Historic Florida Meeting: Zelensky and Trump Discuss Peace
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived here Sunday, even as his capital, Kyiv, was under attack from Russian missiles and drones.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived here Sunday, even as his capital, Kyiv, was under attack from Russian missiles and drones. It was a deadly reminder from the aggressor in the war that its attacks would continue even amid accelerated peace talks.
The meeting between Zelensky and President Donald Trump, scheduled for 1 p.m. ET at Mar-a-Lago and announced just two days earlier, is intended to address shortcomings in the original 28-point peace plan that Trump first proposed last month and which Ukraine has since revised to 20 points. Intensive work is underway by U.S. envoys to finalize a proposal that both Ukraine and Russia can agree to.
Trump, who has been in Palm Beach since December 20, will interrupt his holiday break for the discussion. The meeting was arranged after Zelensky spoke by phone last week for an hour with Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, who are working to finalize the peace agreement.
Trump said earlier this month that he didn’t think meetings with Zelensky or his European counterparts would be useful until they were closer to an agreement, indicating an advanced stage of negotiations. U.S. officials have described significant progress in the peace efforts, with one U.S. official saying earlier this month that 90% of the terms of an agreement had been settled. Zelensky confirmed that figure on Friday.
“It’s not easy. No one is saying it will be 100% perfect immediately, but still, with every such meeting, with every such conversation, we have to get closer to the desired result,” he said.
Resolving the remaining 10% has proven difficult and includes the thorny issue of territorial concessions that would be necessary to end the nearly four-year-old war. Russia has not backed down from its maximum demands, which include requiring Ukraine to cede the entire eastern Donbas region.
However, Zelensky is no longer completely ruling out concessions, and says he will put a peace plan to a referendum if Russia agrees to a ceasefire. (According to Ukraine's constitution, any changes to the country's borders require approval in a referendum.)
A U.S. official said the American side has offered "thought-provoking" ideas on how to resolve the impasse, including the development of an "economic free zone" in eastern Ukraine. The future of Europe's largest nuclear power plant, the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia plant, also remains undecided. Zelensky said Kyiv proposes that the plant be run by a joint enterprise between the U.S. and Ukraine, with 50% of the power going to Ukraine and the rest to the U.S.
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There will be no Russian representative at Sunday's meeting, and it remains unclear whether Moscow will immediately agree to a ceasefire, which would allow the peace plan to be implemented. Trump has often described both Ukraine and Russia as obstacles to peace.
Speaking the day before the meeting, according to the Russian state news service TASS, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that "if Kyiv is not ready to resolve the matter peacefully, then Russia will achieve all the goals of the special military operation by military means," using a euphemism for the war in Ukraine.
According to the Ukrainian Air Force, Russia launched 519 drones and 40 missiles at Ukraine on Saturday night. Zelenskyy said Saturday morning that while Russian officials are talking about ending the fighting, the ongoing violence speaks for itself.
Following a week of intense efforts between U.S. and Ukrainian negotiators, U.S. officials are hopeful that Sunday's meeting will be successful, although they did not specify any particular goals for the meeting. Before the meeting, Zelensky said he wanted to develop a framework for ending the conflict, including defining the specifics of security guarantees from the United States to ensure that Russia could not attack again after the war ends.
Earlier this month, two days of talks in Berlin between officials from Europe, Ukraine, and the United States produced a set of security guarantees similar to NATO's Article 5. These would provide protection against further Russian aggression, establish conflict-resolution mechanisms, and allow for monitoring of any potential peace agreement. They would also clarify the consequences for Russia if it were to violate the agreement.
A senior U.S. official said, “This is the strongest set of security protocols they’ve ever seen. It’s a very robust package,” though he did not specify what the U.S. is actually promising. Another official said Trump is prepared to present the U.S.-backed security guarantees to Congress and described the package as the “platinum standard” of what Washington can offer Ukraine.
Trump believes he can persuade Moscow to accept the guarantees, and officials also said Russia has shown openness to Ukraine joining the European Union as part of any peace agreement.
According to U.S. and European officials, no European leaders are expected to attend Sunday’s meeting, a departure from previous meetings between the two presidents. In August, European leaders joined Zelensky at the White House after a contentious Oval Office session with Trump in February.
Trump said in an interview with Politico on Friday that he expects the meeting with Zelensky to “go well,” but warned that the Ukrainian president “won’t get anything until I approve it.”
The Ukrainians have been pressing for a meeting between Zelensky and Trump since they last met in October. European officials said they expect a positive meeting and described the current coordination between the U.S. and Ukraine as productive.
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