KYIV — After scrambling to get to Switzerland for a meeting with President Donald Trump that almost didn’t happen the two leaders spoke in Davos for about an hour, with a Ukrainian spokesman confirming that it was “good.”
The meeting was closed to the press and there were no statements at its conclusion. On his way out, however, Trump did tell reporters that “the meeting was good with President Zelensky, we still have a ways to go.” He added that the message his envoys would take to Russian President Vladimir Putin tonight in Moscow would be “the war needed to end.”
Initially, the meeting seemed to take Kyiv by surprise. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday, Trump said that he planned to meet with Zelensky that day, adding that he might even “be in the audience” — when, in fact, Zelensky was still in Kyiv, where temperatures hover well below freezing and thousands of high-rise buildings have no electricity or heat from Russia’s continued assault on the power grid.
The forum was already underway when Zelensky on Tuesday told reporters he was “choosing Ukraine, not an economic forum,” dashing hopes that a bilateral meeting might lead to the inking of frameworks for security guarantees and postwar economic recovery. Officials had hinted the two countries were close to the finish line — until Trump’s new focus on Greenland appeared to sidetrack progress. Zelensky expressed his support for the sovereignty of Denmark.
Then Trump abruptly announced Wednesday that both sides were “reasonably close.”
“I believe they’re at a point now where they can come together and get a deal done,” Trump said. “And if they don’t, they’re stupid.”
Trump added that “it’s a very difficult balance,” saying that “oftentimes we’ll have a deal with Russia. Russia is set, and President Zelensky will not do it … and then we’ll have President Zelensky wants to make a deal, and Putin doesn’t want to make the deal.”
Despite the optimism expressed by the White House, the two sides still appear to be far apart in negotiations. In a news conference Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called into question any deal that allowed the continuing existence of the current Ukrainian government.
“Any settlement proposal founded on the primary goal of preserving the current Nazi regime in what remains of the Ukrainian state is, naturally, completely unacceptable to us,” he said.
As Zelensky touched down in Switzerland on Thursday, White House envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner — who met with lead Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov on the sidelines of the forum — were preparing to head to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Speaking at the forum’s Ukrainian Breakfast on Thursday morning, Witkoff said that he felt “encouraged” and described the Ukrainian people as “so courageous in this fight … under some real difficult conditions.”
“I think we’ve got it down to one issue, and we have discussed iterations of that issue,” Witkoff said, appearing to gesture at territorial concessions, one of the most contentious aspects of the negotiations and a red line for Ukraine. “That means it’s solvable. So if both sides want to solve this, we are going to get this solved; that’s my view.”
Previous meetings between Witkoff and Putin have lasted hours and will likely continue into early Friday morning, though Witkoff said he will not be spending the night and will continue on to Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, afterward.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on whether the Kremlin shared Witkoff’s optimism that a deal was close. At a news conference, Putin said he would also discuss Russia’s contribution to Trump’s Board of Peace with Witkoff and Kushner.
As world leaders congregated in Davos, enjoying mountain views, plush lodges and crackling fireplaces, Ukraine’s power grid remained crippled during one of the coldest winters in years. Without electricity, many Ukrainians sat in restaurants and coffee shops, kept running by generators. Outside, inches of ice slicked the streets and sidewalks. The windows of thousands of apartments remained dark.
Robyn Dixon and Natalia Abbakumova in Riga, Latvia, and Kostiantyn Khudov in Kyiv contributed to this report.
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