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 of Ukraine’s national security and defence council, on new contacts with US officials.
“We are not losing a single day. We have agreed on a meeting at the highest level – with President Trump in the near future,” Zelenskyy said, adding that “a lot can be decided before the New Year”.
Zelenskyy later told journalists the high-stakes meeting with Trump was planned for Sunday and would focus on Ukrainian security guarantees and reconstruction. He added that the proposed 20-point peace plan was “90% ready”.
The plan is considered an updated version of an earlier 28-point document agreed several weeks ago between the US envoys and Russian officials – a proposal widely viewed as skewed towards the Kremlin’s demands. Ukraine has pushed for security guarantees modelled on Nato’s article 5 mutual defence pledge under any proposed peace deal with Russia, though it remains unclear whether Moscow would accept such terms.
“I cannot say whether the meeting with President Trump on Sunday will lead to the signing of any agreements,” Zelenskyy said.
Washington has not publicly confirmed the meeting.
The announcement follows a burst of diplomatic activity last weekend in Miami, where Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff met separately with Russian and Ukrainian representatives, as well as Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
US officials described the discussions as “constructive”, 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.
At a closed-door meeting with Russia’s 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.
According to Kommersant, one of Russia’s 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’s northern Kharkiv and southern Zaporizhzhia regions.
Zelenskyy has previously said Ukraine would be open to withdrawing “heavy forces” from parts of Donbas it still controls, but only if Russia mirrored the move as part of a US-backed initiative to create a “free economic zone” in the region.
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.
On Friday, the Kremlin said Putin’s 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.
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.
Yet while Moscow has made slow, grinding progress on the battlefield, Ukrainian forces have in recent days pushed Russian troops out of the city of Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region. It marked a rare Ukrainian counteroffensive, undermining Putin’s repeated claims that the city was under Moscow’s control.