Donald Trump said on Sunday evening he believes a deal to end Russia’s war in Ukraine is “very close” following a meeting in Florida with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
The US president said one or two thorny issues remain, but his meeting with Mr Zelenskiy was “excellent” and said some would say they covered “95 per cent” of issues.
“I do think we are getting a lot closer, maybe very close,” he said at a press conference after the meeting. Mr Trump said territorial issues remain but he thinks these will be resolved and there will be an outcome to the peace talks in a few weeks.
Speaking at the same event, Mr Zelenskiy said he had a great discussion with the American leader, and US-Ukraine security guarantees are “100 per cent agreed to”.
Mr Trump said he was on the phone with Russian president Vladimir Putin for “maybe 2½ hours” on Sunday. He said he thinks the Russian and Ukrainian presidents both want to see a deal agreed. He said Mr Putin wants to see Ukraine succeed.
Russia struck Kyiv and other parts of war-torn Ukraine with hundreds of missiles and drones on Saturday, knocking out power and heat in parts of the capital.
The Ukrainian president called it Russia’s response to the ongoing US-brokered peace efforts.
Donald Trump speaks during the meeting with president Volodymyr Zelenskiy and other Ukrainian officials at Mar-a-Lago on Sunday. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty
Speaking after his meeting with Mr Trump, Mr Zelenskiy said Ukraine has a “different position” to Russia on Donbas. He said Russia had to respect Ukrainian land and “the territory which we control”. He said Ukraine’s attitude to Donbas is “very clear” and that it is “a different position to Russia”.
“It is the land of our nation, for generations,” he said.
Mr Trump said the issue of Donbas is “unresolved but getting closer”.
Asked if there was any agreement on a free trade zone on Donbas, Mr Trump said it was a “very tough issue but one I think we’ll get resolved”.
Mr Trump and Mr Zelenskiy spoke with the leaders of France, Finland, Poland, Norway, Italy, the UK and Germany, along with the Nato secretary general and head of the European Commission after their meeting.
Afterwards Mr Trump said he believed Mr Putin was ready to make a peace deal. There were no signs, however, that Russia was willing to drop any of its demands. According to Kremlin adviser Yuri Ushakov, Mr Trump “listened carefully” to Russia’s assessment of the conflict. Both sides agreed that a ceasefire proposed by Ukraine and Europe would only prolong the fighting “and is fraught with renewed hostilities”, Mr Ushakov said.
Asked about Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, one of the key sticking points in the talks, Mr Trump said Mr Putin is “working with Ukraine on getting it open”.
“He’s been very good in that sense. He wants to see that open,” Mr Trump added.
The US president said he had offered to address the Ukrainian parliament. “If that would help, I don’t know if that would help. I think it would probably help, but I don’t even know,” he said.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin said he welcomed the progress that Mr Trump and Mr Zelenskiy spoke of this evening. He said in a statement: “I firmly hope that this will be built on in the time ahead to enable a ceasefire to take place.
“Russia must now demonstrate that it is committed to ending its illegal war on Ukraine.”
Moscow has repeatedly insisted that Ukraine yield all of the Donbas, even areas still under Kyiv’s control, and Russian officials have objected to other parts of the latest proposal, sparking doubts about whether Mr Putin would accept whatever Sunday’s talks might produce.
The Ukrainian president told Axios on Friday he still hopes to soften a US proposal for Ukrainian forces to withdraw completely from the Donbas. Failing that, Mr Zelenskiy said the entire 20-point plan, the result of weeks of negotiations, should be put to a referendum vote.
Axios said US officials viewed Mr Zelenskiy’s willingness to hold a referendum as a major step forward and a sign that he was no longer ruling out territorial concessions, although he said Russia would need to agree to a 60-day ceasefire to allow Ukraine to prepare for and hold such a vote.
A recent poll suggests that Ukrainian voters may also reject the plan. European allies, while at times cut out of the loop, have stepped up efforts to sketch out the contours of a postwar security guarantee for Kyiv that would be supported by the United States.
Kyiv and Washington had agreed on many issues, and Mr Zelenskiy said on Friday that the 20-point plan was 90 per cent finished. But the issue of what territory, if any, will be ceded to Russia remained unresolved. While Moscow has insisted on getting all of the Donbas, Kyiv wants the map frozen at current battle lines.
The motorcade with US president Donald Trump leaves Trump International Golf Club on the way to his Mar-a-Lago club. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
The United States, seeking a compromise, has proposed a free economic zone if Ukraine leaves the area, although it remains unclear how that zone would function in practical terms.
Mr Zelenskiy, whose past meetings with Mr Trump have not always gone smoothly, worries along with his European allies that Mr Trump could sell out Ukraine and leave European powers to foot the bill for supporting a devastated nation, after Russian forces took 12 to 17sq km of its territory per day in 2025.
Russia controls all of Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, and since its invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago has taken control of about 12 per cent of its territory, including about 90 per cent of Donbas, 75 per cent of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and slivers of the Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions, according to Russian estimates.
Mr Putin said on December 19th that he thought a peace deal should be based on conditions he set out in 2024: Ukraine withdrawing from all of the Donbas, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and Kyiv officially renouncing its aim to join Nato.
Ukrainian officials and European leaders view the war as an imperial-style land grab by Moscow and have warned that if Russia gets its way with Ukraine, it will one day attack Nato members. The 20-point plan was spun off from a Russian-led 28-point plan, which emerged from talks between US special envoy Steve Witkoff, Mr Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Russian special envoy Kirill Dmitriev, and which became public in November.
Subsequent talks between Ukrainian officials and US negotiators have produced the more Kyiv-friendly 20-point plan.
Saturday’s air attacks show that Mr Putin does not want peace, Mr Zelenskiy said to reporters after arriving in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he met Canadian prime minister Mark Carney.
In a brief statement with Mr Zelenskiy by his side, Mr Carney said peace “requires a willing Russia”.
“The barbarism that we saw overnight – the attack on Kyiv – shows just how important it is that we stand with Ukraine in this difficult time,” Mr Carney said, pledging 2.5 billion Canadian dollars (€1.5 billion) in additional economic aid to Ukraine.
Elsewhere on Sunday, one man died and three other people were injured in a Russian bomb attack in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk, hours before Mr Trump was due to host Mr Zelenskiy.
Local officials said three guided aerial bombs launched by Russia struck private homes in Sloviansk overnight into Sunday.
That came a day after Russia attacked Ukraine’s capital with ballistic missiles and drones, killing at least one person and wounding 27.
Explosions boomed across Kyiv as the attack began early on Saturday and continued for hours. – Reuters/AP