Zelenskyy says US peace plan 'looks better' with new revisions

Politics and diplomacy

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, in Paris to shore up European support for Kyiv, and said that territorial concessions were the key sticking point in the United States-led talks to end Russia’s war.
• Zelenskyy said he was expecting a conversation with US President Donald Trump on “key issues that are quite challenging”.
• Macron told reporters that only Ukraine could decide on its territories in peace negotiations with Russia and said the current moment “could be decisive for the future of peace in Ukraine and security in Europe”.
• Macron spoke to Trump later on Monday and discussed “next steps in the mediation efforts”, with the French president emphasising “the central importance of security guarantees necessary for Ukraine”, according to the French government.
• The White House said on Monday that the Trump administration was “very optimistic” about reaching an agreement to end the war in Ukraine following the talks between Ukrainian and US delegations in Florida on Sunday.
• The comments came as Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, is set to meet with Putin in Moscow on Tuesday.
• European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas expressed concern over the planned Putin-Witkoff meeting, saying she feared “all the pressure will be put on the weaker side, because that is the easier way to stop this war when Ukraine surrenders”.
• Top Russian banker Andrei Kostin said that Moscow would retaliate if the EU used frozen Russian sovereign assets for a loan to Ukraine by seizing assets owned by European investors in Russia. He also warned Moscow could unleash half a century of litigation over the money.

Weapons and military aid

• Ukraine and the Netherlands signed an agreement for joint drone production, and the Dutch government pledged to buy some 250 million euros ($290m) worth of weapons from the US for Kyiv.
• The weapons will include equipment and missiles for air defence, as well as munitions for F-16 fighter jets and unmanned aerial systems, the Dutch government said.

Regional security

• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has condemned attacks on commercial ships in the Black Sea after a drone attack on a tanker that forms part of Russia’s so-called shadow fleet in Turkiye’s waters. Ukrainian officials have confirmed responsibility for the attack.
• Belarus, a close ally of Russia, accused Lithuania, an EU member, of deploying a drone to spy on it and drop “extremist material”. Vilnius rejected the charge as false.
• For its part, Lithuania has blamed Belarus for balloon incursions that halted flights at the Vilnius airport. It said the EU’s diplomatic service had summoned the Belarusian representative in Brussels and called for “a stop of hybrid attacks against EU countries”.