Trump, Zelenskyy will begin to meet in an effort to end the Russia-Ukraine war – National
President Donald Trump will host his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Sunday to try to seal a peace deal that will end nearly four years of war sparked by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia has stepped up its attacks on the Ukrainian capital and elsewhere in the days leading up to the meeting.
The two will meet at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Florida, where the US president spends the holidays. Zelenskyy, who arrived in Miami in the morning, said the two planned to discuss security and economic deals at their afternoon meeting. He said he would raise “territorial issues” as Moscow and Kyiv remain at odds over the fate of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.
Overnight, three Russian-led air strikes hit homes in the eastern city of Sloviansk, according to the head of the local military administration, Vadym Lakh. Three people were injured and one man died, Lakh said in a post on the Telegram messenger app.
The strike came a day after Russia attacked the Ukrainian capital with missiles and drones on Saturday, killing at least one person and wounding 27, a day before planned talks between Ukrainian and American leaders, Ukrainian authorities said. Explosions erupted in Kyiv as the attack began in the early hours of the morning and continued for hours.
Before his meeting with Trump, Zelenskyy said on Sunday that he spoke on the phone with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, filling him in on “the priority situation and the consequences of the Russian strikes.” He wrote on X: “Thank you, Keir, for the continued cooperation!” Zelenskyy’s office said he would speak by phone with allies after the meeting with Trump.
In a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Saturday, Zelenskyy said the key to peace is “pressure on Russia and adequate, strong support for Ukraine.” To that end, Carney announced more economic aid from his administration to help Ukraine rebuild.
Criticizing the “barbarism” of Russia’s latest attack on Kyiv, Carney praised Zelenskyy and Trump for creating the conditions for a “just and lasting peace” at a crucial time.
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“Ukraine is willing to do anything to stop this war,” Zelenskyy said on Saturday. “We must be strong at the negotiating table.”
In response to the attack, he wrote: “We want peace, and Russia shows the desire to continue the war. If the whole world – Europe and America – join us, we will stop “Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump and Zelenskyy’s face-to-face meeting underscored the apparent progress made by Trump’s top negotiators in recent weeks as the sides traded draft peace plans and continued to shape a ceasefire proposal. Zelenskyy told reporters on Friday that the draft of the 20 points discussed is “about 90% correct” – echoing the figure, and optimism, expressed by US officials when Trump’s negotiators met with Zelenskyy in Berlin earlier this month.
During recent negotiations, the US agreed to provide certain security guarantees to Ukraine similar to those provided by other NATO members. The proposal came as Zelenskyy said he was willing to withdraw his country’s bid to join the security alliance if Ukraine received NATO-like protections designed to protect it from future Russian aggression.
The ‘deep’ weeks ahead
Zelenskyy also spoke on Christmas Day with US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. The Ukrainian leader said they discussed “some concrete details” and warned that “there is still work to be done on sensitive issues” and “the coming weeks could also be intense.”
The US president has been working to end the war in Ukraine for much of his first year in office, expressing anger at both Zelenskyy and Putin while publicly acknowledging the difficulty of ending the conflict. Gone are the days when, as a 2024 candidate, he boasted that he could solve the war in one day.
After hosting Zelenskyy at the White House in October, Trump demanded that Russia and Ukraine stop fighting and “stand on the battle line,” meaning that Moscow must be able to maintain the position it has taken in Ukraine.
Zelenskyy said last week that he would agree to withdraw troops from the industrial zone in eastern Ukraine as part of a plan to end the war, if Russia also withdraws and the area becomes a demilitarized zone monitored by international forces.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday that the Kremlin is already in contact with the US.
“It was agreed that the negotiations should continue,” he said.
Putin wants to preserve Russia’s interests, and so on
Putin has publicly stated that he wants all areas in four key regions captured by his forces, as well as the Crimean Peninsula, which was illegally seized in 2014, to be recognized as Russian territory. He also insisted that Ukraine withdraw from some areas in eastern Ukraine that Moscow’s forces did not capture. Kyiv has publicly rejected all those demands.
The Kremlin also wants Ukraine to abandon its bid to join NATO. It warned that it would not accept the deployment of any troops from members of the military alliance and would consider them “legitimate victims.”
Putin also said Ukraine must limit the size of its army and give official status to the Russian language, demands he has made since the beginning of the conflict.
Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, told the Kommersant daily business this month that Russian police and national guards will remain in parts of Donetsk – one of the two largest areas, along with Luhansk, that make up the Donbas region – even if they become a demilitarized zone under the peace plan.
Ushakov warned that trying to reach an agreement could take a long time. He said US proposals to accommodate Russia’s demands have been “worse” because of changes proposed by Ukraine and its European allies.
Trump has somewhat accepted Putin’s demands, charging that the Russian president can be persuaded to end the war if Kyiv agrees to give up Ukrainian land in the Donbas region and if the West provides economic incentives to bring Russia back into the world economy.
–Kim reported from Washington and Morton from London. Associated Press writers Illia Novikov in Kyiv and Rob Gillies in Toronto contributed to this report.
