PALM BEACH, Florida: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will sit down Sunday (Dec 28) with Donald Trump and search to safe the US president’s stamp of approval for a new proposal to finish the practically four-year battle with Russia.
The 20-point plan, which emerged from weeks of intense US-Ukraine negotiations, lacks Moscow’s approval, and the face-to-face in Florida comes within the wake of an enormous Russian missile and drone assault on Kyiv.
The assembly, hosted by Trump at his opulent Mar-a-Lago residence, would be the pair’s first in-person encounter since October, when the US president refused to grant Zelenskyy’s request for long-range Tomahawk missiles.
Throughout a stopover in Canada on Saturday, Zelenskyy mentioned he hoped the talks can be “very constructive” and mentioned Russian chief Vladimir Putin had proven his hand with the most recent assault on the Ukrainian capital.
“This assault is once more, Russia’s reply on our peace efforts. And this actually confirmed that Putin does not need peace,” he mentioned.
EUROPEANS VOW SUPPORT
Whereas in Canada, Zelenskyy held a convention name with European leaders who, in keeping with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, pledged their full help for his peace efforts.
Russia has accused Ukraine and its European backers of attempting to “torpedo” a earlier US-brokered plan to cease the combating.
EU chiefs Ursula von der Leyen and Antonio Costa, who participated within the convention name, mentioned the European Union’s backing for Ukraine would by no means falter and vowed to take care of strain on the Kremlin to come back to phrases.
Trump has to date been non-committal on the brand new peace proposal.
Zelenskyy “does not have something till I approve it,” the president mentioned in an interview with Politico on Friday. “So we’ll see what he is obtained.”
The talks will handle a plan that will cease the battle alongside its present entrance strains and will require Ukraine to drag again troops from the east, permitting the creation of demilitarised buffer zones.
As such, it comprises Kyiv’s most specific acknowledgement but of attainable territorial concessions.
However it doesn’t envisage Ukraine withdrawing from the 20 per cent of the jap Donetsk area that it nonetheless controls – Russia’s primary territorial demand.
Trump has made ending the Ukraine and Gaza wars the centerpiece of his self-proclaimed second time period as a “president of peace”.
However the Ukraine battle has, by his personal admission, proved far more durable than he anticipated, and the president has repeatedly voiced his frustration with either side for failing to safe a truce.
