'I AM READY'
Zelensky says he is prepared to STEP DOWN as Ukrainian president if it will bring peace as Trump and Russia hold talks
It comes just hours after Mad Vlad Putin launched Russia's biggest blitz on Ukraine since the start of the war
VOLODYMYR Zelensky says he will step down as Ukraine's president "immediately" in exchange for peace or Nato membership.
The shocking remark comes as Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin's Russia hold peace talks without Kyiv at the table.
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The Ukrainian president said on Sunday: "If it's about peace in Ukraine and you really want me to leave my position, I am ready to do that [in exchange for peace].
"Secondly I can exchange it for Nato [membership].
"If there is such an opportunity I'll do it immediately without a long conversation about it."
He emphasised that Ukraine's security was his priority, not staying in office, adding that it was not his "dream" to remain president for a decade.
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Zelensky's remarks came after Trump branded him a "dictator" for not holding an election during the war.
Elections in Ukraine have been banned under martial law amid Putin's ongoing illegal invasion.
But reports have emerged that Ukraine may be forced to hold elections before any final peace agreement with Russia is reached, according to .
Trump, who has repeatedly boasted he could end the war within “24 hours,” said the demand for elections “came from me” and appeared to blame Ukraine for not reaching a deal sooner.
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“You’ve been there for three years… You should have never started it. You could have made a deal,” he said.
Kyiv and Europe were last week iced out of the beginning of peace talks between the US and Russia - which sparked diplomatic turmoil between Ukraine and Washington.
Ukraine repels Putin's BIGGEST EVER drone attack on eve of war anniversary
After lashing out at Zelensky, Trump later insisted he "trusts" that Russia wants peace before again calling Zelensky a "dictator".
At a press conference today, Zelensky said he wasn't offended by Trump's jibe.
He said: "I wasn’t offended, but a dictator would be. I'm not. I'm the legally election president."
Zelensky also said he wants to see Trump as a partner to Ukraine and more than a simply a mediator between Kyiv and Moscow.
"I want very much from Trump understanding of each other," he added.
The Ukrainian president said an “important meeting” of world leaders would take place on Monday, the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion.
He hinted that major decisions could emerge from the summit, which will include 13 nations attending in person and 24 joining online.
“Tomorrow’s summit is crucial. It might even be a turning point—we’ll see,” he said.
PUTIN BLITZ
Zelensky's suggestion of resigning today came as Putin launched Russia's largest drone attack of the war so far.
Ukrainian officials said a “record” 267 Russian drones were fired in a single, coordinated assault on Sunday - just one day before the war's third anniversary.
Yuriy Ignat, Ukraine’s air force spokesman, said 138 drones were intercepted, while 119 disappeared after being jammed.
Despite Ukraine’s air defences, drone strikes caused fires and destruction across the country.
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Zelensky described it as “aerial terror”, saying Russia had attacked Ukraine with 1,150 drones in the past week alone.
He warned that the latest assault underscored the urgent need for a “lasting and just peace”, which he said could only come with the “strength of all of Europe and America”.
TENSIONS RISING
The latest escalation came on the eve of the war’s third anniversary and as the White House suggested a peace deal could be reached “this week”.
Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president was “very confident” that negotiations with both sides would end the war soon.
“The president, his team are very much focused on continuing negotiations… and the president is very confident we can get it done this week,” she said.
But tensions between Washington and Kyiv have been rising after Zelensky reportedly refused to sign an agreement that would hand over $500 billion worth of critical minerals and rare earths to the US.
The White House had initially claimed a deal was “close”, but Ukrainian sources suggested the current draft was not ready to be signed.
The deal proposed by Trump's team would see Kyiv hand over billions of dollars of minerals to Washington DC in exchange for weapons.
Zelensky said on Sunday that he could be forced to sign an agreement with the US that would ensure continued aid for Ukraine in return for the minerals in the country.
The Ukrainian President said in a news conference: "If your conditions are, 'We will not give you aid if you do not sign an agreement,' then it is clear.
"If we are forced and we cannot do without it, then we should probably go for it I just want a dialogue with President Trump."
He added that he was open to brokering a deal that would let the US profit from his country's minerals, but the $500 billion sum initially proposed by the Trump administration wasn't acceptable.
Zelensky said: "I am not signing something that will be paid off by 10 generations of Ukrainians."
The Ukrainian president also said it was up to Prime Minister Keir Starmer and France president Emmanuel Macron to give Trump the “real situation” when they visit the White House this week.
Zelensky ‘refuses to sign Trump deal’ on Ukraine war after White House insiders rage he’d be ‘six feet under’ without US
The Ukraine president brushed off Trump’s jibes that Kyiv’s war leader was a dictator doing a terrible job. Zelensky joked: “Only a real dictator could be insulted by the term ‘dictator’.”
But the former comedian said Trump had been repeating false Russian claims last week, including unfounded assertions that Zelensky’s approval rating had plunged to four per cent.
He said: “This is all disinformation nonsense. I don’t believe Donald Trump thinks like that himself. That’s why I said disinformation.”
But he warned: “He might have certain sources and we need to take a look at that.”
After a furious war of words last week, he admitted his relations with Trump were “never the best”.
And former White House insiders said Trump “hated Ukraine” in his first term in office.
It was a phone call between the two leaders which led to Trump getting impeached in 2019.
But Zelensky insisted that their lack of chemistry should not eclipse the “strategic relationship” between the US and Ukraine.
He was speaking after Russia launched its largest drone blitz to date, with 267 Shahed one-way attack aircraft.
Kyiv said it downed 138 while 119 disappeared from radar, which usually means they were jammed or defeated by electronic warfare.
Three flew back towards Russia and one towards Belarus in a sign that Ukraine hacked the weapons mid-flight and turned them back on their enemies.
The figures suggest at least seven got through.
The blitz came as President Putin claimed the war was a mission from God.
Putin was seen meeting troops in the Kremlin to mark Sunday’s military holiday, known as Defender of the Fatherland Day.
The tyrant admitted the slaughter had been “very hard on the front”.
But he insisted his troops were doing “God’s will”.
And he insisted he felt no shame for the war which has left a million dead and wounded.
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In a nod to Russia’s losses — in Ukraine and World War Two — he said: “No one even knows how many unknown soldiers there were.”
Britain estimates Russia has lost 860,000 soldiers to death and injury in Ukraine since Putin ordered the full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022.
The Sun revealed Russia was on track to hit a million casualties by its so-called “victory day” on May 9 — when it commemorates World War Two — if it carries on at the current rate.
Its troops have committed atrocities including rape, pillage and murdering more than 130 Ukrainian prisoners of war, according to war crimes investigators.
Russia held sham referendums in four partly occupied Ukrainian provinces — Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — and then formally annexed them in September 2022.
North Korea was the only country to recognise the results.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov vowed Russia would not cede captured territory in any negotiations.
He added of negotiations between Putin and Trump: “This is a dialogue between two extraordinary presidents. That’s promising. It is important that nothing prevents us from realising the political will of the two heads of state.”
Trump stunned allies and Ukraine by holding talks with Russia last week.
President Zelensky insisted that peace talks would fail if Ukraine was not at the table.
He said: “It is our table. We are sitting at the table. If the US will agree with Russia about us, without us this agreement will not work.”
Trump also demanded that Kyiv sign away $500billion worth of rare earth minerals as payback for US military support.
Zelensky insisted American aid was worth a fifth — $100billion.
He said Ukraine would not sign a deal unless it came with US “security guarantees” to resist or roll back Russia’s invasion.
He vowed: “I am not signing something that will have to be repaid by generations and generations of Ukrainians.”
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In a message to Trump, he said “like it not” the aid from President Joe Biden had come in the form of US grants that did not need to be repaid.
Thirteen world leaders were due in Kyiv today in a show of solidarity with Ukraine.
Wrong, Donald
The Sun Says...
DONALD Trump’s smearing of the Ukraine regime as scam artists who provoked a war using US taxpayers’ money is a rant beneath the dignity of his office.
Almost nothing in it is true.
It reads like a post on a forum for conspiracy theorists. It is an unprecedentedly shocking statement from the President of the United States.
Vladimir Putin has made no secret of his imperialist ambitions, nor his denial of his neighbour’s right to exist as a sovereign, free country.
He invaded Ukraine, butchered and raped its people, stole its children and bombed its cities.
President Zelensky — far from duping anyone or inviting the conflict, far from being a “dictator without elections” — has been a heroic wartime leader who needs Western aid to overcome staggering odds.
The idea he is riding a “gravy train” is laughable. And his people, with whom he remains highly popular whatever Trump claims, have resisted conquest with immense bravery.
It is troubling and short-sighted in the extreme for the so-called leader of the free world to have no interest in a war raging in Europe because he is separated from it by the Atlantic.
America is not a business where Trump, as CEO, has no task except to slash costs and maximise profits. It is the most powerful democracy on Earth with global responsibilities and — let’s be frank — a duty to discern right from wrong with absolute moral clarity.
Others in the White House should urgently point this out.
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