Trump, Zelenskyy and European leaders under pressure over peace deal

It was the closest Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has sounded to surrender when he addressed the Ukrainian people on Friday night. 

"The pressure on Ukraine [now] is one of the hardest," a tired and grim Zelenskyy said.

"Ukraine may face a very difficult choice: either the loss of dignity or the risk of losing a key partner." 

The Trump administration — which has careened wildly back and forth in its public positions on the war in Ukraine this year — swooped in this week to maximise the pressure on Ukraine to accept a deal that is almost universally seen as delivering Russian President Vladimir Putin everything he has always wanted, with very few real concessions in return.

Enormous pressure on Zelenskyy

A 28-point plan — leaked but not officially released by the US — includes territorial concessions on land it currently holds, the adoption of Russian as the official language of Ukraine, and commitments by Ukraine to halve the size of its military in return for dubiously worded statements about limits on further Russian military action.

The pressures on Zelenskyy are now enormous.

But there are also intense pressures on European allies.

And also on Trump.

Zelenskyy has been grievously damaged domestically by a major corruption scandal that involves some of his key allies and has weakened his authority. Ukrainians are also facing a terrible winter after a renewed Russian bombing assault on the country's energy infrastructure.

Nevertheless, polling and vox pops in Ukraine suggest a powerful rejection of the plan on the streets.

Pollster Anton Grushetsky of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology told the BBC that 75 per cent of Ukrainians strongly reject the peace deal and 70 per cent believed that, if they accept the peace deal, Russia will attack again.

The Ukrainian president's public statements also clearly aim to not further provoke a volatile US president who, in statements at the White House to reporters over the weekend, harked back to his first contentious meeting with Zelenskyy in the Oval Office this year when he said he had reminded the Ukrainian leader that he didn't "have the cards" and said he would have to accept the deal even if he doesn't like it.

The deadline looms

The assessment for Zelenskyy, Ukraine and its allies, has to be what happens if Ukraine does not agree by the deadline of this Thursday, set by the US.

That is, what exactly a withdrawal of US support would mean; and to what extent other allies could keep Ukraine in contention in this bitter war.

It is Europe that has been financing and supplying weaponry to Ukraine — much of it bought from the US as part of a path to meeting Trump's demands that Europe pay more for its own defence.

It would not seem to be in the US's interest — or in the interest of Trump's "America First" strategy to boost local manufacturing — to suddenly stop selling US weaponry to Europe to pass on to Ukraine.

The crucial lever that the US does hold is over access to military intelligence.

While Europe can provide some assistance in this regard, it is the access to US satellite and other imagery and intelligence that allows Ukraine to launch attacks on Russia, which is vital to its war efforts.

Talks have now been scheduled in Geneva between American and Ukrainian representatives.

At pains not to provoke Trump

European leaders, and other Ukrainian allies including Australia, issued a statement from the sidelines of the G20 in Johannesburg over the weekend. It remained couched in the language of polite and more "normal" diplomacy, which sounds particularly weak and ineffective in contrast to the bombast of Trump.

The statement came after an earlier meeting between French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Like Zelenskyy, the 14 leaders who signed the statement seemed at pains not to provoke Trump.

The "initial draft" of the deal included "important elements that will be essential for a just and lasting peace", it said.

"We believe therefore that the draft is a basis which will require additional work." 

But it said they were "clear on the principle that borders must not be changed by force".

"We are also concerned by the proposed limitations on Ukraine's armed forces, which would leave Ukraine vulnerable to future attack."

They also insisted that the commitments in the draft plan, that Ukraine could not join NATO or the EU, needed the consent of EU and NATO members, respectively.

"We take this opportunity to underline the strength of our continued support to Ukraine," it said.

For his part, Putin said in a televised meeting with his security council that "Ukraine and its European allies are still living under illusions and dreaming of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia on the battlefield".

It is true that the slow and haphazard European response at the military level, and on the issue of using Russian assets frozen in European banks to help fund the Ukrainian war effort, give cause for considerable scepticism about what will happen next.

This is despite the fact that there is now a belated, major rearming of Europe underway in its factories and government budgets, and that western European countries now feel much more directly threatened by Russia with the increasing presence of drones identified as being linked to Russia above their cities.

'A terrible deal'

A crucial issue in what happens next could be the response to the move by an increasingly fractured Trump base at home, and within the Republican Party.

Well-known Trump critics within Republican ranks like veteran senator Mitch McConnell and congressman Don Bacon have been scathing in their response to news of the plan in recent days.

"Rewarding Russian butchery would be disastrous to America's interests," McConnell said in an X post.

Bacon said it was "a terrible deal".

"I'm embarrassed as an American that our president would try to force this agreement on Ukraine — giving up territory, cutting its army by more than half by never allowing them in NATO and not allowing foreign troops on their soil. It's a surrender to a Russian invasion," he said.

"Congress needs to inject itself into this appeasement by the administration towards Russia."

Other Republican representatives were also looking for paths for Congress to reject the plan.

Trump's collapsing public polling position, and the erosion of his base over the Epstein files represented by the split — and now departure — of former ally Marjorie Taylor Greene leaves the impact of domestic pushback on Trump's foreign policy a much more open question than it has been in the past.

Laura Tingle is the ABC's global affairs editor.