BUDAPEST — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy poured cold water Thursday on a plan by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to strike a rapid peace deal between Kyiv and Moscow, arguing it would amount to a “loss” for Ukraine.
“I believe that President Trump really wants a quick decision” to end Russia’s war against Ukraine, Zelenskyy told journalists in Budapest. “He wants that. It doesn’t mean that it will happen this way.”
Trump, who was reelected U.S. president this week, said in 2023 that he would seek a quick deal to end the war, asserting: “I’ll have that done in 24 hours” after meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelenskyy. He repeated the claim several times on the campaign trail.
Speaking to journalists in Budapest where he was attending a gathering of European leaders, Zelenskyy said that while Ukraine sought a “fair” end to the war, rushing into a ceasefire or a peace deal with Moscow would lead to a bad outcome for Kyiv.
“He [Trump] wants this war to be finished,” Zelenskyy said through an interpreter. “We all want to end this war, but a fair ending … If it is very fast, it’s going to be a loss for Ukraine.”
The Ukrainian leader also responded to an appeal from Hungarian strongman Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, issued minutes earlier from the same stage, for a rapid ceasefire deal between the two warring camps.
“I heard that it’s better to implement a ceasefire and then, ‘we’ll see,’” Zelenskyy said, referring to Orbán’s comments. “[A] ceasefire was tried back in 2014. We tried to reach this ceasefire and we lost Crimea and then we had the full-scale invasion.”
A rapid, unenforceable ceasefire, Zelenskyy added, amounted to “preparation to ruin and destroy our independence.”
The Ukrainian leader also warned that unless his country’s Western backers ramped up the pressure over North Korea’s participation in the war, more North Korean troops would be sent to the battlefield.
“If there is no political pressure, if there are no decisions, North Korea will increase the number of its soldiers because Putin is always watching the world for reactions and I believe right now the reaction is not sufficient.”
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