Ukraine’s allies say efforts to end Russia’s war at ‘critical moment’

Ukraine’s European allies have agreed to increase their support for Ukraine and put more economic pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin as they say efforts to end Moscow’s “barbaric” war are at a “critical moment”, according to Downing Street.

The statement from UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that he would share Ukraine’s version of a 20-point plan on Tuesday, as both Ukraine and Russia continue to refine a 28-point plan put forward by US President Donald Trump last month to end the war.

“The mood of the Americans, in principle, is for finding a compromise,” Zelenskyy told reporters in London after a meeting with the leaders of France, Germany and the United Kingdom on Monday. “Of course, there are complex issues related to the territory, and a compromise has not yet been found there.”

The London meeting kicked off a busy two days of diplomacy for Zelenskyy as European allies scramble to show their support for the Ukrainian leader as he continues to face public criticism from the US president.

Trump said on Sunday he was “disappointed” with Zelenskyy, accusing him of not having read the latest proposals backed by the US.

Following the meeting in London, Zelenskyy said that the leaders of Finland, Italy, Poland, Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Turkiye also joined a call to express their support.

He then travelled to Brussels, where he met with European Union and NATO leaders before travelling on to Italy to meet with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin has said that the recent US national security strategy put forward by the White House largely aligns with Russia’s positions. The new US document is critical of European leaders, sceptical of NATO expansion, supports far-right parties on the continent, and seeks better and stable relations with Russia.

“The adjustments that we see correspond in many ways to our vision,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state television reporter Pavel Zarubin on Sunday.

Peskov also said it was encouraging that the new strategy pledged to end “the perception… of the NATO military alliance as a perpetually expanding alliance”.

Meanwhile, Russian forces continued to launch deadly attacks across Ukraine, killing at least four civilians in Ukraine’s Donetsk region and five civilians in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region since Sunday.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence also claimed on Monday that Moscow’s troops had seized the Ukrainian villages of Novodanylivka in the Zaporizhia region and Chervone in the Donetsk region, according to the state-owned TASS news agency.