Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday urged former US President Donald Trump to reveal his long-teased plan for ending Russia’s war in Ukraine in 24 hours.
“He can publicly share his idea now, not waste time, not to lose people, and say, ‘My formula is to stop the war and stop all this tragedy and stop Russian aggression,’” the Ukrainian leader told CNN, according to a translation provided by the network.
But Zelenskyy noted the plan cannot involve Ukraine handing parts of its own territory to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“That is not the peace formula,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
Trump told NBC’s Meet the Press in an interview broadcast on Sunday that he would end the conflict within a day by negotiating “a fair deal for everybody” by speaking to Putin and Zelenskyy but declined to provide any further details.
The former president also noted that a deal between the two countries could have already been struck if Ukraine had handed over Crimea, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014.
“That’s something that could have been negotiated,” Trump said. “Because there were certain parts, Crimea and other parts of the country, that a lot of people expected could happen. You could have made a deal. So they could have made a deal where there’s lesser territory right now than Russia’s already taken, to be honest. And you could have made a deal where nobody was killed.”
Zelenskyy addressed the United Nations General Assembly earlier this week and is expected to visit Washington on Thursday to meet with President Joe Biden at the White House and lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Biden recently asked Congress for an additional $24 billion (£19.35 billion) package for Ukraine, but House Republicans have raised objections.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Republican, California) told reporters he has questions for Zelenskyy, adding that Americans deserve to know Kyiv’s plan for victory.
“Is Zelenskyy elected to Congress?” McCarthy asked. “Is he our president? I don’t think I have to commit anything and I think I have questions for him.”
Asked about the Republican resistance to providing further aid to his country, Zelenskyy told CNN it’s not fair to equate war with domestic US issues like energy.
“We can’t compare these challenges,” Zelenskyy said, adding that one could understand the difference even by spending one day on the ground in Ukraine.
Zelenskyy had previously called on McCarthy to travel to his country to see the fighting up close, but the House speaker rejected the invitation.