KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The United States has given Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to reach an agreement to end the nearly four-year war, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters, as Russian attacks on energy infrastructure forced nuclear plants to cut output on Saturday.
If the June deadline is not met, the Trump administration will likely put pressure on both sides to meet it, he added.
“The Americans are proposing that the parties end the war by the beginning of this summer and they will probably put pressure on the parties precisely according to this schedule,” Zelenskyy said, speaking to reporters on Friday. Zelenskyy’s comments were embargoed until Saturday morning.
“And they say they want to do everything until June. And they will do everything to end the war. And they want a clear schedule of all the events,” he said.
He said that the United States proposed to hold the next round of trilateral talks next week in their country for the first time, probably in Miami, Zelenskyy said. “We have confirmed our participation,” he added.
Zelenskyy said Russia presented the United States with a $12 trillion economic proposal — which he dubbed the “Dmitriev package” after Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev. Bilateral economic treaties with the United States form part of the wider negotiation process.
Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure continued with more than 400 drones and about 40 missiles launched overnight Saturday, Zelenskyy said in a post on X. The targets included the power grid, generation facilities and distribution networks.
Ukrenergo, the state power transmission operator, said the attack was the second mass strike on power infrastructure since the start of the year, forcing nuclear power plants to cut output. In a statement he said that eight facilities in eight regions were attacked.
“As a result of missile attacks on main high-voltage substations that ensure the production of nuclear power units, all nuclear power plants in the territories under control were forced to reduce their load,” the statement said.
He said that the energy deficit in the country has increased “significantly” as a result of the attacks that forced an extension of power outages per hour in all regions of Ukraine.
The latest deadline follows US-brokered trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi that have produced no breakthrough as the warring parties cling to mutually exclusive demands. Russia is pressuring Ukraine to withdraw from the Donbas, where fighting is still intense — a condition Kyiv says it will never accept.
“Difficult issues remained difficult. Ukraine once again confirmed its positions on the Donbas issue. “We are where we are” is the fairest and most reliable model for a ceasefire today, in our opinion,” Zelenskyy said. He reiterated that the most challenging subjects would be reserved for a trilateral meeting between the leaders.
Zelenskyy said no common ground had been reached on the management of the nuclear plant in Russian-held Zaporizhzhia and expressed skepticism about a US proposal to turn the Donbas region, desired by Russia, into a free economic zone as a compromise.
“I don’t know if this can be implemented, because when we talked about a free economic zone, we had different views on it,” he said.
He said that in the last round of talks the negotiators discussed how a ceasefire will be technically monitored. He added that the United States reaffirmed that it will play a role in that process.
Repeated Russian airstrikes in recent months have targeted Ukraine’s power grid, causing blackouts and disrupting heating and water supplies for families during a bitterly cold winter, putting more pressure on Kyiv.
Zelenskyy said that the United States has again proposed a ceasefire that prohibits attacks on energy infrastructure. Ukraine is ready to observe such a pause if Russia commits; but he added that when Moscow previously agreed to a week-long pause suggested by the United States, it was broken after only four days.