WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump expressed optimism that leaders are nearing a peace deal in the yearslong war between Russia and Ukraine after speaking to the presidents of both countries in separate meetings over the weekend.
Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a three-hour meeting at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort on Sunday, where the two emerged without a finalized plan to end the conflict but with confidence a resolution was around the corner. Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a phone call ahead of the in-person meeting, and he spoke with him again on Monday morning.
“He wants to see (peace) happen. He wants to see it,” Trump said of Putin. “He told me very strongly, I believe him.”
The meetings come almost four years after the full-scale invasion of Russia into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.
Here are three main takeaways from those talks:
No definitive progress or timeline
While the two emerged from the meeting optimistic, both Trump and Zelenskyy acknowledged there was no solution yet.
“I do think we’re getting a lot closer, maybe very close,” Trump said. “I think we’re in the very final stages of talking, and we’re going to see.”
Trump gave a personal prediction in terms of a timeline, suggesting the end would be very soon or “it’s going to go on for a long time and millions of additional people are going to be killed.”
The president noted the talks were not “a one-day process deal,” and several details still needed to be ironed out and agreed to by both sides.
Majority of peace plan has been agreed to
But the war may be closer to the end than it is to the beginning, Trump suggested, as he said only “one or two very thorny issues” remain in a compromise deal.
The Trump administration drafted a 28-point peace plan last month as a way to resolve the conflict, which Zelenskyy revised down to just 20 points and brought with him to Mar-a-Lago to discuss. Zelenskyy told reporters that 90% of the plan has already been agreed to, but the remaining 10% has been particularly tricky.
The main sticking points include land concessions, as well as what will happen with the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, a Ukrainian power plant that has been under Russian occupation since early in the war. It’s the largest nuclear facility in Europe.
“Our meeting was excellent, we covered — somebody would say 95%, I don’t know what percent — but we have made a lot of progress on ending that war,” Trump said after the meeting.
Other portions of the peace plan, which Zelenskyy says have been agreed to, would guarantee certain securities for Ukraine from the U.S. and Europe as well as a promise that Ukraine can join the European Union at a specific date in the future.
The plan would carve out military force withdrawals in Ukrainian cities such as Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, Sumy and Kharkiv. Ukraine would also receive $800 billion in aid to rebuild its infrastructure and economy.
Future negotiations are expected
More meetings are expected to be held between Ukraine, Russia and the United States over the coming weeks as the final components of the peace plan are negotiated.
Zelenskyy told reporters on Sunday Ukrainian leaders would meet with U.S. officials in the coming weeks “to finalize all discussed matters,” possibly sometime in January. That meeting could take place in Washington, he said.
It’s not clear if Trump will make his own trip to Ukraine, but he told reporters he’d “have no problem with doing it.”
“Don’t anticipate it,” Trump said. “I would like to get the deal done and not necessarily have to go. I’ve offered to go and speak to their parliament and — you know — if that would help.”