“I do think we have the makings of a deal,” Trump said. “We have two willing countries. We are in the final stages of talking,” Trump said.
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The US president said he would call Putin again after meeting with Zelensky.
Zelensky had previously told journalists he planned to discuss the fate of the contested Donbas region with Trump, as well as the future of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and other topics.
Russia claims more battlefield advances
Putin said on Saturday that Moscow would continue waging its war if Kyiv did not seek a quick peace. Russia has steadily advanced on the battlefield in recent months, claiming control over several more settlements on Sunday.
While Kyiv and Washington have agreed on many issues, the issue of what territory, if any, will be ceded to Russia remains unresolved. While Moscow insists on getting all of the Donbas, Kyiv wants the map frozen at current battle lines.
US President Donald Trump greets Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky at Mar-a-Lago.Credit: AP
The US, 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.
US negotiators have also proposed shared control over the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. Power line repairs had begun there after another local ceasefire brokered by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the agency said on Sunday.
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.
Putin said on December 19 that 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.
Zelensky’s past encounters with Trump have not always gone smoothly, but the latest meeting follows weeks of diplomatic efforts. European allies, while at times cut out of the loop, have stepped up efforts to sketch out the contours of a post-war security guarantee for Kyiv that the United States would support.
Asked by a reporter if he was prepared to sign a security guarantee at the meeting, Trump called that a dumb question. “No one knows what the security agreement will say,” Trump said.
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Ahead of the Mar-a-Lago visit, Zelensky said he held a detailed phone call with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Trump and Zelensky would hold a phone call with European leaders at some point during the Florida meeting, Trump said.
The 20-point plan was spun off from a Russian-led 28-point plan, which emerged from talks between US special envoy Steve Witkoff, 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.
Reuters
