Zelenskyy to meet with Trump as efforts to end Russia-Ukraine war remain elusive

WEST PALM BEACH, Florida — President Donald Trump will host his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Sunday to try to reach a peace deal that would end nearly four years of war that began with Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

The two men will meet at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Florida, where the US president vacations and has a schedule mostly filled with daily rounds of golf. Zelenskyy said the two planned to discuss security and economic deals and that he would raise “territorial issues” as Moscow and kyiv remain fiercely at odds over the fate of eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region.

In the days leading up to the meeting, Russia intensified its attacks on the Ukrainian capital, using missiles and drones to attack kyiv and try to increase pressure on Zelensky.

“Ukraine is ready to do whatever it takes to end this war,” Zelensky posted on X on Saturday. “We must be strong at the negotiating table.”

In response to the attacks, he wrote: “We want peace and Russia is demonstrating its desire to continue the war. If the whole world – Europe and America – is on our side, together we will stop” Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Saturday, Zelenskyy said the key to peace was “pressure on Russia and sufficient and strong support for Ukraine.” To that end, Carney announced an additional C$2.5 billion (US$1.8 billion) in economic aid from his government to help Ukraine rebuild.

Denouncing the “barbarity” of the latest Russian attacks on kyiv, Carney credited Zelensky and Trump with creating the conditions for a “just and lasting peace” at a crucial moment.

Trump and Zelensky, sitting opposite each other, also highlighted the apparent progress made by Trump’s top negotiators in recent weeks, as the sides exchanged draft peace plans and continued to hammer out a proposal to end the fighting. Zelenskyy told reporters Friday that the 20-point draft proposal discussed by negotiators was “about 90 percent ready” — echoing a figure and optimism expressed by U.S. officials when Trump’s chief negotiators met with Zelenskyy in Berlin earlier this month.

During recent negotiations, the United States agreed to offer Ukraine certain security guarantees similar to those offered to other NATO members. The proposal comes as Zelensky says he is ready to abandon his country’s candidacy for the security alliance if Ukraine benefits from NATO-like protection, intended to protect it against future Russian attacks.

Zelensky also spoke on Christmas Day with US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. The Ukrainian leader said in an article on

The US president has worked to end the war in Ukraine for much of his first year in office, venting anger at both Zelensky and Putin while publicly acknowledging the difficulty of ending the conflict. The days when, as a candidate in 2024, he boasted of being able to resolve fights in a day are long gone.

After welcoming Zelensky to the White House in October, Trump demanded that Russia and Ukraine stop fighting and “stop at the battle line,” implying that Moscow should be able to hold on to the territory it captured from Ukraine.

Before Sunday’s meeting, Zelensky said key unresolved issues between Ukraine and the United States include issues related to territory, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and financing Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction. He added that there also remained outstanding technical issues related to security guarantees and monitoring mechanisms.

Ukraine has conveyed its position to the United States, Zelenskyy said, adding that Trump administration officials would convey it to Russia.

Zelensky also said last week that he would be ready to withdraw his troops from Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland as part of a plan to end the war, if Russia also withdrew and the area became a demilitarized zone monitored by international forces.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday that the Kremlin had already been in contact with the United States.

“It was agreed to continue the dialogue,” he said.

Putin has publicly stated that he wants all areas of four key regions that have been captured by his forces, as well as the Crimean peninsula, illegally annexed in 2014, to be recognized as Russian territory. He also insisted that Ukraine withdraw from some areas of eastern Ukraine that Moscow’s forces have not captured. Kyiv has publicly rejected all these demands.

The Kremlin also wants Ukraine to abandon its NATO candidacy. He warned that he would not accept the deployment of troops from the military alliance and that he would consider them a “legitimate target”.

Putin also said Ukraine must limit the size of its army and grant official status to the Russian language, demands he made from the start of the conflict.

Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, told the Kommersant business daily this month that Russian police and national guards would remain in parts of Donetsk – one of the two main areas, along with Luhansk, that make up the Donbass region – even if it became a demilitarized zone under a possible peace plan.

Ushakov warned that trying to reach a compromise could take a long time. He said U.S. proposals that took Russian demands into account had been “worsened” by changes proposed by Ukraine and its European allies.

Trump has been somewhat receptive to Putin’s demands, arguing that the Russian president can be persuaded to end the war if kyiv agrees to cede Ukrainian lands in the Donbas region and if Western powers offer economic incentives to bring Russia back into the global economy.

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Kim reported from Washington and Morton from London. Associated Press writers Illia Novikov in Kyiv and Rob Gillies in Toronto contributed to this report.