Volodymyr Zelenskyy is to travel to the US for a planned meeting with Donald Trump on Sunday, as Washington continues to push for a possible peace deal between Kyiv and Moscow. The Ukrainian president said the visit would take place at a location in Florida – widely expected to be Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort – in what would be the latest development in a diplomatic push that began in November with the circulation of a 28-point US plan shaped with input from Russian officials.
“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 post on X on Friday, adding that “a lot can be decided before the New Year”. Early on Saturday, several powerful explosions rocked Kyiv as authorities warned that the Ukrainian capital was under threat of missile attack and that air defences were in operation.
Zelenskyy told journalists the high-stakes meeting with Trump would focus on some of the most sensitive parts of the peace talks, including Ukrainian security guarantees and reconstruction, plus territorial discussions regarding the Donbas region and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. “This meeting is specifically intended to refine things as much as we possibly can,” Zelenskyy said. He added that the proposed 20-point peace plan was “90% ready”.
The plan is considered an updated version of an earlier 28-point document agreed several weeks ago between the US envoys and Russian officials, a proposal widely viewed as skewed towards the Kremlin’s demands. Ukraine has pushed for security guarantees modelled on Nato’s Article 5 mutual defence pledge under any proposed peace deal with Russia, though it remains unclear whether Moscow would accept such terms. “Russia constantly looks for reasons not to agree” to the peace proposals, Zelenskyy told reporters.
In an interview with Politico on Friday, Trump said he anticipated a “good” meeting with the Ukrainian leader, though he offered no endorsement of Zelenskyy’s plan. “He doesn’t have anything until I approve it,” Trump told the news website. “So we’ll see what he’s got.” The announcement follows a burst of diplomatic activity last weekend in Miami, where Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff met separately with Russian and Ukrainian representatives, as well as Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
US officials described the discussions as “constructive”, though Moscow has played down expectations of progress and there are few signs that Vladimir Putin is prepared to soften his maximalist demands to end the full-scale invasion. Trump in the interview with Politico said he expected to speak with Putin “soon, as much as I want”. At a closed-door meeting with Russia’s business elite on Wednesday evening, the Russian president reportedly reiterated his demand that Ukraine hand over the entire eastern Donbas region as part of any peace deal.
