Is a decisive moment approaching in efforts to end the largest war in Europe since World War II, after nearly four years of fighting and more than one million killed and wounded?
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced late Friday that he will meet Sunday with US President Donald Trump at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, one day before Trump is also scheduled to host Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu there.
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Trump and Zelensky stand several feet apart at the White House in August
(Photo: Kevin Lamarque/ Reuters)
Zelensky said the Florida summit will focus on the US ‘20-point plan’ that stands at the center of indirect talks between Kyiv and Moscow in recent weeks, mediated by Trump’s advisers, special envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. The same envoys were also behind the earlier ‘20-point plan’ that led to the end of the Gaza war in October.
‘A great deal could be decided before the new year,’ Zelensky said in announcing the meeting. He noted that one of the most sensitive issues he plans to discuss with Trump is Russia’s demand for a full Ukrainian withdrawal from Donbas, the industrial region at the heart of the war. According to Zelensky, the US plan is still incomplete, about 90 percent finalized, and he hopes to persuade Trump to retreat from the demand that Ukrainian forces withdraw from all of Donbas.
However, Zelensky, who previously rejected the idea outright, has now left the door open to a major concession. This week he said he would be willing to withdraw from areas of Donbas currently under Kyiv’s control, provided Russia carries out a reciprocal withdrawal of comparable scope. According to reports, the Americans are proposing a compromise under which parts of Donbas would be turned into a demilitarized zone recognized as a ‘free economic area,’ though it remains unclear who would govern it.
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Zelensky and European leaders alongside Trump envoys Witkoff and Kushner at last week’s summit in Berlin as part of the talks
(Photo: Lisi Niesner / POOL / AFP)
In an interview with Axios on Sunday, Zelensky said that if he fails to push the United States toward what he called a ‘strong’ position on territorial issues, he would be prepared to submit the American 20-point plan to a national referendum in Ukraine. As a condition, he demanded that Russia agree to a temporary 60-day ceasefire. Such a pause, he said, is essential to allow citizens to vote without security fears and to ensure the credibility of the results.
Zelensky is also seeking to persuade Trump to provide Ukraine with robust security guarantees. After abandoning his demand for NATO membership, he is now calling for European-American guarantees that would be ‘equivalent’ to Article 5 of the NATO charter, the clause that obligates members to defend one another if attacked. According to Axios, the American proposal includes a 15-year security pact. ‘I think we need more than 15 years,’ Zelensky told journalist Barak Ravid.
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Ukrainian fire on the battlefield. Russia has momentum but is advancing very slowly and at a heavy human cost
(Photo: Roman Pilipey/ AFP)
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who frequently boasts about his forces advancing ‘on all fronts’ and has warned he is prepared to continue fighting if his goals are not achieved diplomatically, has so far given no signal of willingness to make a meaningful compromise. Russia’s Kommersant newspaper reported Sunday that Putin told senior business leaders he would consider limited territorial exchanges with Ukraine. In return for returning some areas seized elsewhere, he demanded that Kyiv hand over all of Donbas to Moscow.
Russia currently controls about 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory, including Crimea, which it seized and annexed in 2014 following the uprising that toppled the pro-Russian government in Kyiv. Since launching its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Russia has completed the conquest of the Luhansk region in Donbas and captured about 70 percent of neighboring Donetsk, the other region that makes up Donbas. Russian forces also control large areas of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in southern Ukraine, which, along with Donetsk and Luhansk, were formally annexed by Moscow.
Russia has also seized smaller areas in the Kharkiv and Sumy regions in the east and north, and more recently in Dnipropetrovsk in central Ukraine. In the past, these were reported to be the territories Russia might be willing to relinquish in a deal, not the larger areas in the four regions it formally annexed.
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Wants all of Donbas, open to territorial swaps elsewhere. Russian President Vladimir Putin
(Photo: Alexander Nemenov / AFP)
Over the past year, Russia has made slow but steady battlefield gains, mainly in Donetsk, against the backdrop of severe strain on Ukraine’s military. Major US weapons packages delivered under former President Joe Biden have stopped, and European countries are now purchasing some advanced American weaponry for Ukraine, but on a far smaller scale. Even so, Russia’s advance has been extremely slow and has come at a heavy human cost.
In Donetsk, Ukraine still controls what it calls the ‘fortress belt,’ an area that includes the key cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, surrounded by extensive defensive systems. Kyiv views this zone as a major obstacle to a deeper Russian advance into Ukraine. As noted, however, Zelensky is now signaling a willingness to withdraw from it.
Trump himself, who in the past issued a series of optimistic statements about talks that ultimately went nowhere, sounded more cautious on Sunday and did not promise a breakthrough. ‘He has nothing until I approve it,’ Trump said of Zelensky in an interview with Politico.
At the same time, Trump said he expects the Florida meeting with the Ukrainian president to be ‘good’ and promised to speak with Putin ‘soon, as much as I want.’ He also framed Zelensky’s visit to his Palm Beach estate as part of what he describes as America’s renewed standing in the world under his leadership.
‘Zelensky and Bibi are coming to me. Everyone is coming. They respect our country again,’ Trump said.