By Guy Birchall

Washington has offered a 15-year security guarantee to Kyiv as part of a proposed peace plan, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Dec 29.

The Ukrainian leader added, however, that his preference would be for the United States to make a commitment of up to 50 years to deter Russia from any future land grabs.

“The President of the United States confirmed strong security guarantees. He confirmed the details that had been developed up to this point by our negotiating teams regarding these security guarantees, and he confirmed that they would be put to a vote by the United States Congress. This is a very strong agreement,” Zelenskyy wrote on X.

Details of the security guarantees have not been made public, but Zelenskyy said they would carry legal force and that bilateral agreements with the Europeans will also be ratified by parliaments of those countries, likewise giving those agreements the same legal force.

According to another X post by the Ukrainian leader, President Donald Trump has said he would consider extending American security guarantees beyond 15 years.

Zelenskyy also said he wants the 20-point peace plan under discussion to be approved in a national referendum.

Meanwhile, in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that his forces were making significant advances and breaching Ukrainian defenses as the nearly four-year-old conflict continues.

“The forces of the groups are confidently advancing, breaking through the enemy’s defenses,” he said, according to Russian state-run news agency TASS.

“Ukrainian Armed Forces units are retreating everywhere, along the entire line of contact.”

Putin added that his forces were working to “completely liberate the territory of Donbas,” a region that is proving a key sticking point in the ongoing peace negotiations.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called on Ukraine to withdraw its troops from the areas of the Donbas still under its control if it wants peace.

“Of course, this is a withdrawal of the regime’s armed forces from the Donbas beyond the administrative borders,” Peskov told TASS, restating a long-held Russian position.

He refused to be drawn on the topic of a free economic zone in Kherson or the future of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is currently under Russian control, saying that speculation was inappropriate.

“I’ve already said here that we won’t be fully commenting on or engaging in public discussions of individual provisions,” he said in response to a question at a media briefing in Moscow.

Peskov went on to say that there would be another call between Trump and Putin in the near future.

“We don’t know how they [the negotiations between Zelenskyy and Trump] went, so we can’t assess it,” Peskov said, in response to a question about how the Kremlin viewed the outcome of the talks in Florida over the weekend.

“Following these conversations, the two presidents—I mean the Russian president and the US president—agreed to call each other again. Then we’ll get the information.”

There are currently no plans for a phone conversation between the presidents of Russia and Ukraine, Peskov added.

Trump last spoke with Putin ahead of his Dec. 28 meeting with Zelenskyy.

“I just had a good and very productive telephone call with President Putin of Russia prior to my meeting, at 1 P.M. today, with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Sunday.

Trump welcomed Zelenskyy to his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida, to discuss a plan to end the war, and expressed optimism that a peace agreement was in sight following the meeting.

“We’re getting a lot closer, maybe very close” to a peace agreement, he said.

Lingering territorial disputes, particularly regarding the heavily Russian-occupied Donbas region, still have to be resolved.

Speaking at a news conference after the meeting on the afternoon of Dec. 28, the leaders confirmed that the meeting on a 20-point peace plan was productive but noted that more work remains, including negotiating security guarantees and navigating the future of eastern Ukraine’s contested Donbas region.

“There are one or two very thorny, very tough issues” relating to security, Trump told reporters after the meeting.

He indicated that land disputes were the most significant of these issues.

“The land you’re talking about, some of that land has been taken,” Trump said. “Some of that land is maybe up for grabs, but it may be taken over the next period of a number of months.”

He suggested that Ukraine is “better off making a deal now” that includes territorial concessions to Russia.

Zelenskyy confirmed that the two leaders did not agree on what to do with the Donbas region.

Russia controls about 90 percent of the Donbas, while Ukraine’s forces cover the remaining 10 percent of the area.

“Our team is very close to results,” Zelenskyy said, hinting that he still does not want to relinquish the region.

In an X post on Dec. 28, Zelenskyy wrote: “These are some of the most active diplomatic days of the year right now, and a lot can be decided before the New Year.

“We are doing everything toward this, but whether decisions will be made depends on our partners—those who help Ukraine, and those who put pressure on Russia so that Russians feel the consequences of their own aggression.”

Jacki Thrapp, Emel Akan, and Joseph Lord contributed to this report.