WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Trump will host his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, in Florida on Sunday to try to close out a peace agreement that would end nearly four years of war sparked by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia intensified its attacks on Ukraine’s capital and elsewhere in the days before the meeting.
The two will meet at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, where the U.S. president is spending the holidays. Zelensky, who arrived in Miami in the morning, said the two planned to discuss security and economic agreements in their early afternoon meeting. He said he will raise “territorial issues” as Moscow and Kyiv remain fiercely at odds over the fate of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.
In overnight developments, three guided aerial bombs launched by Russia struck private homes in the eastern city of Slovyansk, 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 the day after Russia attacked Ukraine’s capital with ballistic missiles and drones on Saturday, killing at least one person and wounding 27, Ukrainian authorities said.
In advance of his meeting with Trump, Zelensky said Sunday that he spoke on the phone with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, filling him in “on the situation on the frontline and on the consequences of Russian strikes.” He posted on X: “Thank you, Keir, for the constant coordination!” Zelensky’s office said he will 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, Zelensky said the key to peace is “pressure on Russia and sufficient, strong support for Ukraine.” To that end, Carney announced more economic assistance from his government to help Ukraine rebuild.
Denouncing the “barbarism” of Russia’s latest attacks on Kyiv, Carney credited both Zelensky and Trump with creating the conditions for a “just and lasting peace” at a crucial moment.
“Ukraine is willing to do whatever it takes to stop this war,” Zelensky posted Saturday. “We need to be strong at the negotiating table.”
In response to the attacks, he wrote: “We want peace, and Russia demonstrates a desire to continue the war. If the whole world — Europe and America — is on our side, together we will stop” Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump and Zelensky sitting down face-to-face also underscored the apparent progress made by the top U.S. negotiators in recent weeks as the sides traded draft peace plans and continued to shape a proposal to end the fighting. Zelensky told reporters Friday that the 20-point draft proposal negotiators have discussed is “about 90% ready” — echoing a figure, and the optimism, that U.S. officials conveyed when the chief American negotiators met with Zelensky in Berlin this month.
During the recent talks, the U.S. agreed to offer certain security guarantees to Ukraine similar to those offered to other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The proposal came as Zelensky said he was prepared to drop his country’s bid to join the security alliance if Ukraine received NATO-like protection that would be designed to safeguard it against future Russian attacks.
‘Intensive’ weeks ahead
Zelensky also spoke on Christmas Day with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. The Ukrainian leader said they discussed “certain substantive details” and cautioned that “there is still work to be done on sensitive issues” and “the weeks ahead may also be intensive.”
Trump has been working to end the war in Ukraine for much of his first year back in office, showing irritation with both Zelensky and Putin while asserting often contradictory positions and publicly acknowledging the difficulty of ending the conflict. Long gone is the time when, as a candidate in 2024, he boasted that he could resolve the fighting in a day.
After hosting Zelensky at the White House in October, Trump called on Russia and Ukraine to halt the fighting and “stop at the battle line,” implying that Moscow should be able to keep the territory it has seized from Ukraine.
Zelensky said last week that he would be willing to withdraw troops from Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland as part of a plan to end the war, if Russia also pulls back and the area becomes a demilitarized zone monitored by international forces.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Friday that the Kremlin had been in contact with U.S. about the latest diplomatic efforts.
“It was agreed upon to continue the dialogue,” he said.
Putin wants Russian gains kept, and more
Putin has publicly said he wants all the areas in four key regions that have been captured by his forces, as well as the Crimean peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, to be recognized as Russian territory. He also has insisted that Ukraine withdraw from some areas in eastern Ukraine that Moscow’s forces haven’t captured. Kyiv has publicly rejected all those demands.
The Kremlin also wants Ukraine to abandon its bid to join NATO. It warned that it wouldn’t accept the deployment of any troops from members of the military alliance and would view them as a “legitimate target.”
Putin also has said Ukraine must limit the size of its army and give official status to the Russian language, demands he has made from the outset of the conflict.
Putin’s foreign affairs advisor, Yuri Ushakov, told the business daily Kommersant this month that Russian police and national guard members would stay in parts of Donetsk — one of the two major areas, along with Luhansk, that make up the eastern Donbas region — even if they become a demilitarized zone under a prospective peace plan.
Ushakov cautioned that trying to reach a compromise could take a long time. He said U.S. proposals that took into account Russian demands had been “worsened” by alterations proposed by Ukraine and its European allies.
Trump has been receptive to Putin’s demands, making the case that the Russian president can be persuaded to end the war if Kyiv agrees to cede Ukrainian land in the Donbas region and if Western powers offer economic incentives to bring Russia back into the global economy.
Weissert, Kim and Morton write for the Associated Press and reported from West Palm Beach, Washington and London. AP writers Illia Novikov in Kyiv and Rob Gillies in Toronto contributed to this report.
The post Zelensky to meet with Trump as efforts to end Russia-Ukraine war remain elusive appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
