Volodymyr Zelensky said the two issues that are still to be resolved before a peace deal can be agreed on are over the division of territory and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
Zelensky, briefing journalists after his meeting in Florida with U.S. President Donald Trump, said these two open questions are why he said the plan is 90 percent agreed. Details on security guarantees are also still under discussion.
On territory, control of the Donbas region—Ukraine’s industrial heartlands in the east, comprising mostly of the two oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk—is the central issue.
Russia controls 80 percent of the Donbas and says it will seize the rest by force if necessary, though analysts say that could take Moscow’s forces years to achieve.
But Ukraine, which still controls two of Donetsk’s fortress cities, Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, says it will not cede territory without a constitutionally-required referendum, and it can only hold one during a ceasefire—which Russia rejects.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant—Europe’s largest—is currently under Russian control after it was seized early on in Moscow’s full-scale 2022 invasion.
Negotiations are working on who should operate the nuclear plant during peacetime—including, potentially, the U.S. playing a vital mediating role—and how the electricity it produces should be divided between Russia and Ukraine.
The IAEA, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, has raised repeated international safety concerns due to fighting nearby, some of which has damaged the plant’s administrative buildings. It has also suffered losses of power due to the fighting.
Ukraine says the safe operation of the station requires the demilitarization of its territory. Kyiv has also demanded that Ukrainian workers be granted full access to the station, which they currently don’t have.