{"id":255924,"date":"2025-12-29T10:31:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T10:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/255924\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T10:31:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T10:31:09","slug":"trump-says-deal-to-end-ukraine-war-very-close-but-thorny-issues-remain-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/255924\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump says deal to end Ukraine war \u2018very close\u2019 but thorny issues remain \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald \u200dTrump<\/a> said on Sunday evening he \u200dbelieves a deal to end Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine is \u201cvery close\u201d following a meeting in Florida with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The US president said one or two thorny issues remain, but his meeting with Mr Zelenskiy was \u201cexcellent\u201d and said some would say they covered \u201c95 per cent\u201d of issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do think we are getting a lot closer, maybe very close,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the same event, Mr Zelenskiy said he had a great discussion with the American leader, and US-Ukraine security guarantees are \u201c100 per cent agreed to\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mr Trump said he was on the phone with Russian president \u2060Vladimir Putin<\/a> for \u201cmaybe 2\u00bd hours\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Russia<\/a> 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. <\/p>\n

The Ukrainian president called it Russia\u2019s response to \u200dthe ongoing US-brokered peace efforts.<\/p>\n

\"DonaldDonald Trump speaks during the meeting with president Volodymyr Zelenskiy and other Ukrainian officials at Mar-a-Lago on Sunday. Photograph: Joe Raedle\/Getty <\/p>\n

Speaking after his meeting with Mr Trump, Mr Zelenskiy said Ukraine has a \u201cdifferent position\u201d to Russia on Donbas. He said Russia had to respect Ukrainian land and \u201cthe territory which we control\u201d. He said Ukraine\u2019s attitude to Donbas is \u201cvery clear\u201d and that it is \u201ca different position to Russia\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is the land of our nation, for generations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mr Trump said the issue of Donbas is \u201cunresolved but getting closer\u201d. <\/p>\n

Asked if there was any agreement on a free trade zone on Donbas, Mr Trump said it was a \u201cvery tough issue but one I think we\u2019ll get resolved\u201d.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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 \u201clistened carefully\u201d to Russia\u2019s assessment of the conflict. Both sides agreed that a ceasefire proposed by Ukraine and Europe would only prolong the fighting \u201cand is fraught with renewed hostilities\u201d, Mr Ushakov said.<\/p>\n

Asked about Ukraine\u2019s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, one of the key sticking points in the talks, Mr Trump said Mr Putin is \u201cworking with Ukraine on getting it open\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s been very good in that sense. He wants to see that open,\u201d Mr Trump added. <\/p>\n

The US president said he had offered to address the Ukrainian parliament. \u201cIf that would help, I don\u2019t know if that would help. I think it would probably help, but I don\u2019t even know,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin said he welcomed the progress that Mr Trump and Mr Zelenskiy spoke of this evening. He said in a statement<\/a>: \u201cI firmly hope that this will be built on in the time ahead to enable a ceasefire to take place.<\/p>\n

\u201cRussia must now demonstrate that it is committed to ending its illegal war on Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moscow has repeatedly insisted that Ukraine yield all \u200cof the Donbas, even areas still under Kyiv\u2019s control, and Russian officials have objected to other parts of the latest proposal, sparking doubts about whether Mr Putin would accept whatever Sunday\u2019s talks might produce. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0From Zelenskiy\u2019s jaw-dropping White House meeting to Prince Andrew\u2019s loss of royal titles: 12 history-making moments of 2025Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The Ukrainian president told Axios on Friday he still hopes to soften a \u2060US 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. <\/p>\n

Axios said \u200cUS \u200bofficials \u200dviewed Mr Zelenskiy\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n

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 \u2060out the contours of a postwar security guarantee for Kyiv that would be supported by the United States.<\/p>\n

Kyiv and Washington had agreed on many issues, and Mr Zelenskiy said on Friday that the 20-point plan \u2060was 90 per cent finished. But the issue of what territory, if any, will be \u2060ceded to Russia remained unresolved. While Moscow has insisted on getting all of the Donbas, Kyiv wants the map frozen at current battle lines.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe 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 <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Mr Zelenskiy, whose past meetings with Mr Trump have not always gone smoothly, \u200dworries 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Zelenskiy \u2018doesn\u2019t have anything until I approve it\u2019, says Trump ahead of meeting on SundayOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

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 \u200cplan was spun off from a Russian-led 28-point \u200cplan, which emerged from talks between US special envoy Steve Witkoff, Mr Trump\u2019s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Russian special envoy Kirill Dmitriev, and which became public in November.<\/p>\n

Subsequent talks between Ukrainian officials and US negotiators have produced the more Kyiv-friendly 20-point plan.<\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s air attacks show that Mr Putin does not want peace, Mr Zelenskiy said to reporters after arriving in Halifax, \u200cNova Scotia, where he met Canadian prime minister Mark Carney.<\/p>\n

In a brief statement with Mr Zelenskiy by his side, Mr Carney said peace \u201crequires a willing Russia\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe barbarism that we saw overnight \u2013 the attack on Kyiv \u2013 shows just how important it is that we stand with \u2060Ukraine in this difficult time,\u201d Mr Carney said, pledging 2.5 billion Canadian dollars (\u20ac1.5 billion) in additional economic aid to Ukraine.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Local officials said three guided aerial bombs launched by Russia struck private homes in Sloviansk overnight into Sunday.<\/p>\n

That came a day after Russia attacked Ukraine\u2019s capital with ballistic missiles and drones, killing at least one person and wounding 27.<\/p>\n

Explosions boomed across Kyiv as the attack began early on Saturday and continued for hours. \u2013 Reuters\/AP <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald \u200dTrump said on Sunday evening he \u200dbelieves a deal to end Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine is \u201cvery…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,356,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,550,7,8,2264,384,2263,2267,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-255924","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-latest-news","15":"tag-latestnews","16":"tag-main-news","17":"tag-mainnews","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-russia","20":"tag-top-stories","21":"tag-topstories","22":"tag-ukraine-crisis","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-vladimir-putin","25":"tag-volodymyr-zelenskiy","26":"tag-world","27":"tag-world-news","28":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115802399272798835","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}