Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday he would accept a peace deal freezing the war along current front lines, calling it the “real way” to end the conflict.
Zelensky made the remarks in an interview on Fox News’s Fox & Friends when host Brian Kilmeade pressed him on whether he would agree to an arrangement that halted the fighting where the battlefield now stands.
The Ukrainian leader did not hesitate when asked to commit: “Yes, right now we have to freeze, and I think this is real way to end this war,” he replied. “We call it a ceasefire or ‘stop killing,’ like President Trump called it. Freeze and stop. And of course, this is the minimum what we need from Russia today.”
Kilmeade framed the question around a settlement under which Ukraine would retain 75 percent or more of its territory. Zelensky replied in the affirmative and said any freeze would need to be paired with Western backing.
“Then, of course, we will go to [the U.S.] president and to Europeans, and we will ask for security guarantees,” he said.
The Ukrainian president cast the proposal as an opening into negotiations rather than a final territorial settlement, stressing that the priority is stopping the killing before talks on a durable peace.
The interview aired a day after Zelensky met U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff in Oslo, Norway, alongside Finnish President Alexander Stubb, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, and representatives from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Poland, the European Union, and NATO. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner joined that meeting by video link.
Witkoff traveled directly from Oslo to St. Petersburg on Wednesday to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, carrying an updated framework proposal developed with Ukrainian and European input. Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev met Witkoff at the airport, two sources told Reuters.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said his understanding was that the Oslo talks had been “positive,” with “nothing unexpected” or “surprising.”
Zelensky also said he was prepared to halt strikes on Russian oil refineries if Moscow took reciprocal steps, and renewed his call for a trilateral summit with Putin and Trump, a format the Kremlin has so far rejected.
Trump pressed both sides toward a settlement after months of stalled diplomacy, with his envoys shuttling between Kyiv’s European backers and Moscow to assemble a workable framework. Zelensky complained last week that the administration’s move to pause Russian sanctions would only embolden Putin.