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Diplomacy on the Russo-Ukrainian war is in its “final phase,” US President Donald Trump said, welcoming Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky in his Florida estate.
The two leaders stood outside the Mar-a-Lago resort on Sunday and spoke to reporters as they prepared to discuss a new proposal to end the bloody conflict.
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The US president has worked hard to end almost all four year war in Ukraine for much of his first year back in power, showing irritation with both Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin, while publicly acknowledging the difficulty of ending the fighting.
“I think we’re in the final stages of discussions and we’ll see. Otherwise, this is going to drag on for a long time and millions more people will be killed,” Trump said, adding that he had no deadline for the process.
“I believe we have the elements of a deal that is good for Ukraine, good for everyone.”
He added that there would be “a strong agreement” to guarantee Ukraine’s security, an agreement that would involve European countries.
“We have two parties willing to do it. We have two countries willing to do it… The Ukrainian people want [the war] let it end, and the Russian people want it to end, and both leaders want it to end,” Trump said.
Russia intensified its attacks on the Ukrainian capital a few days before the Florida meeting.
Zelensky, alongside Trump, said that he and the US president would discuss issues of territorial concessions, which so far constitute a red line for his country. He said his negotiators and Trump’s advisers “discussed how to move forward step by step and bring peace closer” and would continue to do so at Sunday’s meeting.
In recent negotiations, the United States agreed to offer Ukraine certain security guarantees similar to those offered to other NATO members.
The proposal comes as Zelensky said he was willing to abandon his country’s bid to join the security alliance if Ukraine was given NATO-style protection designed to protect it against future Russian attacks.
Oleksandr Kraiev, an analyst at the Ukrainian think tank Prism, said the Ukrainian people were “quite cynical” about the US-brokered talks.
“We tried this in 2015, 2016, 2017 and unfortunately, each time, the Russians broke the ceasefire regime, let alone the peace process,” he told Al Jazeera.
“So we have little confidence that there will be a real peace process. For now, we are struggling for a ceasefire as a precondition for any kind of talks… We can’t trust the Russians for a peace deal, but a ceasefire is something we are working on.”
“Blinded again”
Trump’s optimistic tone comes despite widespread skepticism in Europe about Putin’s intentions after Russia carried out another massive bombing of the Ukrainian capital just as Zelensky was heading to Florida.
Before Zelensky’s arrival, Trump spoke by phone with Putin for more than an hour and said he planned to speak again after Zelensky’s meeting, catching Ukraine’s leaders off guard, Al Jazeera’s Shihab Rattansi reported.
“From what we hear, Zelensky’s delegation here was once again blindsided by Donald Trump. And according to the Russians, it was at the insistence of the Americans that there should have been a call with Vladimir Putin an hour before Zelensky arrived,” Rattansi said, speaking from Palm Beach, Florida.
Meanwhile, even if on the Ukrainian side there is talk of land concessions, these go beyond the framework hoped for by Zelensky.
The Kremlin gave a more accurate reading of the discussions between Trump and Putin, saying the U.S. leader agreed that a simple ceasefire “would only prolong the conflict” as he demanded a compromise on territory from Ukraine.
Zelensky said last week 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 region became a demilitarized zone monitored by international forces.
Putin has publicly stated that he wants all areas of the four key regions captured by his forces, as well as the Crimean peninsula, illegally annexed in 2014, to be recognized as Russian territory. He also insisted that Ukraine withdraw from some areas of eastern Ukraine that Moscow’s forces have not captured.
Kyiv has publicly rejected all these demands.
Trump has been somewhat receptive to Putin’s terms, arguing that the Russian president can be persuaded to end the war if kyiv agrees to cede Ukrainian lands in the Donbas region and if Western powers offer economic incentives to bring Russia back into the global economy.
