US President Donald Trump said that he and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy were "getting a lot closer, maybe very close" to an agreement to end the war in Ukraine, while acknowledging that the fate of the disputed Donbas region remains a key unresolved issue.
The two leaders spoke at a joint news conference after meeting at Mr Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Both leaders reported progress on two of the most contentious issues in peace talks - security guarantees for Ukraine and the division of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region that Russia has sought to capture.
The two leaders offered few details and did not provide a deadline for completing a peace deal, although Mr Trump said it will be clear "in a few weeks" whether negotiations to end the war will succeed.
He said a few "thorny issues" around territory must be resolved.
GR
FR
DE
ES
IT
RU
EU
Both Trump and Zelensky said on Sunday that the future of the Donbas had not been settled. “It’s unresolved, but it’s getting a lot closer. That’s a very tough issue,” Trump said.
ReplyDeleteUS President Donald Trump said he agreed with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, that a ceasefire amid arrangements for holding a referendum in Ukraine would not work.
ReplyDeleteFrench President Emmanuel Macron, in an X post published after the Florida meeting, said progress was made on security guarantees.
ReplyDeleteMr Macron said countries in the so-called "Coalition of the Willing" would meet in Paris in early January to finalise their "concrete contributions".
Ushakov, speaking in Moscow, said Putin told Trump that a 60-day ceasefire proposed by the European Union and Ukraine would prolong the war. The Kremlin aide also said Ukraine needed to make a decision regarding the Donbas “without further delay”, and that Russia had agreed to establish working groups to resolve the conflict, focusing on economic and security concerns.
ReplyDeleteUS President Donald Trump described his meeting with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky in Florida and a phone call earlier on Sunday with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, as excellent.
ReplyDelete"Our meeting was excellent. We covered, somebody would say, 95% [of issues]. I don't know what percent, but we have made a lot of progress on ending that war," the US leader said at a joint press conference with Zelensky at his Mar-a-Lago residence.
"As you know, I had an excellent phone call with President Putin that lasted for over two hours. We discussed a lot of points," Trump recounted.