Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy says he'd be ready to give up presidency if it brought peace, Nato membership and genuine security guarantees for Ukraine.

"If (it means) peace for Ukraine, if you really need me to leave my post, I am ready," Zelenskiy said during a press conference on February 24.

Kyiv’s relation with the new administration of US President Donald Trump got off to a rocky start in the first weeks thanks to missing money, delayed arms deliveries and demand for mining deals dominated the agenda. It has only become worse in the last week after the US excluded Europe and Ukraine from peace talks that kicked off in Riyadh on February 18. 

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the state TASS  news agency on February 23 that Moscow and Washington would continue bilateral talks at the end of next week.

The  US has proposed a three-stage plan towards peace, the second stage of which is to hold presidential elections before the substance of a ceasefire deal is agreed with Russia. That has been widely interpreted as White House desire to remove Zelenskiy from the process.

Personal relations between Zelenskiy and Trump deteriorated sharply in the last week after the two got into a public war of words. Zelenskiy accused Trump of living in a Russian “disinformation bubble” and Trump responded by calling Zelenskiy a dictator and questioning his legitimacy.

Zelenskiy also rejected the idea of calling the military aid sent by the US to Ukraine over the last three years as any sort of “debt” that the country should repay. He also took a swipe at the extreme terms of the deal, saying they were unique in US relations amongst its partners. 

"If the United States, our friendly partners, vote in Congress to give us $50bn in aid, we are obliged to return $100bn. I have a question that no one can honestly answer for me. When the United States sells arms to Israel, Qatar, the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, do they ask them for a 100% surcharge? I'm not signing something that ten generations of Ukrainians are going to pay later,” Zelenskiy said.

The Ukrainian leader said considering aid as a debt to be repaid would be a "Pandora's box" that would set a precedent requiring Kyiv to reimburse all its backers.

"We do not recognize the debt," Zelenskyy said. "It will not be in the final format of the agreement."

"I know that we received $100bn. And this is a fact. I am not going to recognize $500bn. With all due respect to the partners," Zelenskiy told a news conference.

"I cannot even record $100bn. We cannot recognize grants as debts," he went on to say. "I agreed with [former US President Joe] Biden, I agreed with the Congress. Both sides were present. You might not like it, but this was the agreement. It was a grant. We don’t recognize this as a debt."

While the EU has issued most of the money it sent to Ukraine as loans, the Biden administration was a lot more generous and issued most its money as grants that don’t have to be repaid, although in the last year it increasingly began to issue more funds as debt not loans. However, the total amount of US debt remains modest and can be written off by the president by executive order.

According to Zelenskiy, the US-proposed minerals deal is a "new agreement," which has no relation to the assistance to Kyiv, which has already been provided.

Trump said again on February 22 he was trying to get money back for the billions of dollars sent to support Ukraine's war against Russia and claims that the US has spent some $350bn on the war, whereas the actual sum spent is about $90bn, of which some $60bn was military aid, according to Zelenskiy.

"We're going to get our money back because it's just not fair. And we will see, but I think we're pretty close to a deal, and we better be close because that has been a horrible situation,” Trump said.

The Trump team is pushing hard to close a $500bn harsh minerals deal that includes Kyiv signing away half the revenues from any mining concessions until a total of $500bn has been built up in an associated fund to repay the US for support it has sent to Ukraine over the last three years.

The NYT reported the same day that Zelenskiy had rejected a second version of the minerals deal and that some of the terms had been made even tougher than in the first version presented to Kyiv on February 14.

Trump said at the weekend he believes Zelenskiy's presence at negotiations with Russia is “not important” although the US delegation has said the talks are at an early stage and that Ukraine will have to agree to any eventual deal to make it work.

"I don't think it's very important for him to be at the meetings... It was not a priority because he has done such a bad job at the talks so far. First of all, there should not have been a war, and if there was, it should have been resolved and settled immediately. It could have been done," he said.

Trump also once again stated that Russia's invasion of Ukraine could have been prevented, Interfax reports.

"You know, whenever I say, oh, it's not Russia's fault, I always get slammed by fake news. But I'm telling you, Biden said the wrong thing. Zelenskiy said the wrong thing. They were attacked by somebody that much bigger and much stronger, which is a bad thing to do, and you shouldn't do that. But Russia could have done it. But Russia could have done it. But Russia could have done it. Dead people shouldn't be dead, and all these cities shouldn't be demolished right now," he said.

US National security adviser Mike Waltz suggested at the weekend that any deal should be based on the failed 2022 Istanbul peace deal – mirroring another Kremlin talking point. Russian President Vladimir Putin called for restarting peace talks last autumn, but said that any deal should be based on the Istanbul agreement which included significant territorial concessions and a dramatic reduction in the size of Ukraine’s military.

Zelenskiy has been refusing to sign any deal that does not include meaningful security guarantees for Ukraine, something Waltz has made clear will not be included in any mineral deal offered by the US.

"There are no American obligations in the agreement regarding guarantees or investments, everything about them is very vague, and they want to extract $500bn from us," the Ukrainian source told AFP.