AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, says President Trump wants to strike business deals with the Kremlin. As NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports, this comes as Russia is stepping up attacks on Ukraine's cities and infrastructure.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Ukrainian intelligence uncovered a proposed framework for large-scale U.S.-Russia economic cooperation to the tune of $12 trillion, which he said could affect Ukraine and is being decided without Ukraine. Zelenskyy also said President Trump plans to ramp up pressure on both parties to end the four-year war in four months, by June. Internal U.S. politics, he said - i.e., the midterm elections - is likely behind it, as Trump looks to show a win. In his address to the nation Saturday, Zelenskyy said attacks on key high-voltage substations linked to nuclear power plants had led to huge power loss. Ukraine gets most of its electricity from nuclear energy. Zelenskyy also called the attacks linked to nuclear output dangerous.
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PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY: (Speaking Ukrainian).
BEARDSLEY: "This is a level of attacks that no terrorist in the world has ever allowed itself, and Russia must feel the responses of the whole world," said Zelenskyy. But while Russia has not changed its maximalist demands one iota, the Trump administration seems to be exerting pressure on Ukraine, like pushing Ukraine to give up territory it controls in the Donbas.
OLEKSANDRA MATVIICHUK: They speak about territories like empty spaces.
BEARDSLEY: That's human rights lawyer and 2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk. She says it's important for Ukraine to hang on to that territory with its cities and people. She says there are already millions of Ukrainians living under Russian occupation.
MATVIICHUK: Millions of Ukrainians live there. These people live in gray zone. They have no tools how to defend their rights, their freedom, their property, their life, their children.
BEARDSLEY: Russian occupation is not about changing one flag for another, she says. It means enforced disappearances, torture, rape.
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BEARDSLEY: That's something people in the eastern Ukrainian town of Izium know all about. They spent six months under Russian occupation in 2022. Hundreds of civilians were killed. There's a mass grave outside of town. Ukraine took Izium back, but the front line is moving closer again.
VALERII SAVYTSKYI: Russia will not stop. Never.
BEARDSLEY: That's surgeon Valerii Savytskyi, who operates on soldiers coming from the front. He says the only way to end this war is if the U.S. and Europe support Ukraine together through diplomacy and put economic pressure on Russia. His colleague Oleksiy Mykoliuk agrees.
OLEKSIY MYKOLIUK: We need sanctions to work and make them tighter because war is money. We're seeing it every day. It's all about money.
SAVYTSKYI: So when we and the world stop their economy, then they will stop the war.
BEARDSLEY: These doctors say making deals with Russian President Vladimir Putin will only encourage him to keep up his onslaught on Ukraine.
Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Izium.
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