“We are working on all possible scenarios to protect Ukraine,” said President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose country was looking to European allies for support.
“Our meeting in Washington, at the White House on Friday, did not go the way it was supposed to be,” Mr. Zelensky wrote on X. “It is regrettable that it happened this way. It is time to make things right.”
He was referring to an explosive meeting at the White House last week in which President Trump berated Mr. Zelensky and called him ungrateful. Mr. Trump followed up on Monday by announcing that he was pausing all U.S. military aid to Ukraine.
The Ukrainian leader said he was ready to release Russian prisoners of war, stop long-range drone and missile strikes aimed at Russian targets, and declare a truce at sea immediately — moves that he said would help establish a pathway to peace.
In his post, Mr. Zelensky offered effusive praise for American support, noting specifically “the moment when things changed when President Trump provided Ukraine with Javelins.”
“We are grateful for this,” he wrote. “Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer,” he added. “My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts.”
There was no immediate reaction from the Kremlin to Mr. Zelensky’s proposal. Despite the ferocity of the fighting, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has shown a willingness to do side deals with Ukraine. The two countries have conducted numerous prisoner-of-war exchanges, and Russia and Ukraine had been set to participate in talks in Qatar last August about halting strikes on each other’s energy infrastructure. Moscow pulled out of the meeting after Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.
“There is no evidence that Russia would be prepared to accept a deal, and what that would be,” said Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director general of the Royal United Services Institute, a research group in London. He said the decision by the United States to pause military aid would only encourage Putin to ask for more — including Ukrainian demilitarization and neutrality.
Mr. Zelensky sought to strike a careful balance in his statement. Aware of Mr. Trump’s stated desire to get a quick deal, he said Ukraine was “ready to work fast to end the war.”
At the same time, he suggested a staged process, similar to an idea raised by the French government, that could start immediately.
An emergency meeting in the Ukrainian Parliament was convened on Tuesday to assess the impact of the latest pressure from the Trump administration while soldiers in the trenches woke up to the news that an already grueling war could become even more challenging, and brutal.
Mr. Zelensky did not comment directly on the aid suspension but he convened senior civilian and military leaders to discuss “special issues concerning our national resilience.”