Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukraine will need at least $40 billion per year from Western allies to ensure that it can keep up the fight against Russia and has called for additional pressure from the Trump administration on Moscow.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky missed out on a personal meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump this week as the American leader cut his trip to the Group of Seven nations summit in Canada short to return to Washington.
Zelensky had been seeking to secure fresh commitments from the United States to supply more weapons, as Kyiv attempts to strengthen its position in the largely stalled negotiations with Moscow and an increasingly grim situation along the frontlines against the Russian army.
After being sidelined in favour of the Middle East war, Zelensky took to social media on Tuesday to lay out his demands for his Western allies.
“It’s crucial to have $40 billion annually in budgetary support for Ukraine – to ensure our resilience and the ability of our country to carry on. This should be a joint decision by G7 leaders, including the U.S,” the Ukrainian leader wrote.
Since the Russian invasion in 2022, the United States has allocated some $184.8 billion in aid to Ukraine, $89.5 billion of which has been allocated, $58.3 billion of which has been obligated but has not yet been dispersed, and $34.3 billion of which has been further appropriated.
Zelensky went on to call on the fellow Western powers to “continue urging President Trump to use the influence he really has – to force Putin to end this war.”
“It was the U.S. and President Trump who proposed a ceasefire, the resumption of diplomacy, immediate meetings and negotiations. But Russia has blocked every effort,” he said.
“This war continues because of Russia. From the start, it has been an unprovoked and criminal war of aggression. We must not forget that. We must continue applying pressure in every direction – diplomatic, economic, military – to finally bring peace,” Zelensky added.
Since the last round of talks earlier this month in Istanbul, both sides have continued significant strikes against each other’s territory, with Russia bombarding cities like Kyiv and Ukraine in turn carrying out a major operation, in which suicide drones were smuggled deep into Russian territory and struck at Russian bombers and other strategic aircraft.
In addition to both sides continuing to launch consequential attacks, there also appears little appetite from either the Kremlin or Zelensky’s government to give an inch on their respective negotiating stances.
Indeed, following the latest round of talks at the start of the month, Moscow laid out its list of demands, including the total withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from the territories of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. Russia has claimed these Ukrainian territories for itself, though it has so far been unable to occupy the regions fully.
Additionally, the Kremlin demanded that Kyiv fully recognise Russia’s ownership of the Crimean peninsula, which Vladimir Putin annexed from Ukraine in 2014 under the Obama administration.
On top of its territorial demands, Russia also said that for any peace deal, Ukraine would have to agree to indefinite political neutrality and to forgo NATO membership, agree to a prohibition on Western military forces or nuclear weapons in its country, limit the size of Ukraine’s military force, and allow for Russian as an official language of Ukraine.
The demands contrast starkly with the position of the Zelensky government, which has maintained that Ukraine will not officially cede any of the territory it has lost militarily to Russia, including Crimea. Kyiv has also demanded that Russia agree to an unconditional ceasefire before peace talks begin in earnest. Moscow has claimed that this position is “delusional” and shot down the idea of a ceasefire, which it claims would allow Ukraine to reinforce its positions along the frontlines.
Nevertheless, Vladimir Putin told President Trump over the weekend that Russia was willing to continue peace talks. In turn, Zelensky criticised the discussions between the two leaders as “too warm” and said that “any signals of reduced aid, or of treating Ukraine and Russia as equals, are deeply unfair. Russia is the aggressor. They started this war. They do not want to end it.”
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