In this pho­to pro­vid­ed by the Ukrain­ian Emer­gency Ser­vice, res­cuers car­ry out bod­ies of pas­sen­gers af­ter a Russ­ian drone hit a pub­lic bus in Marhanets, Dnipropetro­vsk re­gion, Wednes­day, April 23, 2025. (Ukrain­ian Emer­gency Ser­vice via AP)

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on Wednes­day lashed out at Ukraine’s pres­i­dent, say­ing Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy is pro­long­ing the “killing field” af­ter push­ing back on ced­ing Crimea to Rus­sia as part of a po­ten­tial peace plan.

Ze­len­skyy on Tues­day ruled out ced­ing ter­ri­to­ry to Rus­sia in any deal be­fore talks set for Wednes­day in Lon­don among U.S., Eu­ro­pean and Ukrain­ian of­fi­cials. “There is noth­ing to talk about. It is our land, the land of the Ukrain­ian peo­ple,” Ze­len­skyy said.

Dur­ing sim­i­lar talks last week in Paris, U.S. of­fi­cials pre­sent­ed a pro­pos­al that in­clud­ed al­low­ing Rus­sia to keep con­trol of oc­cu­pied Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ry as part of a deal, ac­cord­ing to a Eu­ro­pean of­fi­cial fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter who was not au­tho­rized to com­ment pub­licly and spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

Trump called Ze­lenkyy’s push­back “very harm­ful” to talks.

“No­body is ask­ing Ze­len­skyy to rec­og­nize Crimea as Russ­ian Ter­ri­to­ry but, if he wants Crimea, why didn’t they fight for it eleven years ago when it was hand­ed over to Rus­sia with­out a shot be­ing fired?” he wrote on so­cial me­dia.

Rus­sia an­nexed Crimea in 2014 af­ter send­ing troops to over­run it. Weeks lat­er, Moscow-backed sep­a­ratists launched an up­ris­ing in east­ern Ukraine, bat­tling Kyiv’s forces.

Trump al­so as­sert­ed they were close to a deal and that Ukraine’s leader can have peace or “he can fight for an­oth­er three years be­fore los­ing the whole Coun­try,” adding that Ze­len­skyy’s state­ment “will do noth­ing but pro­long the ‘killing field,’ and no­body wants that!”

‘A very fair pro­pos­al’

Wednes­day’s meet­ing was pared back at the last minute, while Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance said ne­go­ti­a­tions are reach­ing a mo­ment of truth.

“We’ve is­sued a very ex­plic­it pro­pos­al to both the Rus­sians and the Ukraini­ans, and it’s time for them to ei­ther say ‘yes’ or for the Unit­ed States to walk away from this process,” Vance told re­porters dur­ing a vis­it to In­dia.

He said it was “a very fair pro­pos­al” that would “freeze the ter­ri­to­r­i­al lines at some lev­el close to where they are to­day,” with both sides hav­ing to give up some ter­ri­to­ry they cur­rent­ly hold. He did not pro­vide de­tails.

A se­nior Eu­ro­pean of­fi­cial fa­mil­iar with the on­go­ing talks in­volv­ing the Amer­i­can team said a pro­pos­al the Unit­ed States calls “fi­nal” was ini­tial­ly pre­sent­ed last week in Paris, where it was de­scribed as “just ideas” — and that they could be changed.

When those “ideas” sur­faced in me­dia re­ports, Ukrain­ian of­fi­cials were sur­prised to find that Wash­ing­ton por­trayed them as fi­nal, ac­cord­ing to the of­fi­cial, who was not au­tho­rized to com­ment pub­licly and spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

Ze­len­skyy said Wednes­day that Ukraine is ready for any for­mat of ne­go­ti­a­tions that might bring a cease­fire and open the door to full peace ne­go­ti­a­tions, as he mourned nine civil­ians killed when a Russ­ian drone struck a bus ear­li­er in the day.

“We in­sist on an im­me­di­ate, com­plete and un­con­di­tion­al cease­fire,” Ze­len­skyy wrote on so­cial me­dia, in ac­cor­dance with a pro­pos­al he said the U.S. tabled six weeks ago.

Ukraine and some West­ern Eu­ro­pean gov­ern­ments have ac­cused Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin of drag­ging his feet on that pro­pos­al as his army tries to cap­ture more Ukrain­ian land. West­ern an­a­lysts say Moscow is in no rush to con­clude peace talks be­cause it has bat­tle­field mo­men­tum.

Doubts over ne­go­ti­a­tions

U.K. For­eign Sec­re­tary David Lam­my said the talks in Lon­don to find an end to the more than three-year war would in­volve on­ly low­er-rank­ing of­fi­cials, af­ter the U.S. State De­part­ment said Tues­day that Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio was un­able to at­tend be­cause of a sched­ul­ing is­sue.

Ru­bio’s abrupt can­cel­la­tion raised doubts about the di­rec­tion of ne­go­ti­a­tions. He had in­di­cat­ed that Wednes­day’s meet­ing could be de­ci­sive in de­ter­min­ing whether the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion re­mains en­gaged.

Com­ment­ing on those at­tend­ing the talks, Krem­lin spokesman Dmit­ry Peskov said that “as far as we un­der­stand, they so far have failed to bring their po­si­tions clos­er on some is­sues.” He said the Krem­lin was still in con­sul­ta­tions with Amer­i­can of­fi­cials but wouldn’t pub­licly dis­cuss de­tails.

U.S. spe­cial en­voy Steve Witkoff is ex­pect­ed to vis­it Moscow again lat­er this week, ac­cord­ing to Russ­ian of­fi­cials.

Even achiev­ing a lim­it­ed, 30-day cease­fire has been be­yond the reach of ne­go­tia­tors, as both sides con­tin­ue to at­tack each oth­er along the 1,000-kilo­me­ter (620-mile) front line and launch long-range strikes.

A Russ­ian drone struck a bus car­ry­ing work­ers in Mar­ganets, in east­ern Ukraine’s Dnipropetro­vsk re­gion on Wednes­day morn­ing, killing eight women and one man, re­gion­al head Ser­hii Lysak wrote on so­cial me­dia. More than 40 peo­ple were in­jured, he said.

Lysak pub­lished pho­tos of a bus with win­dows blown out and shards of glass mixed with blood spat­tered on its floor.

A Ukrain­ian del­e­ga­tion in Lon­don

Trump has pushed for an end to the war and said last week that ne­go­ti­a­tions were “com­ing to a head.” That com­ment came af­ter Ru­bio sug­gest­ed the U.S. might soon back away from ne­go­ti­a­tions if they don’t progress.

Those still at­tend­ing Wednes­day’s meet­ing in­clude re­tired Lt. Gen. Kei­th Kel­logg, Trump’s en­voy for Ukraine and Rus­sia.

An­drii Yer­mak, the head of Ukraine’s pres­i­den­tial of­fice, said on so­cial me­dia that a del­e­ga­tion in­clud­ing him, For­eign Min­is­ter An­drii Sybi­ha and De­fense Min­is­ter Rustem Umerov had ar­rived in Lon­don for the talks de­spite the al­ter­ations.

“The path to peace is not easy, but Ukraine has been and re­mains com­mit­ted to peace­ful ef­forts,” Yer­mak said. Of­fi­cials would “dis­cuss ways to achieve a full and un­con­di­tion­al cease­fire as the first step to­ward a com­pre­hen­sive set­tle­ment and the achieve­ment of a just and last­ing peace.”

Sev­er­al hours lat­er, Yer­mak said that he, Sybi­ha and Umerov met with na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and for­eign pol­i­cy ad­vi­sors from the coun­tries “par­tic­i­pat­ing in the coali­tion of the will­ing” and “em­pha­sized our com­mit­ment” to the U.S. pres­i­dent’s peace ef­forts.

He as­sert­ed on so­cial me­dia that “Rus­sia con­tin­ues to re­ject an un­con­di­tion­al cease­fire, drag­ging out the process and try­ing to ma­nip­u­late ne­go­ti­a­tions.”

A Ukrain­ian sol­dier walks past dam­aged build­ings in cen­tral Pokrovsk, the site of the heav­i­est bat­tles with the Russ­ian troops in the Donet­sk re­gion, Ukraine, Wednes­day, April 23, 2025. (AP Pho­to/Michael Shtekel)

Trump frus­trat­ed with both sides

Trump said re­peat­ed­ly dur­ing his elec­tion cam­paign last year that he would be able to end the war “in 24 hours” up­on tak­ing of­fice. But he has ex­pressed frus­tra­tion with Ze­len­skyy and Putin. Rus­sia has ef­fec­tive­ly re­ject­ed a U.S. pro­pos­al for an im­me­di­ate and full 30-day halt in the fight­ing by im­pos­ing far-reach­ing con­di­tions.

White House press sec­re­tary Karo­line Leav­itt told re­porters lat­er on Thurs­day that Trump’s “frus­tra­tion is grow­ing and he needs to see this thing come to an end.”

“What he is ask­ing is for peo­ple to come to the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble, rec­og­niz­ing that this has been a bru­tal war for far too long,” Leav­itt said. “And in or­der to make a good deal, both sides have to walk away a lit­tle bit un­hap­py, and un­for­tu­nate­ly, Pres­i­dent Ze­len­skyy has been try­ing to lit­i­gate this peace ne­go­ti­a­tion in the press, and that’s un­ac­cept­able to the pres­i­dent.”

Some Eu­ro­pean al­lies are wary of the Amer­i­can pro­pos­al for Ukraine to ex­change land for peace. But an of­fi­cial said there’s al­so ac­knowl­edg­ment by some al­lies that Rus­sia is firm­ly en­trenched whol­ly or par­tial­ly in five re­gions of Ukraine: Crimea, Luhan­sk, Donet­sk, Za­por­izhzhia and Kher­son.

If the goal is to ob­tain a cease­fire im­me­di­ate­ly, “it should be based on the line of con­tact as it is,” said the se­nior French of­fi­cial, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty in line with French pres­i­den­tial pol­i­cy.

___

Novikov re­port­ed from Kyiv and Mad­hani from Wash­ing­ton. Han­na Arhi­ro­va in Kyiv, Ukraine and An­gela Charl­ton in Paris con­tributed.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) —