Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy is meeting Donald Trump in Florida for crucial discussions on ending the war with Russia.
The two leaders are meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, marking the culmination of weeks of intense diplomacy to end Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Standing beside Zelenskyy before the meeting, Trump said “we have the makings of a deal that is good for Ukraine, that is good for everybody”.
He added that Ukraine’s people were “very brave” and the country had the potential to be very wealthy if a peace deal was pushed through.
“There will be a security agreement, it will be a strong agreement,” Trump added in his doorstep remarks with Zelenskyy.
But the US president appeared to suggest that cast-iron guarantees had not yet been offered to Ukraine: “Nobody even knows what a security agreement is going to say,” he said.
Trump added that European nations “all want to get [the peace deal] done”, but warned that the war will “either end or it’s going to go on for a long time and millions of additional people are going to be killed”.
Ahead of the meeting, Trump said he held a “good and very productive” telephone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He said he will speak to Putin again following his talks with Zelenskyy.
The Ukrainian president is expected to try to lock in the details of a 20-point peace plan developed with the US, which is to be presented to Russia. As he prepared for the talks, Zelenskyy remained optimistic about what he called “the most active diplomatic days of the year”.
Zelenskyy told European leaders by phone on Saturday that he did not expect Russia to drop its maximalist demands or agree to Ukraine’s proposed plan, but wanted the US to shift its focus to pressuring Russia, according to two people briefed on their call.
Russia has already indicated it will reject any amendments Ukraine proposes to Trump’s initial plan, which was drafted in the autumn with significant input from Moscow.
On Sunday Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, claimed Kyiv was trying to evade “constructive negotiations” on a way to end the war.
