Zelensky, Trump to meet Sunday in Florida as part of efforts to end Ukraine-Russia war

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday he will meet U.S. President Donald Trump in Florida as part of negotiations to end the war between Ukraine and Russia.

Zelensky told reporters that the two would discuss security guarantees for Ukraine and that the 20-point plan under discussion “is about 90 percent ready.”

An “economic deal” will also be discussed, Zelenskyy said, but he was unable to confirm “whether anything will be finalized by the end” of the meeting, which was reportedly held at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s property in Palm Beach, Florida.

The Ukrainian side will also raise “territorial issues,” he said.

Zelensky said Ukraine “would like the Europeans to be involved”, but he doubted this would be possible in the short term.

“We undoubtedly need to find a format in the near future in which not only Ukraine and the United States will be present, but Europe will also be represented,” he said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The announced meeting is the latest development in a broad diplomatic campaign led by the United States to end a nearly four-year war, but the efforts have encountered sharply conflicting demands from Moscow and kyiv.

On Thursday, Zelensky said he had a “good conversation” with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Friday that the Kremlin was already in contact with U.S. representatives since Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev recently met with U.S. envoys in Florida.

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

Trump is engaged in a diplomatic move aimed at ending Russia’s all-out war, which began with the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

Zelensky said Tuesday he would be ready to withdraw his troops from Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland as part of a plan to end the war if Russia also withdrew and the area became a demilitarized zone monitored by international forces.

Although Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Thursday that there had been “slow but steady progress” in peace talks, Russia has given no indication that it would agree to any type of withdrawal from land it has seized.

Moscow insisted that Ukraine give up the remaining territory it still holds in Donbass, an ultimatum that Ukraine rejected. Russia has captured most of Luhansk and around 70% of Donetsk – the two regions that make up Donbass.

On the ground, two people were killed and six others injured on Friday when a guided aerial bomb hit a busy road and set cars on fire in Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, Mayor Ihor Terekhov wrote on the Telegram messaging service.

One person was killed and three others were injured when a guided aerial bomb hit a house in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, and six people were injured in a missile strike on the city of Uman, local officials said Friday.

Russian drone attacks on Mykolaiv and its suburbs overnight Friday left part of the city without power. Energy and port infrastructure was damaged by drones in the Black Sea city of Odessa.

Ukraine, meanwhile, said it struck a major Russian oil refinery on Thursday using Storm Shadow missiles supplied by the United Kingdom. Ukraine’s General Staff said its forces had struck the Novoshakhtinsk refinery in Russia’s Rostov region.

“Several explosions were recorded. The target was hit,” writes the Telegram messaging service.

Rostov regional governor Yuri Slyusar said a firefighter was injured while putting out the blaze.

Ukraine’s long-range drone strikes on Russian refineries aim to deprive Moscow of the oil export revenue it needs to continue its large-scale invasion. Russia wants to cripple Ukraine’s power grid, seeking to deprive civilians of access to heat, electricity and running water, in what Ukrainian officials say is an attempt to “weaponize winter.”