Ukraine’s Zelensky ready to give up presidency for peace and Nato membership

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he would be ready to give up the presidency if doing so would achieve a lasting peace for his country under the security umbrella of the Nato military alliance.

Speaking at a forum of government officials in Kyiv marking the three-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Mr Zelensky said, “If to achieve peace, you really need me to give up my post, I’m ready.”

Responding to a journalist’s question on whether he would trade his office for peace, Mr Zelensky said, “I can trade it for Nato.”

Earlier on Sunday, Mr Zelensky said Russia launched 267 strike drones into Ukraine overnight on Saturday, more than in any other single attack of the war.

Ukraine’s air force said 138 drones had been shot down over 13 Ukrainian regions, with 119 more lost en route to their targets.

Three ballistic missiles had also been fired, the air force said. One person was killed in the city of Kryvyi Rih, according to the city military administration.

Mr Trump’s engagement with Russian officials and his agreement to reopen diplomatic ties and economic co-operation with Moscow marked a dramatic about-face in US policy.

Mr Zelensky has expressed fears that Mr Trump pushing a quick resolution would result in lost territory for Ukraine and vulnerability to future Russian aggression, though US officials have asserted that the Ukrainian leader would be involved if and when peace talks actually start.

Mr Trump, however, prompted alarm and anger in Ukraine when this week he suggested that Kyiv had started the war, and that Mr Zelensky was acting as a “dictator” by not holding elections, despite Ukrainian legislation prohibiting them during martial law.

Russia’s deputy foreign minister on Saturday said preparations were under way for a Trump-Putin meeting, a further sign that the Russian leader’s isolation, at least for the Trump administration, was beginning to thaw.

Reacting to the latest Russian attacks, however, Andrii Sybiha, Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, said that the overnight attack “demonstrates that avoiding calling Russia an aggressor does not change the fact that it is one”.

“No one should trust Putin’s words. Look at his actions instead,” Mr Sybiha said in a statement on social media.

Elsewhere, a contentious US proposal that would have seen 500 billion dollars worth of profits from Ukrainian rare minerals given to the United States as compensation for its wartime assistance to Kyiv has been taken off the table, Mr Zelensky said on Sunday, a sign the two sides may be drawing closer to an agreement.

“As of today, as of this evening, the question of 500 billion dollars is no longer there,” Mr Zelensky said during a news conference at the forum of government officials.

US officials under Mr Trump have pressured Mr Zelensky to sign a deal allowing the US access to Ukrainian rare earth minerals as a form of compensation for the assistance the US has provided Ukraine to defend itself against Russia’s invasion.

Mr Zelensky had earlier declined a draft agreement with the US on mineral exploitation because it did not contain security guarantees and came with a 500 billion dollar price tag.

On Sunday, he said that considering aid to Ukraine as a debt to be repaid would be a “Pandora’s box” that would set a precedent requiring Kyiv to reimburse all its backers.

“We do not recognise the debt,” Mr Zelensky said. “It will not be in the final format of the agreement.”

Mr Putin used his speech, on Russia’s Defender of the Fatherland Day, to pledge greater social support for military personnel and new weapons and equipment for Russian forces.

“Today, as the world is changing impetuously, our strategic course for strengthening and developing the Armed Forces remains unchanged,” he said, adding that Russia would continue to develop its armed forces “as the essential part of Russia’s security that guarantees its sovereign present and future”.