A luxurious table, with two delegations and with Donald Trump ensuring that they were in a room inclined to make big deals. The American president and Ukrainian leader Volodimir Zelensky met this Sunday for about two hours. in the tycoon’s vacation home in Mar-a-Lago (Florida) looking for important progress for peace and they seem to have found it: “We have made a lot of progress,” said the American president, who dared to assert that 95% of the pact has been achieved, although he later qualified this percentage with more caution.
The meeting – the first between the two in this format since August – began with a strange feeling from Zelensky, since Trump He spoke by telephone on his initiative with Vladimir Putin and assured that the Russian is “ready” for peace.which kyiv strongly doubts in view of the latest massive attacks in the Donbass region, with advances in several places also by Kremlin troops. Sources close to the Ukrainian president assured that Zelensky had not appreciated this Washington-Moscow contact; This same sequence of events occurred during Trump’s “containment” of Zelensky a few months ago at the White House.
Already at the press conference, Trump was kind to Zelensky, and both were filled with mutual gratitude. “We had a very good conversation,” acknowledged the Ukrainian president, who saw this meeting as a way to consolidate the steps taken, according to him, by the delegations of the two countries. “There has been great progress”Zelensky assumed. They agreed that security guarantees in kyiv are the key to achieving peace, which they also agreed with European leaders, with whom they connected via video conference after their face-to-face meeting.
“There are one or two things left to resolve,” Trump told reporters after the meeting. They are closer, he admitted, to an agreement regarding Donbass. “We are much closer, but it is not done,” declared the tenant of the White House; In this area, Ukraine demands a demilitarized economic zone under the control of kyiv. “It’s a very difficult question,” the American president himself admitted on this element. Zelensky, in fact, has committed to the 20-point plan to withdraw his troops as long as Putin does the same.
The Ukrainian president followed the line of his American counterpart and assured that Ukraine is “ready for peace” and that kyiv’s attitude is “clear” and that the positions around Donbass are very different from those of Russia. Likewise, he left the door open to holding a referendum so that the Ukrainians can approve the future peace agreement, but this is not a sure thing, but it will depend, added Zelensky, on the complexity of this agreement, particularly in territorial matters.
“I want to end this war because I don’t want more people to die,” said Trump, who called the conflict “the most serious since World War II.” And precisely regarding future security guarantees, Trump assumed that they would be the responsibility of European allies. “They are the ones who are there, but we will help them one hundred percent,” he said. In this sense, Zelensky clarified that these guarantees are agreed at “100%” while the rest of the 20-point plan is closed at “90%”.
The other key point is control of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, currently controlled by Russia. Trump elaborated in the sense that there will be more conversations with Putin on the subject.but did not give further details. However, it is expected that Moscow and Washington will deploy two negotiating teams in the coming months with the aim of moving forward with the steps taken this Sunday with Zelensky.
Donald Trump is clear that both sides want to end the war and warned before the meeting that If an agreement is not reached in the short term, the war could drag on “for a long time”. In this sense, the tenant of the White House declared that he had no problem going to kyiv but believes that “it will not be necessary” because there will be an agreement for peace.
Russia, for its part, is not changing its tone. “The ambitions of European politicians blind them: not only do they not care about Ukrainians, but they also do not seem to care about their own population. How else can we explain the continued rumors in Europe about sending military contingents to Ukraine in the form of a coalition of the willing? We have already stated hundreds of times that, in such a case, they would become a legitimate target for our armed forces.“, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said of the European idea of deploying “a multinational force” in Ukraine in peacetime. Lavrov described kyiv’s partners as a “war party” and said that “They are exaggerating the Russian threat.”
And on a purely military level, Moscow has announced in recent hours new advances in its invasion of Ukraine, with the capture of six more cities in the provinces of Zaporizhia and Donetsk. The Russian Defense Ministry said Russian troops took Stepnogorsk and Gulyai-Pole in Zaporizhzhia, as well as Artemovka, Dimitrov, Rodinske and Volnoye in Donetsk, without providing information on human losses in these battles. In fact, there was another night of massive Kremlin drone attacks on several Ukrainian cities.
Among the citizens there is no optimism. Most Ukrainians are skeptical of the ongoing negotiations and do not expect them to bring peace in the short term. The kyiv International Institute of Sociology conducted a survey this month to analyze the mood of Ukrainian society regarding the conflict. Only 14% of respondents think the war will end in the first half of 2026. And 75% of those surveyed are opposed to a peace plan that reflects Russia’s main demands.
The reactions of the allies
After the meeting, reactions began to emerge from Ukraine’s allies. “There have been positive developments which we welcome. Europe is ready to continue working with Ukraine and our American partners to consolidate this progress. A fundamental aspect of this effort is to have foolproof security guarantees from day one,” wrote the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, for example, on social networks.
Finnish President Alexander Stubb was also somewhat optimistic. “We discussed concrete measures to end the war. We all work for a just and lasting peace“, he reacted, revealing that the connection with Florida “lasted more than an hour.” It is also planned, according to Zelensky, that European leaders – and the Ukrainian president himself – will be able to sit down with Trump in the United States in January to continue negotiations.
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