The delegations of Ukraine and the United States, led by President Volodymyr Zelensky and White House envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, concluded this Sunday evening (December 13, 2025) their first meeting in Berlin on the peace plan promoted by Washington, according to Advisor to the Ukrainian Presidential Office Dmitro Litvin.
The two delegations met for more than five hours at the Federal Chancellery and will meet again tomorrow, Monday morning, in the German capital to continue discussions on the document, Litvin told the Ukrainian agency Ukrinform.
Zelensky, who heads a delegation that includes Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Rustem Umérov and Chief of the Armed Forces General Staff Andrí Gnátov, met with Witkoff and Kushner in person for the first time.
The aim of the meeting was to reach a political agreement with the US on a 20-point peace plan, which must then be presented to the Kremlin to find a compromise between the two sides to end the war.
“There has been great progress,” US envoy Steve Witkoff said after his meeting with the Ukrainian president.
point of contention
The main point of contention between Ukrainians and Russians is, a priori, the distribution of the disputed territories in Donbass (consisting of Donetsk and Luhansk) in eastern Ukraine.
In contacts with Washington’s envoys, Zelensky wants to ensure that the United States offers Ukraine binding security guarantees that will prevent Russia from attacking the country militarily again after the end of the current war.
The fact that US President Donald Trump sent Witkoff and his son-in-law to Berlin shows that he sees prospects for sufficient progress to achieve his goal of reaching a preliminary agreement before Christmas, US media such as Axios report.
This Sunday’s meeting took place one day before the summit that Chancellor Friedrich Merz called on Monday afternoon with numerous heads of state and government from the European Union (EU) and NATO to negotiate the peace plan together with Zelensky and ultimately the American president’s envoys.
(mn/efe, afp)
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