Zelensky to attend Downing Street for high-level Ukraine talks

President Volodymyr Zelensky will meet with key European leaders in London on Monday, as Ukraine’s allies plan their response to ongoing US pressure for kyiv to accept concessions in peace talks.

The leaders of France and Germany will join Zelensky and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in No 10 as they seek to ensure any deal deters a future Russian attack.

The high-level meeting comes after three days of talks in Florida, where Zelensky’s chief negotiator pushed for changes to a widely considered White House plan to accommodate the Kremlin’s core demands.

The United States and Ukraine said there was progress, but US President Donald Trump appeared to criticize Zelensky on Sunday, saying he “has not read” the draft.

Trump told reporters he was “a little disappointed that President Zelensky hasn’t read the proposal yet, that was a few hours ago.”

He continued: “Their people love it… [Russia] “I’d rather have the whole country, if you think about it, but Russia, I think, is okay with that, but I’m not sure Zelensky is okay with that.”

Trump appeared to be referring to the latest draft of the proposed peace deal, which was reviewed in Miami after talks led by Zelensky’s new chief negotiator, Rustem Umerov, and Trump’s close aides, special envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Around the same time as Trump’s comments on Sunday, Zelensky said Umerov would brief him on negotiations in London or Brussels, adding that “some issues can only be discussed in person” rather than by phone.

Zelensky added that the talks with Witkoff and Kushner were “constructive, although not easy.”

Monday’s talks in London will feature Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who represent the three NATO nations with the largest military budgets in real terms, except the United States.

Downing Street said the meeting would “focus on ongoing peace negotiations and next steps”, while British cabinet minister Pat McFadden said it would explore ways to ensure Ukraine is “able to decide its own future”.

He said there needed to be meaningful security guarantees should a peace deal be reached, not a “toothless organization.”

The UK and France have led talks to form a so-called coalition of the willing, also known as the Ukraine Multinational Force, to offer future defense support, including a possible security force deployed to the country.

It is not yet clear what functions it would perform, although diplomatic sources have previously indicated that it would not be used to monitor a ceasefire line and would differ from a peacekeeping force in that it would not be classified as impartial.

Germany and other European defense players, including Italy and Poland, have promised forms of defense assistance but have expressed skepticism about the prospect of sending troops on the ground inside Ukraine, a proposal the Kremlin has said it would consider escalatory.

The White House has been pressing kyiv and Moscow to quickly agree on a multi-point plan to end the war.

But there have been few signs of a breakthrough, even after Witkoff held five hours of in-person talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow last week.

In addition to security guarantees, negotiations remain particularly tense over the issue of territorial concessions.

The United States has proposed that Ukraine completely withdraw its forces from the eastern regions that Russia has attempted to take by force but has not been able to fully capture, in exchange for Russia withdrawing from other locations and ceasing fighting.

Speaking on Sunday, Trump’s outgoing special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, also highlighted talks on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant as particularly complex.

Heavy fighting has occurred at times around the facility, which is the largest in Europe and is currently under Russian control. A leaked first draft of the US-backed peace plan proposed dividing future energy generation between Ukraine and Russia.

Kellogg said at an event in California that he was close to a deal but that talks on those items were continuing, adding: “If we get those two things resolved, I think the rest of the things will work out pretty well.”

The talks in London are the latest attempt by Ukraine’s European allies to carve out a role in US-led efforts to end the war, which they fear will undermine the continent’s long-term interests in favor of a quick resolution.

European leaders have rejected early versions of the US-led peace plan, which has been revised after criticism that it was too favorable to Russia.

Despite enormous economic pressure and battlefield losses, the Kremlin has shown few signs of being willing to budge on its key demands, including ruling out any future path for Ukraine to join the NATO military alliance.

Last week, Putin also reaffirmed his willingness to continue fighting until his forces take full control of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, of which they currently control around 85%.

Elsewhere, the Kremlin has responded favorably to the White House’s updated National Security Strategy, a document that sets out the administration’s foreign policy views.

It says the United States should prioritize improving relations between Europe and Russia to “mitigate the risk” of a broader conflict, as well as establish a critical view of the continent’s policies on the economy, migration and freedom, which the White House says have brought Europe to the point of “civilizational erasure.”

The Kremlin said the strategy was “largely consistent” with its own vision and was a “positive step” forward.