Volodymyr Zelensky will meet US president Donald Trump at his residence in Florida on Sunday for crucial talks amid growing optimism in Kyiv that a peace deal may be nearing completion.
The Ukrainian president announced on Friday that he would meet Mr Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort to discuss critical stumbling blocks, including territorial disputes and security guarantees.
“This meeting is specifically for the purpose of finalising everything as much as we can,” Mr Zelensky said on Friday, adding that “a lot can be decided before the new year”.
“As for the sensitive issues: we will discuss both Donbas and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. We will certainly discuss other issues as well,” he told reporters in a WhatsApp chat.
Mr Zelensky said that his 20-point peace plan was “90 per cent ready”, expressing hopes that it could be signed off by Mr Trump ahead of the new year. European leaders may join the talks online, he added.
Moscow has spoken with Washington about the Ukrainian proposals for a peace deal, the Kremlin said, after Vladimir Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev brought back copies of the proposals from Miami last week.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the details of the proposals have been analysed, and that “contact took place” between Putin’s foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, and US officials.
Russia has made clear its intention to control the entire Donbas, comprised of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions. However, throughout the latest US-led attempts to bring Moscow and Kyiv closer to an agreement, Mr Zelensky has made clear that Ukraine will not cede land it currently controls.
According to Russian newspaper Kommersant, Putin told some of Russia’s top businessmen that he might be open to swapping some territory occupied by Russian forces in Ukraine, but that he wants the whole of Donbas.
Mr Peskov did not give much away on Friday when asked about the report, saying that he did not want to comment on the latest proposals as Russia believed making public remarks might undermine negotiations.
The US has been desperately seeking a compromise and has veered between backing Kyiv and repeating Moscow’s talking points. Washington has recently proposed a free economic zone if Ukraine were to leave the Donbas area, but it is unclear how that zone would function in reality.
Mr Zelensky said his meeting with Mr Trump aimed to “refine things” and discuss a possible deal on Ukraine’s economy, but that compromises on territory should be decided by the Ukrainian people in a referendum.
Although he was not ready to say if a deal would be signed during the visit, Mr Zelensky said he was open to the possibility, given it is “almost ready”. He said he was planning to raise the issue of intensifying pressure on Russia during the meeting with Mr Trump.
Mr Trump had previously suggested that he would meet with Mr Zelensky if he felt there was a possibility of a major diplomatic advance, after becoming increasingly frustrated by the slow pace of progress in the negotiations.
But officials in Kyiv will be wary of previous failures to strike a deal in a limited timeframe. A White House meeting in which the pair were due to sign the “minerals deal” in February resulted in a showdown between Mr Zelensky and Mr Trump, who accused the Ukrainian leader of being “ungrateful” in an extraordinary televised press conference in the Oval Office. The deal was never signed.
Kyiv is seeking strong security guarantees that would deter Russia from invading again, but it remains unclear what exact form these will take.
As talks continued, Russia continued its attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in overnight drone and missile attacks, including a ramped-up assault on Ukraine’s southern region of Odesa, the main site of its sea ports.
An attack on the northeastern city of Kharkiv killed two people on Friday.
