Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky have claimed that progress had been made to end the Ukraine war during talks in Florida, but failed to reach a breakthrough on a few of the bottleneck issues.
The US and Ukrainian leaders met at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on Sunday where they discussed a revised peace plan, several key parts of which Russia has already rejected.
On Monday, Zelensky said the US had offered security guarantees for a period of 15 years. Trump said on Sunday an agreement on this point was “close to 95%” done.
But little has been said on the future of Ukraine’s contested Donbas region, which Russia seeks to control in its entirety.
Moscow currently controls about 75% of the Donetsk region, and some 99% of the neighbouring Luhansk. The two regions are known collectively as Donbas. Speaking to reporters after the talks, Trump said a deal on Donbas remained “unresolved, but it’s getting a lot closer”. Its fate has been a major obstacle throughout negotiations, with Russia consistently unwilling to compromise on its aim to seize its full control. On Monday, the Kremlin again said Ukraine should withdraw its troops from the part of Donbas Kyiv still controls. Ukraine has insisted the area could become a free economic zone policed by Ukrainian forces – but Zelensky has underlined that any talks on this should include the Ukrainian people, Reuters news agency reported.
President Trump has repeatedly changed his own position on Ukraine’s lost territories, and in September stunned observers by suggesting that Ukraine might be able to take it back. He later reversed course.
Addressing reporters at Mar-a-Lago after Sunday’s talks, Zelensky repeated his belief that an overall peace agreement was 90% of the way there, a figure he had given in the days leading up to his visit.
Both leaders also indicated there had been progress on one key sticking point – security guarantees for Ukraine. Zelensky later said the US had offered security guarantees for an extendable period of 15 years, but Kyiv wanted the option of having them for up to 50 years. He said he hoped the guarantees would begin the moment Kyiv signed a peace deal.
The US has not yet commented on the time frame. On Sunday, Trump said an agreement was close and that he expected European countries to “take over a big part” of that effort with support from the US.
