Zelenskyy, Trump will meet in Florida on Sunday amid efforts to end the Ukraine-Russia conflict
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday he will meet with US President Donald Trump in Florida as part of talks to end the Ukraine-Russia war.
Zelenskyy told reporters that the two will discuss Ukraine’s security guarantees and that the 20-point plan being discussed is “90 percent correct.”
An “economic deal” will be discussed again, Zelenskyy said, but he could not confirm “that anything will be finalized at the end” of the meeting, which reports say will be held at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Palm Beach, Fla.
The Ukrainian side will also raise “local issues,” he said.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine would “like the Europeans to take part” but doubted it would happen soon.
“We must, without a doubt, find some form in the near future where not only Ukraine and the US but Europe is represented as well,” he said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The announced meeting is the latest development in a broader US-led effort to end the nearly four-year-old war, but efforts have faced sharply opposing demands from Moscow and Kyiv.
On Thursday, Zelenskyy said he had a “good conversation” with US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday that the Kremlin has already been in contact with US representatives since Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev recently met with US delegations in Florida.
“It was agreed to continue the discussion,” said Peskov.
Trump is busy with a campaign to end Russia’s war, which began with its invasion of Ukraine in Feb. 24, 2022.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy presented a 20-point peace plan that negotiations from Ukraine and the US have recently made. Zelenskyy admitted that he would be open to making the Donetsk region a free economic zone under the watch of international forces.
Zelenskyy said on Tuesday he would agree to withdraw troops from an industrial hub 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.
Although Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday there had been “slow but steady progress” in the peace talks, Russia has not indicated that it will accept any kind of withdrawal from the land it has taken.
Moscow insisted that Ukraine withdraw the territory it still holds in Donbas, a decision that Ukraine rejected. Russia holds most of Luhansk and about 70 percent of Donetsk – the two areas that make up Donbas.
On the ground, two people were killed and six injured on Friday when an aerial bomb hit a busy road and set fire to cars in Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, Mayor Ihor Terekhov wrote on the Telegram messaging service.
One person was killed and three were injured when a bomb hit a house in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, and six people were injured in a missile strike in the city of Uman, local officials said on Friday.
Russian airstrikes in and around Mykolaiv on Friday left part of the city without power. Energy and port infrastructure has been damaged by drones in the Black Sea city of Odesa.
Meanwhile, Ukraine said it had raided a major Russian oil refinery on Thursday using UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles. Ukraine’s General Staff said its forces attacked the Novoshakhtinsk refinery in Russia’s Rostov region.
“Multiple explosions were recorded. The target was hit,” wrote the Telegram messaging service.
Rostov district manager Yuri Slyusar said a firefighter was injured while putting out the fire.
Ukraine’s long-range strikes on Russian oil refineries aim to deprive Moscow of the oil export revenue it needs to continue its full-scale offensive. Russia wants to cripple Ukraine’s electricity grid, seeking to deny residents access to heat, light and running water in what Ukrainian officials have said is an attempt to “winterize.”
