Zelenskyy to journey to US for Trump assembly amid push for Ukraine deal | Ukraine

Volodymyr Zelenskyy is to journey to the US for a deliberate assembly with Donald Trump on Sunday, as Washington continues to push for a potential peace deal between Kyiv and Moscow.

The Ukrainian president stated the go to would happen at a location in Florida – extensively anticipated to be Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort – in what could be the newest improvement in a diplomatic push that started in November with the circulation of a 28-point US plan formed with enter from Russian officers.

“We are not losing a single day. We have agreed on a meeting at the highest level – with President Trump in the near future,” Zelenskyy wrote in a publish on X on Friday, including that “a lot can be decided before the New Year”.

Zelenskyy later informed journalists the high-stakes assembly with Trump was deliberate for Sunday and would deal with a few of the most delicate elements of the peace talks, together with Ukrainian safety ensures and reconstruction.

“This meeting is specifically intended to refine things as much as we possibly can,” Zelenskyy stated.

He added that the proposed 20-point peace plan was “90% ready”.

“Our goal is to bring everything to 100%,” Zelenskyy stated. He later added: “As of today, our teams – the Ukrainian and American negotiating teams – have made significant progress.”

The plan is taken into account an up to date model of an earlier 28-point doc agreed a number of weeks in the past between the US envoys and Russian officers, a proposal extensively seen as skewed in direction of the Kremlin’s calls for. Ukraine has pushed for safety ensures modelled on Nato’s article 5 mutual defence pledge below any proposed peace take care of Russia, although it stays unclear whether or not Moscow would settle for such phrases.

“Russia constantly looks for reasons not to agree,” to the peace proposals, Zelenskyy informed reporters.

Washington has not publicly confirmed the assembly.

The announcement follows a burst of diplomatic exercise final weekend in Miami, the place Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff met individually with Russian and Ukrainian representatives, in addition to Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

US officers described the discussions as “constructive”, although Moscow has performed down expectations of progress and there are few indicators that Vladimir Putin is ready to melt his maximalist calls for to finish the full-scale invasion.

At a closed-door assembly with Russia’s enterprise elite on Wednesday night, the Russian president reportedly reiterated his demand that Ukraine hand over the whole jap Donbas area as a part of any peace deal.

According to Kommersant, considered one of Russia’s best-connected newspapers, Putin additionally indicated openness to a restricted territorial change with Ukraine, with Moscow doubtlessly exchanging small areas of land Russian forces occupy in Ukraine’s northern Kharkiv and southern Zaporizhzhia areas.

Zelenskyy has beforehand stated Ukraine could be open to withdrawing “heavy forces” from elements of Donbas it nonetheless controls, however provided that Russia mirrored the transfer as a part of a US-backed initiative to create a “free economic zone” within the area.

It stays extremely unsure that Moscow would settle for both a urged demilitarised buffer zone or a withdrawal of its forces, whilst different sticking factors stay, together with management of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant that Kyiv says ought to be collectively managed by the US and Ukraine.

On Friday, the Kremlin stated Putin’s prime international coverage aide, Yuri Ushakov, had held a name with the US administration after Moscow obtained an up to date US proposal on a possible peace deal, though there have been no indicators {that a} breakthrough had been reached.

Russia has repeatedly stated it was ready to proceed preventing in Ukraine if no peace deal had been reached, saying it was assured it may obtain its battle goals by way of navy means.

Yet whereas Moscow has made sluggish, grinding progress on the battlefield, Ukrainian forces have in latest days pushed Russian troops out of town of Kupiansk within the Kharkiv area.

It marked a uncommon profitable Ukrainian counteroffensive, prompting frustration amongst pro-war Russian bloggers over what many described as overly upbeat and unrealistic battlefield briefings.

“On the Kupyansk front, large-scale territorial losses have come to light, caused by the systematic submission of false reports that exaggerated the Russian armed forces’ successes in the battle for Kupyansk and surrounding settlements,” the favored Telegram channel Rybar, which has shut hyperlinks to the defence ministry, wrote.

In late November, senior Russian generals briefed Putin that Russian troops had “completed the liberation of Kupyansk”, prompting Zelenskyy to journey to town’s outskirts to “show the world that Putin is lying”.