Efforts to end war in Ukraine elusive as Zelensky to meet Trump

US President Donald Trump will host his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, today to try to close out a peace agreement that would end nearly four years of war that began with Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

The two will meet at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Florida, where the US president is spending the holidays and has an agenda mostly filled with daily rounds of golf.

Zelensky said the two planned to discuss security and economic agreements and he will raise “territorial issues” as Moscow and Kyiv remain fiercely at odds over the fate of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.

In the days before the meeting, Russia has intensified its attacks on Ukraine's capital, using missiles and drones to attack Kyiv and try to increase the pressure on Zelensky.

“Ukraine is willing to do whatever it takes to stop this war,” Zelensky posted Saturday on X.

“We need to be strong at the negotiating table.”

In response to the attacks, he wrote: “We want peace, and Russia demonstrates a desire to continue the war. If the whole world — Europe and America — is on our side, together we will stop" Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Saturday, Zelensky said the key to peace is “pressure on Russia and sufficient, strong support for Ukraine.”

To that end, Carney announced $2.5 billion Canadian (NZ$3.1 billion) more in economic assistance from his government to help Ukraine rebuild.

Denouncing the “barbarism” of Russia’s latest attacks on Kyiv, Carney credited both Zelensky and Trump with creating the conditions for a “just and lasting peace” at a crucial moment.

Trump and Zelensky sitting down face-to-face also underscored the apparent progress made by Trump’s top negotiators in recent weeks as the sides traded draft peace plans and continued to shape a proposal to end the fighting.

Zelensky told reporters Friday that the 20-point draft proposal negotiators have discussed is “about 90% ready” — echoing a figure, and the optimism, that US officials conveyed when Trump’s chief negotiators met with Zelensky in Berlin earlier this month.

During the recent talks, the US agreed to offer certain security guarantees to Ukraine similar to those offered to other members of NATO.

The proposal came as Zelensky said he was prepared to drop his country’s bid to join the security alliance if Ukraine received NATO-like protection that would be designed to safeguard it against future Russian attacks.

Zelensky also spoke on Christmas Day with US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.

The Ukrainian leader said in a post on X that they discussed “certain substantive details of the ongoing work” and cautioned in a subsequent post that “there is still work to be done on sensitive issues” and “the weeks ahead may also be intensive.”

The US president has been working to end the war in Ukraine for much of his first year back in office, showing irritation with both Zelensky and Putin while publicly acknowledging the difficulty of ending the conflict. Long gone are the days when, as a candidate in 2024, he boasted that he could resolve the fighting in a day.

After hosting Zelensky at the White House in October, Trump demanded that both Russia and Ukraine halt fighting and “stop at the battle line,” implying that Moscow should be able to keep the territory it has seized from Ukraine.

Before Sunday’s meeting, Zelensky said the key issues that remain unresolved between Ukraine and the US include questions surrounding territory, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and funding for Ukraine’s postwar recovery.

He said there also are outstanding technical matters related to security guarantees and monitoring mechanisms.

Ukraine has conveyed its position to the US, Zelensky said, adding that Trump administration officials would relay that to Russia.

Zelensky also said last week that he would be willing to withdraw troops from Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland as part of a plan to end the war, if Russia also pulls back and the area becomes a demilitarised zone monitored by international forces.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Friday that the Kremlin had already been in contact with US

“It was agreed upon to continue the dialogue,” he said.

Putin has publicly said he wants all the areas in four key regions that have been captured by his forces, as well as the Crimean Peninsula, illegally annexed in 2014, to be recognised as Russian territory.

He also has insisted that Ukraine withdraw from some areas in eastern Ukraine that Moscow’s forces haven’t captured. Kyiv has publicly rejected all those demands.

The Kremlin also wants Ukraine to abandon its bid to join NATO.

It warned that it wouldn’t accept the deployment of any troops from members of the military alliance and would view them as a “legitimate target.”

Putin also has said Ukraine must limit the size of its army and give official status to the Russian language, demands he has made from the outset of the conflict.

Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, told the business daily Kommersant this month that Russian police and national guard would stay in parts of Donetsk -– one of the two major areas, along with Luhansk, that make up the Donbas region — even if they become a demilitarised zone under a prospective peace plan.

Ushakov cautioned that trying to reach a compromise could take a long time. He said US proposals that took into account Russian demands had been “worsened” by alterations proposed by Ukraine and its European allies.

Trump has been somewhat receptive to Putin’s demands, making the case that the Russian president can be persuaded to end the war if Kyiv agrees to cede Ukrainian land in the Donbas region and if Western powers offer economic incentives to bring Russia back into the global economy.