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Paul BryantEuropean Digital Editor
Photo by Alexander Gusev/SOPAUS President Donald Trump will meet with Volodymyr Zelensky in Davos on Thursday after his special envoy Steve Witkov expressed optimism about finalizing a deal to end the war in Ukraine.
“I think we have solved a problem and we have discussed the recurrence of the problem, which means it is solvable,” Witkov said before traveling to Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Vitkov did not specify the issues, but recent talks have focused on the future status of Ukraine’s Donbass industrial hub and proposed the creation of a demilitarized and free economic zone in exchange for Kiev’s security guarantees.
“If both sides want to resolve this issue, we will resolve it,” Witkoff said.
Ahead of Witkov’s visit to Moscow with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, the US president said on Wednesday that he believed both Putin and Zelensky were at a point where they could come together and strike a deal: “They would be stupid if they didn’t.”
Last week, Trump said he believed Putin was “ready to make a deal” but that Zelensky was “not ready yet.”
The Ukrainian president arrived in Davos overnight on Thursday.
He initially canceled the trip to deal with the fallout from a Russian attack on Kiev’s electrical infrastructure that left large swaths of the capital without heat, water or electricity during Russia’s harshest winter of nearly four years of all-out war. Thousands of apartment buildings remain without heat.
Kyiv has been concerned about Trump’s dispute with European NATO allies over the future of Greenland, which has derailed his approach to the war in Ukraine.
After talks with Trump in Miami late last month, Zelensky said that the United States’ 20-point plan to end the war is 90% ready, and that Ukraine’s position on the Donbas issue in eastern Ukraine is different from Russia’s.
Specifically, Zelensky proposed withdrawing up to 40 kilometers (25 miles) from 25 percent of the Donetsk region that Ukraine still controls to create an economic zone if Russia does the same. Russian troops have been slowly advancing in the east over the last year, and Putin is known to covet control of the entire region.
Another big sticking point highlighted by Zelensky last month was the future control of Ukraine’s giant Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, which was seized by Russia in March 2022.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that discussions with the U.S. envoy would continue “on Ukraine and other related topics” and declined to say whether he shared Vitkov’s optimism about a deal.
Putin has not yet decided whether to join Trump’s Gaza peace commission.
The Ukrainian president had hoped to sign two important documents with Trump in Davos covering future security and economic prosperity, but he said he was “a mile away from finalizing them.”
It is unclear whether any agreement will be signed during their meeting at the World Economic Forum.
However, Rustem Umerov, chairman of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said late Wednesday that his Davos team had discussed issues such as economic development, post-war recovery and security guarantees with their U.S. counterparts.
