A new round of peace talks between President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and President Trump seem to have produced little beyond a promise to meet again next month and a reminder of how distant a peace deal remains.
Yet for Mr. Zelensky, even a stalemate in the discussions counts as progress.
After setbacks in U.S. support for Ukraine this year, one of Mr. Zelensky’s main priorities when meeting Mr. Trump would have been to prevent talks from derailing. After the meeting on Sunday, Mr. Trump signaled that he would remain engaged in the negotiations — a win for Ukraine given his repeated threats to walk away. Mr. Trump also backed away from setting another deadline to reach a peace deal, after having previously floated Thanksgiving and Christmas as target dates.
“I don’t have deadlines,” Mr. Trump told reporters as he greeted Mr. Zelensky at Mar-a-Lago in Florida for the talks. “You know what my deadline is? Getting the war ended.”
Most important for Ukraine, Mr. Trump did not echo Russia’s maximalist demands to stop the fighting, a departure from earlier in his term when he often appeared to side with the Kremlin. The change was also notable because Mr. Trump had spoken with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia just before meeting Mr. Zelensky, the type of last-minute Russian intervention that has derailed Ukrainian hopes before.
That may leave Mr. Zelensky confident that Kyiv and Washington are more closely aligned in the peace negotiations. Several European leaders also joined Sunday’s talks by phone, and Mr. Zelensky said that the United States might host a new round of negotiations next month that could include them.
“We had a really great discussion on all the topics, and we appreciate the progress that was made by American and Ukrainian teams in recent weeks,” Mr. Zelensky said. Still, he acknowledged that several sticking points remained in a draft peace deal, including the fate of Ukrainian-held land in the east and a Russian-occupied nuclear power plant.
As Mr. Zelensky arrived in Florida, some Ukrainians were concerned that he might walk into another meeting where Mr. Trump would pressure him to strike a quick peace deal on Moscow’s terms. The concern grew when the White House unexpectedly announced that Mr. Trump had spoken with Mr. Putin.
In October, Mr. Trump held a similar unannounced call with Mr. Putin shortly before meeting with Mr. Zelensky to discuss supplying Kyiv with powerful U.S. cruise missiles. In that call, Mr. Putin appeared to have steered Mr. Trump away from selling the missiles. Mr. Trump later told Mr. Zelensky that Ukraine would not get the weapons during a meeting described as tense by European officials.
Mr. Trump said Sunday’s call with Mr. Putin had been “good and very productive.” Yuri Ushakov, the top foreign policy aide to Mr. Putin, said in a news briefing that the conversation had lasted more than an hour. Mr. Ushakov also reiterated the Kremlin’s position that Kyiv should cede territory in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine to achieve peace. Mr. Trump said that he would call Mr. Putin again after meeting Mr. Zelensky, though it was not immediately clear whether he did.
Unlike in October, however, Mr. Trump refrained on Sunday from echoing the Kremlin’s demands and did not pressure Ukraine to strike a deal quickly. “This is not a one-day-process deal,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “This is very complicated stuff.”
Mr. Zelensky said that the peace plan was “90 percent” complete, the same progress he reported before flying to Florida. He added that U.S. and European allies were nearly aligned on the security guarantees they would offer Ukraine to prevent further Russian aggression. He also emphasized Ukraine’s proposal of compromise on the territorial issue: a demilitarized zone from where both Ukrainian and Russian troops would pull back.
Mr. Trump struck a more cautious tone when asked about progress in the talks. “The word ‘agreement’ is too strong,” he said. On resolving the territorial issue, he said, “I would not say ‘agreed,’ but we’re getting closer to an agreement on that.”
Perhaps the most promising development for Ukraine was Mr. Trump’s apparent willingness to hold a round of talks next month in the United States, potentially with European leaders at the table.
In past negotiations, European leaders were brought in to salvage talks after disagreements between Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Trump. Their presence as full participants rather than belated troubleshooters could help Ukraine strengthen its position.
Constant Méheut reports on the war in Ukraine, including battlefield developments, attacks on civilian centers and how the war is affecting its people.
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