KYIV, Ukraine — (AP) — A deal to end the war between Ukraine and Russia "is still very, very far away," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, adding that he believed Ukraine's long-term partnership with the U.S. was strong enough that American support would continue despite recent fraught relations with U.S. President Donald Trump.
“I think our relationship (with the U.S.) will continue, because it’s more than an occasional relationship,” Zelenskyy said late Sunday, referring to Washington’s support for the past three years of war.
“I believe that Ukraine has a strong enough partnership with the United States of America” to keep aid flowing, he said at a briefing in Ukrainian before leaving London.
Zelenskyy publicly was upbeat despite the recent heated Oval Office blow up with Trump and Vice President JD Vance during which they accused him of being “disrespectful” and said he should show more gratitude for America's help. The turn of events is unwelcome for Ukraine, whose understrength army is having a hard time keep bigger Russian forces at bay.
The Ukrainian leader was in London to attend U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer's effort to rally his European counterparts around continuing — and likely much increased — support for Ukraine from the continent amid political uncertainty in the U.S., and Trump's overtures toward Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Asked by a reporter to comment about the outlines of a new European initiative to end Russia's war, Zelenskyy said: "We are talking about the first steps today, and therefore, until they are on paper, I would not like to talk about them in great detail."
“An agreement to end the war is still very, very far away, and no one has started all these steps yet. The peace that we foresee in the future must be just, honest, and most importantly, sustainable,” he added.
Trump slammed Zelenskyy later Monday for suggesting that the end of Russia's war against Ukraine is still far off.
“This is the worst statement that could have been made by Zelenskyy, and America will not put up with it for much longer!” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform.
“It is what I was saying, this guy doesn’t want there to be Peace as long as he has America’s backing and, Europe, in the meeting they had with Zelenskyy, stated flatly that they cannot do the job without the U.S. — Probably not a great statement to have been made in terms of a show of strength against Russia,” Trump added in his post. “What are they thinking?”
The White House wants Zelenskyy to show more openness to potential concessions in order to bring the fighting to an end, but Zelenskyy resisted that idea while pressing for security guarantees from Washington during last Friday's meeting.
Friedrich Merz, Germany's likely next leader after the recent election, said Monday that he didn't think last Friday's Oval Office blow-up was spontaneous.
He said that he had watched the scene repeatedly. “My assessment is that it wasn’t a spontaneous reaction to interventions by Zelenskyy, but apparently an induced escalation in this meeting in the Oval Office,” Merz said.
He said that he was “somewhat astonished by the mutual tone,” but there has been “a certain continuity to what we are seeing from Washington at the moment” in recent weeks.
“I would advocate for us preparing to have to do a great, great deal more for our own security in the coming years and decades,” he said.
Even so, Merz said that he wanted to keep the trans-Atlantic relationship alive.
“I would also advocate doing everything to keep the Americans in Europe,” he said.
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Geir Moulson contributed to this report from Berlin.
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Follow AP's coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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