Donald Trump said he believes that Volodymyr Zelensky is ready to give up Crimea in order to secure peace terms with Russia. 'Oh, I think so,' the U.S. president told reporters in New Jersey yesterday, asked whether he thought the his Ukrainian counterpart was ready to 'give up' the territory. The comments came after the pair met on the sidelines of Pope Francis' funeral on Saturday, their first face-to-face since the disastrous White House summit in February.
Trump said that during their talks at St. Peter's Basilica they had 'briefly' discussed the fate of the Black Sea peninsula. He insisted that Putin should 'stop shooting' and sign an agreement to end the grinding war. Zelensky hailed the recent summit as a 'good meeting…that has the potential to become historic', while the Washington said it was 'very productive'.
But the Ukrainian leader has otherwise remained steadfast on his position on Crimea. Crimea has been a sticking point in negotiations. The strategic peninsula was given to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954 – before Putin illegally annexed it in 2014.
Russia said today it was ready to negotiate with Ukraine – but said recognition of Moscow's claims over five Ukrainian regions including Crimea were 'imperative' to resolving the conflict. Experts warn Trump's peace plan, which includes recognising Russian authority over Crimea, would require constitutional changes and could amount to treason. 'It doesn't mean anything,' said Oleksandr Merezkho, a lawmaker with Zelenskyy's party.
'We will never recognize Crimea as part of Russia.' Volodymyr Zelenskyy, right, huddles with U.S President Donald Trump during a one-on-one meeting before the funeral of Pope Francis at St. Peter's Basilica, April 26, 2025 Ukrainian forces fire a self-propelled howitzer towards Russian troops at an undisclosed location in the Donetsk frontline, April 6, 2025 Flames and smoke rise from a bridge connecting Crimea and Russia in Kerch, on the Crimean peninsula, Oct. 8, 2022 Zelensky echoed the sentiment over the weekend, rejecting any suggestion his country would hand over the region to Moscow. Speaking to reporters, he said: 'Our position is unchanged: only the Ukrainian people have the right to decide which territories are Ukrainian.
'The Constitution of Ukraine states that all temporarily occupied territories are temporarily occupied. They all belong to Ukraine, to the Ukrainian people,' he said. 'Ukraine will not legally recognize any temporarily occupied territories.
I think this is an absolutely fair position. 'It is legal not only from the point of view of the Constitution of Ukraine, but also from the point of view of international law.' As well as undermining Ukrainian sovereignty, potentially amounting to treason and stranding Ukrainian nationals, a concession would set an uneasy precedent for rogue states looking to illegally annex territory through force.
Kyiv has reiterated its desire to end the gruelling war in Ukraine, but warns it must have security guarantees to avoid Russia reopening the conflict at a later date. Ahead of his February meeting with Trump at the White House, Zelensky said he had shared a list of 25 times Russia had violated ceasefires since the annexation of Crimea. Ukrainian soldiers practice trench assaulting during a military training with French servicemen, in a military training compound at an undisclosed location in Poland, on April 25, 2025 Firefighters work to extinguish a fire following an attack in Mykolaiv, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, on April 17, 2025 British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskiy talk on the day of a bilateral meeting at The Villa Wolkonsky on April 26, 2025 in Rome, Italy Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer, Donald Trump, and Volodymyr Zelensky speaking in Saint Peter's Cathedral prior to the funeral Mass of Pope Francis Trump has, in recent months, taken a slightly harder line on Russia, after Vladimir Putin was accused of breaching agreed ceasefires and attacking civilian targets.
The U.S. leader said that Putin should 'stop shooting' and sign an agreement to end the grinding war that started with Moscow's February 2022 invasion. 'I want him to stop shooting, sit down, and sign a deal,' Trump said Sunday when asked what he wanted from Putin. 'We have the confines of a deal, I believe, and I want him to sign it.'
The White House has said that without rapid progress, it could walk away from its role as a broker. Trump indicated that he would give the process 'two weeks.' U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier on Sunday stressed the importance of the week ahead.
'We're close, but we're not close enough' to a deal to halt the fighting, Rubio told broadcaster NBC. 'I think this is going to be a very critical week.' But there is still US frustration with both sides, as the war, which has devastated swathes of eastern Ukraine and killed tens of thousands of people, drags on.
French President Emmanuel Macron (L) talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during the funeral Mass of Pope Francis Volodymyr Zelenskyi speaks during a memorial to honor the victims of a Russian missile strike in Svyatoshynskyi district on April 25, 2025 Zelensky lays flowers at a makeshift memorial to honor the victims of a Russian missile strike in Svyatoshynskyi district on April 25 Russian Foreign Ministry Sergey Lavrov had said last week that Moscow was 'ready to reach a deal' with the mediating United States to end the war in Ukraine, while caveating that some elements of a proposed deal still need to be 'fine tuned'. Crimea, and other areas annexed since the 2022 invasion, appear to remain at the heart of this. 'The Russian side has repeatedly confirmed its readiness, as confirmed by the president, to begin negotiations with Ukraine without any preconditions,' Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reiterated through state media on Monday.
But when asked if there were indeed preconditions that Russia required to sit down with Ukraine, Lavrov added: 'International recognition of Russia's ownership of Crimea, Sevastopol, the Donetsk People's Republic, the Lugansk People's Republic, the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions is imperative.' Lavrov made the comments in an interview with Brazilian newspaper O Globo, published by the Russian foreign ministry. Since launching its Ukraine offensive in February 2022, Russia has seized large parts of four Ukrainian regions and claimed them as its own, in addition to Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.
Zelensky's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said on Monday that continuing Russian attacks contradicted the Kremlin's statements about wanting peace. 'Russia is not ceasing fire at the front and is attacking Ukraine with Shaheds right now,' Yermak wrote on Telegram, referring to Iranian-made drones widely used by Russian forces. 'All the Russians' statements about peace without ceasing fire are just plain lies.'
