Zelensky encourages Trump to ‘not waste time’ and release his Ukraine peace plan

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged former President Donald Trump on Tuesday to release details of an apparent plan that the 2024 Republican presidential front-runner claims would end the war in Ukraine “within 24 hours.” 

Trump, 77, has wildly bragged in several interviews and campaign events that if elected president next year, he would lead peace negotiations between Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin and have the conflict resolved within one day. 

The ex-commander-in-chief, however, has refused to provide details about the approach he would take to end the nearly 19-month-long war. 

“He can publicly share his idea now, not waste time, not to lose people, and say, ‘My formula is to stop the war and stop all this tragedy and stop Russian aggression,’” Zelensky told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “And he said, how he sees it, how to push Russian from our land. Otherwise, he’s not presenting the global idea of peace.”

Zelensky, 45, noted that any peace deal that sees Ukraine giving up land to Russia would be a non-starter.  

“So [if] the idea is how to take the part of our territory and to give Putin, that is not the peace formula,” the Ukrainian leader said. 

Since at least February, Trump has been touting his secret plan to settle the war. 

“It can be negotiated within 24 hours,” Trump told Right Side Broadcasting Network on Feb. 2. “It has to be done from the office of the president, and you have to get them both in a room, and there are things you can say to each one of them — which I won’t reveal now — which will guarantee this war will end immediately. They have to do it.”

In March, the former president similarly told Fox News host Sean Hannity that negotiations between himself, Zelensky and Putin would be “easy.” 

“If it’s not solved [by the next presidential inauguration], I will have it solved in 24 hours with Zelensky and with Putin, and there’s a very easy negotiation to take place, but I don’t want to tell you what it is because then I can’t use that negotiation,” Trump said, not so much as hinting at what his negotiation strategy would be. 

When asked Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” if his deal would allow Putin to keep the land he’s taken in Ukraine, Trump responded, “No, no. I’d make a fair deal for everybody. Nope, I’d make it fair.”

Zelensky delivered a rousing speech at the United Nations in Manhattan Tuesday, calling  on world leaders to “act united to defeat the aggressor.”

He took the stage hours after President Biden urged international unity against Russia’s offensive in his remarks before the UN General Assembly. 

The Ukrainian president will travel to Washington on Thursday, where he will meet with Biden, 80, at the White House and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and other congressional leaders on Capitol Hill, amid growing Republican skepticism about sending billions of dollars in more aid to Ukraine.