The future of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, which Russia took control of in March 2022, is one of the remaining sticking points in negotiations.
Almost all countries consider that it belongs to Ukraine but Russia says it is owned by Russia and a unit of Russia’s state-owned Rosatom nuclear corporation runs the plant.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion was launched, there have been numerous safety concerns at the plant, including power outages and nearby shelling.
A monitoring mission from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been stationed there for over three years, but Russian authorities have been accused of regularly restricting access to the plant, which is located in Enerhodar on the banks of the Dnipro river and the Kakhovka reservoir.
It is not currently producing electricity but relies on external power to keep the nuclear material cool and avoid a meltdown.
The head of the plant, Ramil Galiyev, said on Monday that the facility could restart power generation by the middle of 2027 if the war concludes in the near future.
Galiyev said “serious issues” at the plant would have to be addressed first, including replenishing the cooling pond and preparing railway tracks.
Both Russia and Ukraine regularly accuse one another of shelling the plant, risking a nuclear disaster.
Al Jazeera has some quotes Zelenskyy gave reporters about the US security guarantees he reportedly agreed with Trump during their meeting (see opening post for more details). Here are some quotes from the Ukrainian leader:
In the documents, it is for 15 years, with the possibility of extending these security guarantees. I raised this issue with the president, I told him that we have a war going on, and it has been going on for almost 15 years, so I really wanted the guarantees to be longer …
I told him that we really wanted to consider the possibility of 30, 40, 50 years, and this would then be a historic decision by President Trump. The president said that he would think about it.
Zelenskyy also said he wants Kyiv to host a meeting with European and American officials in the “coming days” to work on documents to end the war.
“We want this meeting to take place, and I believe we will do everything possible for it to finally be held in Ukraine,” Zelensky told journalists a day after the Florida talks with Trump, adding that the meeting would be “at the adviser level”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also told reporters this morning that a meeting with Russia would be possible after the US and European leaders agreed on a Ukraine-proposed peace plan to end the war.
Donald Trump told the media yesterday he believed that there could be a trilateral meeting between Russia, Ukraine and the US “at the right time” and appeared to suggest that Russian President Vladmir Putin “wants to see it happen”.
Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin have not met since December 2019. The meeting, mediated by the leaders of France and Germany, aimed to revive efforts to resolve Kyiv’s then five-year conflict with Russian-backed separatists who had held a broad swath of south-eastern Ukraine since 2014.
In May 2025, the Russian president declined to travel to Istanbul for talks with Zelenskyy, rejecting the Ukrainian president’s bold proposal for a face-to-face meeting in Turkey to discuss peace.
We are restarting our live coverage of the war in Ukraine and the diplomatic efforts to bring it to an end after nearly four years of conflict following the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters via WhatsApp this morning that he asked Donald Trump to provide security guarantees of up to 50 years during their high stakes meeting at the US president’s residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, yesterday.
Zelenskyy said that, instead, a draft peace framework envisages US security guarantees for Ukraine for 15 years.
It is not clear what form these commitments would take, but the Ukrainian leader has been pushing for “article-5-like” security guarantees from Europe and the US, referring to Nato’s founding principle that an attack on one member should be seen as an attack on all.
Zelenskyy has said US security guarantees for Ukraine under the revised 20-point proposal to end the war have been 100% agreed, though Trump was more cautious, putting the figure at more like 95%.
Both leaders said progress had been made during the Florida talks and stressed that the lengthy peace talks would continue. Trump, however, cautioned there were “one or two tough” outstanding issues, including over territory, and expressed sympathy with Russia not wanting a ceasefire. “You have to understand the other side,” he said.
Trump said that a proposal to turn eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, which Russia largely controls, into a demilitarised zone remains “unresolved”, adding that it will become clear within weeks if the war can end.
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