Zelenskyy Offers Elections if Putin Agrees to a 60-Day Ceasefire, Answering Trump

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has turned Donald Trump's call for a new leader in Kyiv back toward Moscow, saying he is ready to organise elections if Russia agrees to a 60-day ceasefire. Speaking to ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, Zelenskyy asked Washington to carry a simple message to Vladimir Putin: give Ukraine two months of total ceasefire and it will go to the polls.

The offer came a day after Trump told reporters at the White House that it was time for Ukraine to get a new president, a remark we covered in our earlier report.

"It's up to Ukrainians"

Zelenskyy did not dispute that elections are overdue in principle, but he rejected the idea that anyone outside Ukraine should decide who leads it. The choice of president, he said, belongs to Ukrainians. He also pointed out that Putin has long wanted a different leader in Kyiv, a jab that put Trump's comments in uncomfortable company.

The conditional offer is not entirely new. Ukraine's constitution does not allow national elections while martial law is in force, and martial law has been in place since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022. Zelenskyy has previously said that a ceasefire of roughly 60 days would be the minimum needed to organise a vote safely, including for soldiers at the front and the millions of Ukrainians displaced abroad. What has changed is the audience: he is now framing it as a direct test of whether Moscow, rather than Kyiv, is the obstacle to a democratic transfer of power.

A trade on energy strikes

The same interview addressed the dispute that triggered Trump's outburst. Trump has accused Ukraine of pushing up global diesel prices by hitting Russian oil refineries with long-range drones, and on Friday he eased sanctions to allow Russian diesel onto world markets.

Zelenskyy defended the strikes as a response to Russia's repeated attacks on Ukraine's power stations and energy grid. He said he had told Trump and his team several times that Kyiv wants peace and is ready for de-escalation, and he proposed a straightforward exchange: if Russia stops attacking Ukrainian energy infrastructure, Ukraine will stop hitting Russian refineries. He called that a fair deal.

He also pushed back on the idea that Ukraine is to blame for expensive fuel, saying the whole world understands that the war in the Middle East is the main reason prices are rising.

What happens next

The ball is now in Moscow's court, and there was no immediate public response from the Kremlin to the 60-day proposal. Russia has in the past dismissed short ceasefires as a way for Ukraine to regroup, and has questioned Zelenskyy's legitimacy because his original five-year term ended in 2024 while martial law was in place.

For Washington, the offer complicates Trump's position. If he wants elections in Ukraine, Zelenskyy is effectively asking him to secure the truce that would make them possible. How the White House responds will shape not only the US-Ukraine relationship but also the wider sanctions picture, with the European Union preparing its broadest package of Russia sanctions yet even as the US loosens curbs on Russian diesel.

For India, a major buyer of Russian crude and an exporter of refined fuels, any agreement that halts strikes on Russian refineries or Ukrainian power plants would ease one source of pressure on global diesel supply and pricing.

This is an original summary based on public reporting. See our editorial policy for how we source, write, and correct our stories.