support Kyiv. “This just and lasting peace and its conditions must be decided by Ukraine, and cannot be dictated by Putin,” Robles told Spanish public radio RTVE.

Zelensky said sticking points remained over the land issue and who would run the Zaporizhya nuclear power plant, which Russia seized in the early stages of its full-scale invasion in 2022.

The Ukrainian president had previously said that he would be ready to withdraw “heavy forces” from a “demilitarized zone” or a potential “economic zone” in eastern Ukraine, on the condition that Russian forces reverse this withdrawal. But he said on Monday that there was no “detailed concept” on potential areas.

“It is no secret that Russia wants this, in their delusions they want us not to be present on the territory of our country at all,” Zelensky said. “But we have our own land, our own territorial integrity, our own statehood and our own interests. We will act in accordance with Ukraine’s interests,” he added.

Additional reporting by Abigail Hauslohner, Laura Bittle and Carmen Moela