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Vladimir Zelensky Will meet with the President of the United States Donald Trump Key talks took place at his residence in Florida on Sunday, amid growing optimism in Kyiv that a peace deal may be nearing completion.
Ukraine’s president announced on Friday that he would meet with Trump at his presidential palace. Mar-a-Lago Resort Key obstacles are discussed, including territorial disputes and security guarantees.
“The purpose of this meeting is to finalize everything as much as possible,” Zelensky said on Friday, adding that “a lot of things can be decided before the New Year.”
“As for sensitive issues: we will discuss the Donbass and Zaporizhia nuclear power plants. We will of course discuss other issues as well,” he told reporters in a WhatsApp chat.
Zelensky said his 20-point peace plan was “90 percent ready” and expressed hope that Trump would sign it before the new year. European leaders may take part in online talks, he added.
The Kremlin said Moscow had spoken to Washington over a proposed peace deal in Ukraine after Vladimir Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev brought back a copy of the proposal from Miami last week.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said details of the proposals had been analyzed and there had been “contacts” between Putin’s foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov and U.S. officials.
Russia has made clear its intention to control the entire Donbas, including the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine. However, in the latest US-led attempt to bring Moscow and Kiev to a deal, Zelensky made clear that Ukraine would not give up the land it currently controls.
According to Russian newspaper reports KommersantPutin told some of Russia’s top businessmen that he might be willing to trade some of the territory captured by Russian troops in Ukraine, but that he wanted the entire Donbas.
Asked about the report on Friday, Peskov did not reveal much, saying he did not want to comment on the latest proposal because Russia believed speaking out publicly could derail negotiations.
The United States has been desperately seeking compromise and has vacillated between supporting Kiev and repeating Moscow’s talking points. Washington has recently proposed creating a free economic zone if Ukraine leaves the Donbass region, but it is unclear how that would work in reality.
Zelensky said his meeting with Trump was aimed at “improving things” and discussing a possible economic deal for Ukraine, but that compromise on territorial issues should be decided by the Ukrainian people in a referendum.
Although Zelensky was not ready to say whether the deal would be signed during the visit, he said he was open to the possibility because the deal was “almost ready.” He said he planned to raise the issue of increased pressure on Russia when he meets with Trump.
Trump has previously said he would meet with Zelensky if he believed major diplomatic progress was possible after growing frustrated with the slow progress of negotiations.
But Kyiv officials will remain wary of previous failures to reach an agreement within a limited time frame. The two were scheduled to meet at the White House in February to sign a “mining deal,” which resulted in a showdown between Zelensky and Trump, who accused the Ukrainian leader of “ungratefulness” during a special televised news conference in the Oval Office. The agreement was never signed.
Kiev is seeking strong security guarantees to deter another Russian invasion, but it is unclear what form those guarantees will take.
As negotiations continued, Russia continued to carry out nighttime drone and missile attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, including intensifying attacks on Odessa in Ukraine’s southern region, which is home to its seaport.
Two people were killed in an attack in the northeastern city of Kharkiv on Friday.