A new round of peace talks between president Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine and US president Donald Trump seems to have produced little beyond a promise to meet again next month and a reminder of how distant a peace deal remains.
Yet for Zelenskiy, even a stalemate in the discussions counts as progress.
Following setbacks in US support for Ukraine this year, one of Zelenskiy’s main priorities when meeting Trump was to prevent talks from derailing. After the meeting on Sunday, Trump signalled that he would remain engaged in the negotiations – a win for Ukraine given his repeated threats to walk away. Trump also backed away from setting another deadline to reach a peace deal, after having previously floated Thanksgiving and Christmas as target dates.
“I don’t have deadlines,” Trump told reporters as he greeted Zelenskiy at Mar-a-Lago in Florida for the talks. “You know what my deadline is? Getting the war ended.”
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Most importantly for Ukraine, Trump did not echo Russia’s maximalist demands to stop the fighting – a departure from earlier in his term when he often appeared to side with the Kremlin. The change was also notable because Trump had spoken with president Vladimir Putin of Russia just before meeting Zelenskiy – the type of last-minute Russian intervention that has derailed Ukrainian hopes before.
That may leave Zelenskiy confident that Ukraine and Washington are more closely aligned in the peace negotiations. Several European leaders also joined Sunday’s talks by phone, and Zelenskiy said the United States might host a new round of negotiations next month that could include them.
“We had a really great discussion on all the topics, and we appreciate the progress that was made by American and Ukrainian teams in recent weeks,” Zelenskiy said. Still, he acknowledged that several sticking points remained in a draft peace deal, including the fate of Ukrainian-held land in the east and a Russian-occupied nuclear power plant.
As Zelenskiy arrived in Florida, some Ukrainians were concerned that he might walk into another meeting where Trump would pressure him to strike a quick peace deal on Moscow’s terms. The concern grew when the White House unexpectedly announced that Trump had spoken with Putin.
In October, Trump held a similar unannounced call with Putin shortly before meeting Zelenskiy to discuss supplying Ukraine with powerful US cruise missiles. In that call, Putin appeared to have steered Trump away from selling the missiles. Trump later told Zelenskiy that Ukraine would not get the weapons during a meeting described as tense by European officials.
[ Trump says deal to end Ukraine war ‘very close’ but thorny issues remainOpens in new window ]
Trump said Sunday’s call with Putin had been “good and very productive”. Yuri Ushakov, the top foreign policy aide to Putin, said in a news briefing that the conversation had lasted more than an hour. Ushakov also reiterated the Kremlin’s position that Ukraine should cede territory in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine to achieve peace. Trump said he would call Putin again after meeting Zelenskiy.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump and Putin had a second phone call on Monday. Posting on X, she wrote: “President Trump has concluded a positive call with President Putin concerning Ukraine.”
Unlike in October, however, Trump refrained on Sunday from echoing the Kremlin’s demands and did not put pressure on Ukraine to strike a deal quickly. “This is not a one-day-process deal,” Trump told reporters. “This is very complicated stuff.”
Zelenskiy said the peace plan was “90 per cent” complete, the same progress he reported before flying to Florida. He added that US and European allies were nearly aligned on the security guarantees they would offer Ukraine to prevent further Russian aggression. He also emphasised Ukraine’s proposal of compromise on the territorial issue: a demilitarised zone from where both Ukrainian and Russian troops would pull back.
Trump struck a more cautious tone when asked about progress in the talks. “The word ‘agreement’ is too strong,” he said. On resolving the territorial issue, he said, “I would not say ‘agreed,’ but we’re getting closer to an agreement on that.”
Perhaps the most promising development for Ukraine was Trump’s apparent willingness to hold a round of talks next month in the United States, potentially with European leaders at the table.
In past negotiations, European leaders were brought in to salvage talks after disagreements between Zelenskiy and Trump. Their presence as full participants rather than belated troubleshooters could help Ukraine strengthen its position. – This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
