Trump's Ukraine plan faces new obstacles after Putin call

President Donald Trump’s campaign to end the war in Ukraine faced new complications on Monday when Vladimir Putin said he would revise his country’s negotiating position after the Russian leader claimed Ukrainian drones targeted his residence.

Putin told Trump of his decision in a call Monday, according to the Kremlin, even as Kyiv cast the Russian allegations as a fabrication aimed at derailing the peace process.

Trump addressed the dispute while speaking to reporters in Florida, saying that Putin had told him about the purported attack during their discussion. The U.S. president, seeming to side with Putin, said he was “very angry.”

“It’s one thing to be offensive, because they’re offensive,” Trump told reporters in Florida. “It’s another thing to attack his house. It’s not the right time to do any of that.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has dismissed the Russian claims as a “new lie” and warned that Moscow could be using it as an excuse to prepare an attack on government buildings in Kyiv.

Putin said Moscow intends to work closely with the U.S. on peace efforts but would reconsider a number of previously reached agreements, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told Russian newswires. Ushakov added that Putin assured Trump that Moscow would look to continue working with American partners to achieve peace and that the two leaders agreed to maintain their dialogue.

Putin and Trump’s Monday call — their second in as many days — follows a flurry of diplomatic activity at year’s end as the U.S. president pushes to secure a resolution to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and fulfill a pledge he’d made for his first day back in office. While White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on X that Trump and Putin had held a “positive call,” it remains unclear whether the American president is any closer to that goal.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier on Monday that Ukraine attempted to attack a presidential residence in the Novgorod region, more than 400 kilometers (249 miles) northwest of Moscow, with 91 drones, adding that Russia would retaliate and that targets had already been selected.

His counterpart, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, on Monday cast it as a false claim to justify continuing the war.

The tit-for-tat was a marked shift from Sunday, when Zelenskyy met with Trump in Florida and the two leaders expressed optimism about the prospects for a peace deal. While that meeting delivered no clear breakthrough, Trump hailed what he called “a lot of progress,” even as he cautioned it might take a few weeks to conclude and there was no set timeline.

Zelenskyy said Sunday the peace plan was “90% agreed.” The U.S. and Ukrainian presidents spoke with European leaders after their meeting.

In a Fox News interview broadcast on Monday evening, Zelenskyy reiterated the 90% assessment, adding that one of the largest remaining obstacles regards territory control. He rejected the idea that Putin wanted Ukraine to succeed, as the American president said that the Russian leader did.

“I don’t trust Putin, and he doesn’t want success for Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said. “I believe that he can say such words to President Trump,” he added.

Ukraine is seeking a meeting with European partners and Trump in January, Zelenskyy has said, followed by a separate meeting with Russian officials “in one format or another.” The Coalition of the Willing group will meet in early January to discuss its support for Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron said in a Monday post on X.

Ukrainian officials toiled over recent weeks to revise a 28-point draft plan originally proposed by the U.S. but seen as overly favorable to Russia. The latest version has 20 points, but Moscow has warned that it includes elements it won’t accept, including on the size of Ukraine’s post-war military.

Among the major issues left to be resolved: the future of Ukraine’s Donbas region, which is partly occupied by Russian forces. Russia has insisted on maximalist demands for territory, including lands that it doesn’t fully control.

Zelenskyy, asked on Fox News about withdrawal from border regions, said Ukraine would not put any unilateral land concessions up to a referendum, which instead would be an option for Ukraine’s proposal of a free economic zone, or something similar.

“We have the question with the territories — and we can’t, it’s not about referendum or Parliament or the president. We can’t just withdraw, it’s out of our law. We can’t just withdraw from our territories,” he said. If there’s agreement on some sort of economic zone, with Ukrainian retreats mirrored by Russian retreats, then a “referendum is the way, how to accept it or not accept.” Any positive referendum in Ukraine would be a “great success for President Trump,” Zelenskyy added.

Russia also wants guarantees against future eastward expansion by the NATO military alliance and on Ukraine’s neutral status if it joins the European Union, as well as clarity on the removal of sanctions and on hundreds of billions of dollars of Moscow’s frozen state assets in the West, according to a person close to the Kremlin.

Zelenskyy, for his part, said he asked Trump for U.S. security guarantees lasting as long as half a century. Current proposals under discussion set out a 15-year term with the possibility for an extension.

“I would like the guarantee to be much longer,” Zelenskyy said Monday in an audio message to reporters. “We would like to consider the possibility of 30, 40, 50 years and then it will be a historic decision by Trump.”

In the Fox News interview, Zelenskyy described the security proposal as a “NATO-like” guarantee that is not NATO itself.

Even amid ongoing negotiations, Russia has continued to hammer Ukraine with drone and missile attacks targeting cities and energy infrastructure, looking to maximize the pain felt by civilians during winter.

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(With assistance from Mark Sweetman, Magan Crane, Josh Wingrove, Laura Davison and Derek Wallbank.)

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