Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy are set to meet today to discuss a peace agreement which could end almost four years of war between Russia and Ukraine.
The US President will host his Ukrainian counterpart at Mar-a-Lago at 1pm EST, the White House said. Zelenskyy arrived in Florida on Sunday morning.
They will discuss three key issues – raising pressure on Russia, security guarantees, and investment in postwar reconstruction, according to the Washington Post.
It comes just a day after Russia launched a barrage of missiles on Kyiv, killing at least one person and injuring 20 more, per the mayor of the Ukrainian capital.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown little interest in negotiating a peace deal, while Zelenskyy has said Ukraine is ‘willing to do whatever it takes to stop this war’.
Writing on X on Saturday, Zelenskyy said: ‘For us, priority number one – or the only priority – is ending the war. For us, the priority is peace.
‘We need to be strong at the negotiating table. To be strong, we need the support of the world: Europe and the United States.’
Zelenskyy said his country needs more air defenses, weaponry and money.
‘If the whole world – Europe and America – is on our side, together we will stop Putin,’ he wrote.
Trump told Politico he thought their Palm Beach meeting would go well, but he added that ‘Zelenskyy doesn’t have anything until I approve it’.
‘We’ll see what he’s got,’ the US president said in the comment published Friday.
The engagement will be the sixth meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy this year, with their relations improving since the fiery Oval Office feud on February 28.
The first meeting degenerated into a heated argument, with Trump and Vice President JD Vance accusing Zelenskyy of failing to show gratitude for US support.
Earlier in December, the US President’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., also told reporters that his father may walk away from supporting Ukraine if Kyiv refuses to engage with Moscow at the negotiating table.
Last month, Trump expressed a desire to end the war in order to engage in business deals with Putin, hoping to bring billions of dollars from the Russian economy into the US.
A report in The Wall Street Journal details how Trump’s team – including his son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff – have been negotiating with Russia on how to ‘bring their $2 trillion economy in from the cold’.
Witkoff reportedly hosted Kirill Dmitriev – Putin’s ‘handpicked’ negotiator – and Kushner at a waterfront Miami Beach estate to draw up a plan to end the war, while also ensuring American businesses beat their European counterparts to making money once the conflict ended.
Dmitriev is said to have pushed for the $300 billion of Russian central bank assets frozen in Europe to be used for joint US-Russian investment projects, and a ‘US-led reconstruction’ of Ukraine.
In a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Saturday, Zelenskyy said the key to peace is ‘pressure on Russia and sufficient, strong support for Ukraine’.
To that end, Carney announced $2.5 billion Canadian (US$1.8 billion) more in economic assistance from his government to help Ukraine rebuild.
Denouncing the ‘barbarism’ of Russia’s latest attacks on Kyiv, Carney credited both Zelenskyy and Trump with creating the conditions for a ‘just and lasting peace’ at a crucial moment.
Trump and Zelenskyy sitting down face-to-face also underscored the apparent progress made by Trump’s top negotiators in recent weeks as the sides traded draft peace plans and continued to shape a proposal to end the fighting.
Zelenskyy told reporters Friday that the 20-point draft proposal negotiators have discussed is ‘about 90 percent ready’ — echoing a figure, and the optimism, that US officials conveyed when Trump’s chief negotiators met with Zelenskyy in Berlin earlier this month.
