Proposal raises concerns that Russia will use ballot to oust Ukraine’s wartime leader and install pro-Putin candidate

Connor Stringer Deputy US Editor. MJoe Barnes.  Ben Riley-Smith

18 February 2025

Donald Trump is demanding Volodymyr Zelensky hold elections that could oust him from office as the price of peace.

His comments came after Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, and Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, met in Saudi Arabia for the first time on Tuesday to discuss terms to bring an end to the war in Ukraine.

After more than four hours of talks, it emerged that both sides had agreed elections should be held in Ukraine before a final peace settlement is reached.

The proposal raises concerns that Russia will use the ballot to oust Ukraine’s wartime leader from office and install a pro-Putin candidate who would agree to peace terms favourable to Moscow.

Later on Tuesday, Mr Trump said the demand for a Ukrainian presidential election “came from me”.

Speaking from Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach he said: “We have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine, where we have martial law, essentially martial law in Ukraine, where the leader in Ukraine, I mean, I hate to say it, but he’s down at 4 per cent approval rating, and where a country has been blown to smithereens…

“If Ukraine wants a seat at the table, wouldn’t the people have to say it has been a long time since they had an election?

“That’s not a Russian thing, that’s something coming from me and coming from many other countries also.”

It represents a particular setback for Sir Keir Starmer, who on Sunday called for Britain and other Nato members to send troops to Ukraine to act as peacekeepers. He also said after a meeting with other Nato leaders in Paris on Monday that he would tell Mr Trump when he visits Washington that the US needed to offer security guarantees.

Mr Trump said that allowing Europe to have troops in Ukraine “would be fine”.

He added: “I wouldn’t object to it at all.”

Britain is prepared to send Typhoon fighter jets to police the skies above Ukraine as part of any peace deal, The Times reported. 

On Wednesday, France will host a second meeting to discuss Ukraine and European security.

Mr Lavrov said diplomats from the US team also proposed a moratorium on attacks on the energy infrastructure of Russia and Ukraine.

A similar moratorium was discussed last year during negotiations to restore the Black Sea grain deal, but Kyiv refused to engage in dialogue, he said.

Mr Zelensky was not invited to attend the talks and cancelled a pre-planned visit to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday because he had not received clarity on whether the United States or any Russian delegates would still be there for meaningful meetings.

“I don’t know who will stay there and who will go and to be honest I don’t care,” he said.

He reacted furiously to the Saudi Arabia gathering, saying that any talks aimed at ending the war should be “fair” and involve European countries, including Turkey – which offered to host negotiations.

“Ukraine, Europe in a broad sense – and this includes the European Union, Turkey, and the UK – should be involved in conversations and the development of the necessary security guarantees with America regarding the fate of our part of the world,” Mr Zelensky said at a press conference with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president.

Negotiations “should not take place behind our backs”, he added.

Mr Trump defended his decision not to invite Ukraine to the Saudi Arabia talks, saying “they had three years” to end the war.

“I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat. Well, they’ve had a seat for three years and a long time before that, this could have been settled very easily,” he said.

“Just a half-baked negotiator could have settled this years ago without the loss of much land, very little land, without the loss of any lives, and without the loss of cities that are just laying on their sides.”

Tuesday’s talks represented a consequential reset in relations between Russia and the US, with both countries agreeing to re-establish missions in their respective countries and to begin geopolitical and economic negotiations.

The first phase of the peace deal proposed during Tuesday’s meeting would involve a ceasefire, followed by presidential elections in Ukraine, which were postponed during the war under martial law.

The final stage would involve Kyiv and Moscow signing an agreement to end the conflict after an election, The Telegraph understands.

Some polls have shown voters’ support for Mr Zelensky dropping to about 50 per cent in late 2024, down from the high 70s a year before.

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of Mr Zelensky’s presidency after he stayed in post beyond his term, which had been due to end in May last year.

Responding to the meeting, a Ukrainian source said it was “absolutely mind-blowing and downright infuriating what Russia and the US are coming up with for peace talks in Ukraine – pure, unbelievable absurdity”.

Mr Lavrov said the round-table talks with the US were “useful” and both parties had agreed to appoint a team of negotiators to deliver the deal.

“We listened and heard each other,” he said, adding that both sides had agreed to a formal “process” to settle the conflict in Ukraine.

Mr Rubio said he was “convinced” that Moscow was ready to engage in a “serious process” to end the war.

He said: “If the war ends, not only will the world be a better place, then I think there’ll be some pretty unique opportunities to work with [Russia] on areas of bilateral, geopolitical interests, and some very unique economic opportunities.

“We have to get the Ukraine situation resolved first in a way that’s acceptable to everyone.”

He said Mr Trump was the only person who could bring about an end to fighting in Ukraine.

“Obviously, a lot of work remains before we have a result. But President Trump’s the only one that can do it.”

After mixed messaging, the US agreed in Saudi Arabia not to send peacekeeping troops to Ukraine, a source close to the White House told The Telegraph.

Reacting to the news, James Cartlidge, the shadow defence secretary, said it raised questions about Sir Keir’s plans to send British troops to the region to act as peacekeepers. He said: “If Keir Starmer really wants to look at putting troops on the ground in Ukraine we need a lot more information about how America would provide a backstop if they won’t put soldiers in Ukraine.

“We need to know a lot more about both what the UK Government and the White House is thinking before we consider a peace-keeping force.”

Emmanuel Macron, the French president, said Paris was “not preparing to send ground troops as belligerents to the conflict, to the front” in Ukraine.

In an interview with French regional newspapers, Mr Macron emphasised that sending troops could only take place in the most limited fashion and away from conflict zones.

Mr Lavrov noted that Russia opposed any deployment of Nato-nation troops to Ukraine as part of an eventual ceasefire.

He told US negotiators that settling the war required a reorganisation of Europe’s defence agreements.

Moscow has long called for the withdrawal of Nato forces from eastern Europe, viewing the alliance as an existential threat on its flank.

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Dark times for Zelensky as Russia and US push him out of the picture

The Ukrainian president has been frozen out of peace talks for his own country with rumours Putin plans to force elections in Kyiv

Memphis Barker

Senior Foreign Correspondent

18 February 2025

Early on Tuesday morning, Volodymyr Zelensky laid a wreath by the tomb of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish state, in Ankara.

The sky was grey as he stood for a picture on the steps of the mausoleum alongside his wife, Olena, and a host of Turkish officials.

It is impossible not to suspect that the Ukrainian president’s mood was equally dark – and his mind elsewhere.

For the first time since the beginning of the war in February 2022, Mr Zelensky is finding himself well and truly on the sidelines.

There were signs that his influence in the West was fading even before Donald Trump’s election victory. When the Ukrainian president visited Capitol Hill in September he struggled to meet Washington’s power-players, a stark contrast to the whooping, transfixed crowds he drew to the same building two years earlier.

But the full extent of the war-time leader’s marginalisation truly came into focus this week.

While the Ukrainian president trooped up the steps of Ataturk’s tomb, the future of his nation was being sketched out in Riyadh, where a US delegation met for the first time with Russian counterparts to discuss a way out of the war.

Nor had he been invited to an emergency summit of European leaders in Paris on Monday, called in response to Mr Trump’s sudden push for a deal.

Even Mr Zelensky’s decision to make an unannounced trip to Ankara underlined how the ground had shifted. While Istanbul hosted talks between Ukraine and Russia early in the war, Saudi Arabia has now apparently become the middle-man.

The Ukrainian leader had planned to travel on to Riyadh, but at a press conference he announced he had decided to cancel the trip.

This was apparently because he was receiving so little information he could not even be sure whether the United States, or indeed any Russian delegates, would still be there for meaningful meetings.

“I don’t know who will stay there and who will go,” he said, looking profoundly weary in front of a set of Turkish and Ukrainian flags, “and to be honest I don’t care”.

The early news from the summit suggests there is good reason why the Russians and Americans kept Mr Zelensky out of the room. According to reports, the two delegations agreed to – or at least floated – the idea of an election in Ukraine before any peace deal is signed.

Removing Mr Zelensky is plainly a major ambition for Vladimir Putin – nobody has done more to thwart Moscow’s ambition to subjugate Ukraine and crush its spirit. That the FSB intelligence services have failed to kill him is considered an embarrassment. The best hope, the Kremlin now appears to believe, is to push for an election, interfere in it with the usual playbook, and install a pro-Moscow puppet who will sign up to the kind of humiliating peace deal Mr Zelensky would surely refuse.

It may be possible, even, for the Americans to be brought on board with the Kremlin’s strategy. Mr Trump has never warmed to Mr Zelensky, while his son shares memes of the Ukrainian president calling him a “gold-digger” and a leech. The US president has started to repeat the line that Mr Zelensky is not faring well in the polls, with some showing voters’ trust dropping to around 50 per cent in late 2024, down from the high 70s a year before. If Mr Zelensky refuses to sign up to the extortionate mineral wealth deal revealed on Tuesday by the Telegraph, Mr Trump could make any further US support conditional – at least behind the scenes – on the selection of a new Ukrainian leader.

But here is where the efforts to cast Mr Zelensky aside run into trouble. It is no doubt true that his popularity has dimmed lately: the war is going poorly, and last week he sanctioned political enemies, including former president Petro Poroshenko, amid rumours they were mobilising against him. Mr Poroshenko had recently been to Washington to meet with allies of Mr Trump. However, imagine you have an election in which the man still widely considered as a war-hero – bold, defiant, inspirational – is seen as being ushered aside by foreign powers, because he sticks up too firmly for Ukraine’s position. There, if anything, is a winning ticket.

And it is not so simple for Russia to influence a Ukrainian election as it was before the war began. Most of the population spits at the mention of Putin’s name. You cannot spin hatred with misinformation. The most pro-Moscow segments of the Ukrainian population live in the Donbas region, already absorbed into Russia and therefore not able to take part in Ukrainian electoral politics.

Who is not to say that the Ukrainian people vote Mr Zelensky overwhelmingly back in, and he refuses to sign a disadvantageous peace deal? Even if he was replaced by a rival it is far more likely to be someone like Valery Zaluzhny, the ambassador to Britain and former army commander whose resistance spirit runs just as deep, than any quisling pro-Moscow candidate.

But on the windswept stairs of Ataturk’s mausoleum, Mr Zelensky might have pictured a bleaker prospect. What if, simply, there is no good peace deal that can be achieved by Ukraine without the firm support of America? Holding off one major power is hard enough – two at once is surely impossible. The man whose courage defined Ukraine’s heroic fight could well decide he does not want to become the face of defeat. He led the war effort – let someone else pick up the bitter pieces.