{"id":8635,"date":"2025-12-26T13:55:50","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T13:55:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/12\/26\/zelenskyy-to-meet-trump-in-coming-days-as-us-steps-up-push-for-ukraine-peace-deal-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2025-12-26T13:55:50","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T13:55:50","slug":"zelenskyy-to-meet-trump-in-coming-days-as-us-steps-up-push-for-ukraine-peace-deal-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/12\/26\/zelenskyy-to-meet-trump-in-coming-days-as-us-steps-up-push-for-ukraine-peace-deal-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Zelenskyy to meet Trump in coming days as US steps up push for Ukraine peace deal – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Volodymyr Zelenskyy is to travel to the US for a planned meeting with Donald Trump on Sunday, as Washington continues to push for a possible peace deal between Kyiv and Moscow<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Ukrainian president announced the visit on Friday in a social media post, saying he had received a briefing from Rustem Umerov, the secretary of Ukraine\u2019s national security and defence council, on new contacts with US officials.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not losing a single day. We have agreed on a meeting at the highest level \u2013 with President Trump in the near future,\u201d Zelenskyy said, adding that \u201ca lot can be decided before the New Year\u201d.<\/p>\n

Zelenskyy later told journalists the high-stakes meeting with Trump was planned for Sunday and would focus on Ukrainian security guarantees<\/a> and reconstruction. He added that the proposed 20-point peace plan was \u201c90% ready\u201d.<\/p>\n

The plan is considered an updated version of an earlier 28-point document agreed several weeks ago between the US envoys and Russian officials \u2013 a proposal widely viewed as skewed towards the Kremlin\u2019s demands. Ukraine has pushed for security guarantees modelled on Nato\u2019s article 5 mutual defence pledge under any proposed peace deal with Russia<\/a>, though it remains unclear whether Moscow would accept such terms.<\/p>\n

\u201cI cannot say whether the meeting with President Trump on Sunday will lead to the signing of any agreements,\u201d Zelenskyy said.<\/p>\n

Washington has not publicly confirmed the meeting.<\/p>\n

The announcement follows a burst of diplomatic activity<\/a> last weekend in Miami, where Trump\u2019s envoy Steve Witkoff met separately with Russian and Ukrainian representatives, as well as Trump\u2019s son-in-law Jared Kushner.<\/p>\n

US officials described the discussions as \u201cconstructive\u201d, though Moscow has played down expectations of progress and there are few signs that Vladimir Putin is prepared to soften his maximalist demands to end the full-scale invasion.<\/p>\n

<\/gu-island><\/figure>\n
<\/gu-island><\/figure>\n

At a closed-door meeting with Russia\u2019s business elite on Wednesday evening, the Russian president reportedly reiterated his demand that Ukraine hand over the entire eastern Donbas region as part of any peace deal.<\/p>\n

According to Kommersant, one of Russia\u2019s best-connected newspapers, Putin also indicated openness to a limited territorial exchange with Ukraine, with Moscow potentially exchanging small areas of land Russian forces occupy in Ukraine\u2019s northern Kharkiv and southern Zaporizhzhia regions.<\/p>\n

Zelenskyy has previously said Ukraine would be open to withdrawing \u201cheavy forces\u201d from parts of Donbas it still controls, but only if Russia mirrored the move as part of a US-backed initiative to create a \u201cfree economic zone\u201d in the region.<\/p>\n

It remains highly uncertain that Moscow would accept either a suggested demilitarised buffer zone or a withdrawal of its forces, even as other sticking points remain, including control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant that Kyiv says should be jointly managed by the US and Ukraine.<\/p>\n

On Friday, the Kremlin said Putin\u2019s top foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, had held a call with the US administration after Moscow received an updated US proposal on a potential peace deal, although there were no signs that a breakthrough had been reached.<\/p>\n

Russia has repeatedly said it was prepared to continue fighting in Ukraine if no peace deal were reached, saying it was confident it could achieve its war aims through military means.<\/p>\n

Yet while Moscow has made slow, grinding progress<\/a> on the battlefield, Ukrainian forces have in recent days pushed Russian troops out of the city of Kupiansk<\/a> in the Kharkiv region. It marked a rare Ukrainian counteroffensive, undermining Putin\u2019s repeated claims that the city was under Moscow\u2019s control.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Volodymyr Zelenskyy is to travel to the US for a planned meeting with Donald Trump on Sunday, as Washington continues to push for a possible peace deal between Kyiv and Moscow. The Ukrainian president announced the visit on Friday in a social media post, saying he had received a briefing from Rustem Umerov, the secretary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}