The comments come as the Kremlin slammed a plan for France and the UK to send peacekeepers to Ukraine after a ceasefire.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said an agreement on a security guarantee from Washington is now “essentially ready” to be finalised by US President Donald Trump, following days of negotiations in Paris.
In a post on X on Thursday, Zelenskyy said the document – a cornerstone of any settlement to end the war, which would guarantee Washington and other Western allies would support Ukraine if Russia invaded again – was almost complete.
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“The bilateral document on security guarantees for Ukraine is now essentially ready for finalisation at the highest level with the president,” he said.
He said the talks in Paris, involving teams from the US and Europe, had addressed “complex issues” from the framework under discussion to end the nearly four-year war, with the Ukrainian delegation presenting possible solutions for these.
“We understand that the American side will engage with Russia, and we expect feedback on whether the aggressor is genuinely willing to end the war,” he said.
Washington, which on Tuesday endorsed the idea of providing security guarantees for Ukraine for the first time, is expected to present any agreement it reaches with Kyiv to Moscow, in its attempt to broker an end to the conflict.
Kyiv says legally-binding assurances that its allies would come to its defence are essential to deter Moscow from future aggression if a ceasefire is reached.
But specific details on the guarantees and how Ukraine’s allies would respond have not been made public.
Zelenskyy said earlier this week that he was yet to receive an “unequivocal” answer about what they would do if Russia did attack again.
Russia slams peacekeeper plan
Zelenskyy’s comments came as Russia rejected a plan that emerged from the Paris talks for European peacekeepers to be deployed to Ukraine as “militaristic”, warning they would be treated as “legitimate military targets”.
On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer signed a declaration of intent with Zelenskyy in Paris, setting out the framework for troops from their countries to be deployed to Ukraine after a ceasefire was reached with Russia.
But in Russia’s first comments in response to the plan, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova denounced the proposal as “dangerous” and “destructive”, dampening hopes the plan could prove a step in bringing the war to an end.
“The new militarist declarations of the so-called Coalition of the Willing and the Kyiv regime together form a genuine ‘axis of war’,” Zakharova said in a statement.
“All such units and facilities will be considered legitimate military targets for the Russian Armed Forces,” she said, repeating a threat previously made by Putin.
Moscow has repeatedly warned that it would not accept any NATO members sending peacekeeping troops to Ukraine.
Russia attacks energy infrastructure
In his social media post, Zelenskyy also called for more pressure on Russia from Ukraine’s supporters, after further Russian missile attacks on energy infrastructure, which, he said, “clearly don’t indicate that Moscow is reconsidering its priorities”.
“In this context, it is necessary that pressure on Russia continues to increase at the same intensity as the work of our negotiating teams.”
The attacks left Ukrainian authorities scrambling to restore heating and water to hundreds of thousands of households in the Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhia regions.
“This is truly a national level emergency,” Borys Filatov, mayor of Dnipropetrovsk’s capital Dnipro, said on Telegram.
He announced power was “gradually returning to the hospitals” after the blackouts forced them to run on generators. The city authorities also extended school holidays for children.
About 600,000 households in the region remained cut off from power in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian energy company DTEK said.
