Ukraine-Russia war live: Zelensky says he has no right to give up land after European allies pledge support

Ukraine is preparing to present an alternative peace plan to Donald Trump and could do so as soon as today, Volodymyr Zelensky told a news conference yesterday.

An initial 28-point plan proposed by the US, widely viewed as being too favourable to Russia, has since been cut down to 20 points following talks between Ukrainian and US officials.

But sticking points still remain, most notably over the matter of occupied territories in eastern Ukraine and security guarantees to prevent another Russian invasion in future.

The original leaked version of the US-backed plan proposed that Ukraine hand over total control of the Donbas to Russia, even though Kremlin forces have not yet captured it in full.

According to the draft plan, energy produced at Zaporizhzhia, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, would be split between the two countries.

Zelensky said yesterday that his government has no right to agree to forfeit its land. “Russia is insisting that we give up territories, but we don’t want to cede anything,” he said.

“We have no legal right to do so, under Ukrainian law, our constitution and international law. And we don’t have any moral right either.”

Russian drones attacked the northern Ukrainian city of Sumy late on Monday in the second major strike on the city in 24 hours, triggering a power outage, the regional governor said.

“In the space of half an hour, the Russians launched more than 10 drone strikes on the city,” governor Oleh Hryhorov wrote on Telegram.

“There is no electricity in Sumy. Some critical infrastructure is operating on reserve power sources.”

Hryhorov said officials were checking for casualties and that power would be restored as soon as it was safe for crews to do so.

Sumy, a city of around 250,000 before Putin’s invasion in February 2022, has been a frequent target of Russian attacks.

Earlier on Monday, Hryhorov said Russian drones struck an apartment block in the city, injuring seven people.

Russian attacks on Ukraine have for months focused on energy targets in the run-up to the bitterly-cold winter.

Russia’s defence ministry has proposed a medal for servicemen and civilians who helped to recover bodies from combat zones – a rare official indication that Russia is struggling to account for the missing nearly four years into its invasion of Ukraine.

The Russian military has long been accused of abandoning its dead on the battlefield in Ukraine, as Vladimir Putin’s forces have pushed to grab as much land as possible from their European neighbour.

The draft document, published on Monday in an official database of proposed regulations, suggests awarding the medal for “evacuation of killed servicemen and other individuals in combat conditions with life-threatening risks”.

It also includes a proposal to award the medal for the implementation of innovative technologies helping to evacuate bodies from the front lines and identifying the dead.

Russia, like Ukraine, classifies its combat losses as state secrets.

More than one million Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to British military intelligence estimates published earlier this year.

Russian drones struck high-rise apartments in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Okhtyrka overnight, injuring seven people and extensively damaging the building, according to the head of the regional administration Oleh Hryhorov.

In the northern city of Chernihiv, a Russian drone exploded outside a residential building, injuring three people and damaging a kindergarten, gas lines and cars, regional head Viacheslav Chaus said.

Ukraine’s air force said Russia fired 149 drones overnight, with 131 neutralised and 16 others striking their targets.

Meanwhile, Russian air defences destroyed 67 Ukrainian drones overnight, Russia’s defence ministry said. The drones were shot down over 11 Russian regions, it said.

The talks in London yesterday followed the publication of a new US national security strategy that alarmed European leaders and was welcomed by Russia.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the document, which spells out the Trump administration’s core foreign policy interests, was largely in line with Moscow’s vision.

“The nuances that we see in the new concept certainly look appealing to us,” Peskov said yesterday.

“It mentions the need for dialogue and building constructive, friendly relations. This cannot but appeal to us, and it absolutely corresponds to our vision. We understand that by eliminating the irritants that currently exist in bilateral relations, a prospect may open for us to truly restore our relations and bring them out of the rather deep crisis.”

The document released on Friday by the White House said the US wants to improve its relationship with Russia after years of Moscow being treated as a global pariah and that ending the war is a core US interest to “reestablish strategic stability with Russia”.

The document also says Nato must not be “a perpetually expanding alliance,” echoing another complaint by Russia.

It was scathing about the migration and free speech policies of longstanding US allies in Europe, suggesting they face the “prospect of civilisational erasure” due to migration.

Sir Keir Starmer’s government declined to comment on the document, calling it a matter for the US government.

The US and Ukrainian negotiators completed three days of talks on Saturday aimed at trying to narrow differences on the US administration’s peace proposal.

Volodymyr Zelensky said on Telegram that talks had been “substantive” and that National Security and Defence Council secretary Rustem Umerov and Chief of the General Staff Andrii Hnatov were travelling back to Europe to brief him.

A major sticking point in the plan is the suggestion that Kyiv must cede control of the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine to Russia, which illegally occupies most but not all of the territory. Ukraine and its European allies have balked at the idea of handing over land.

UK prime minister Keir Starmer said he “won’t be putting pressure” on Zelensky to accept a peace settlement.

Donald Trump has had a hot-and-cold relationship with Zelensky since winning a second term, insisting the war was a waste of US taxpayers’ money. Trump has also repeatedly urged the Ukrainians to cede land to Russia to end the nearly four-year conflict.

Sir Keir Starmer, French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Friedrich Merz vowed to support Kyiv in their comments before Monday’s meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky, which lasted about two hours.

They met shortly after US president Donald Trump appeared to vent his frustration with Zelensky, claiming the Ukrainian leader “hasn’t yet read the [latest] proposal” for an end to Russia’s war.

Zelensky said on Monday that Trump “certainly wants to end the war. … Surely, he has his own vision. We live here, from within we see details and nuances, we perceive everything much deeper, because this is our motherland”.

Starmer said the push for peace was at a “critical stage,” and stressed the need for “a just and lasting ceasefire”.

Merz, meanwhile, said he was “sceptical” about some details in documents released by the US. “We have to talk about it. That’s why we are here,” he said.

“The coming days – could be a decisive time for all of us.”

European leaders are working to ensure that any ceasefire is backed by solid security guarantees both from Europe and the US to deter Russia from attacking again. Trump has not given explicit guarantees in public.

Volodymyr Zelensky said the current US peace plan differs from earlier versions in that it now has 20 points, down from 28, after some “obvious anti-Ukrainian points were removed.”

Responding to reporters’ questions on WhatsApp about security guarantees, Zelensky said the main questions to be resolved are: “What if after the end of the war, Russia will start another aggression? What will the partners be ready for? What could Ukraine count on?”

The answers to these questions “must be in the core of the security guarantees for Ukraine,” he said.

Ukraine is short of about $800m (£600m) to buy the US weapons it had planned to purchase this year with help from its European allies, President Volodymyr Zelensky says.

For next year, Ukraine would need about $15bn for the PURL (Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List) programme, which involves purchases of US weapons with European money, he said.

More than two-thirds of member states of Nato have committed to weapons for Ukraine through the scheme.