Zelensky plans to meet Trump on Sunday for talks on peace deal

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he will meet U.S. President Donald Trump in Florida over the weekend as talks to end Russia’s all-out war continue.

Zelensky said he expected the meeting to take place on Sunday and focus on a 20-point U.S.-brokered peace plan, as well as a separate proposal for U.S. security guarantees.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin said top aides to President Vladimir Putin had held further talks with U.S. officials by phone and Russia had pledged to continue talks.

Russia said talks were making “slow but steady progress” but did not comment on Zelenskiy’s proposal to withdraw troops from eastern Donbass if Russia also withdraws.

Ukraine seeks U.S. guarantees as part of the deal, and Zelensky has said a demilitarized “free economic zone” is a potential option for the Donbas region that Russia has failed to seize by force.

On Friday, Zelensky said he had received an update on the latest technical talks from top negotiator Rustem Umerov.

He wrote on social media: “We will not lose a day. We have agreed to meet with President Trump at the highest level in the near future. A lot can be decided before the New Year.”

Zelensky and Trump met at the White House in February, the first meeting since the U.S. president returned to office. Get into hostile quarrelsalthough their most recent meeting at the White House in October was much more amicable.

The Ukrainian leader said he had spoken by phone for an hour on Christmas Day with Trump’s chief negotiator, special envoy Steve Witkov and son-in-law Jared Kushner, later confirming the planned high-level talks.

He said that the latest round of negotiations has Generated ‘new ideas’ on how to end wardescribing it as “a really good conversation.”

The White House has proposed creating a de facto demilitarized zone in eastern Ukraine where both sides agree not to deploy troops, a compromise that would avoid resolving the thorny issue of legal ownership of the disputed territory.

Zelensky said on Wednesday that if Ukraine were to withdraw up to 40 kilometers (25 miles) from its eastern front to create an economic zone, Russia must do the same from Ukraine’s industrial heartland of the Russian-occupied Donbass.

Ukraine has made several changes to its previous draft 28-point plan, developed by Steve Witkoff, but is generally seen as favorable to Russia.

Zelensky told reporters on Friday that weekend talks in Florida will focus on several documents, including U.S. security guarantees and a separate economic deal.

However, Zelensky has repeatedly said that territorial issues and the future of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant have proven to be the most difficult issues to resolve.

The White House has proposed that Ukraine and Russia split the energy produced by Europe’s largest plant. Russian troops currently control the area.

Russia is unlikely to agree with many points in the updated U.S. plan, especially its territorial proposals. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova accused “groups of countries, mainly Western European countries” of trying to undermine the diplomatic progress that had been made.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that further talks would take place between Russian and American delegations following a meeting in Miami over the weekend between U.S. negotiators and a delegation led by Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

Peskov added that another close aide, Yuri Ushakov, had had further talks with the White House by phone and more talks were planned.

Zelensky outlined the latest version of the plan this week, the first since the original 28-point draft leaked in November.

The latest proposal commits the United States and Europe to security guarantees modeled on NATO’s Article 5 and commits allies to provide military support in the event of a new Russian invasion.

The deal would also keep Ukraine’s military strength at 800,000 men, a reduction the Kremlin has demanded.

Meanwhile, fighting and airstrikes continued. Ukrainian officials reported that at least four people had been killed in attacks since the morning of December 25, while the air force said it shot down 73 drones overnight.

Russia also said it shot down missiles overnight, including a British Storm Shadow missile. The Ukrainian Air Force said it attacked oil and gas refineries in Rostov and Krasnodar.