Meeting to follow flurry of talks among US, Russian and Ukrainian envoys, but Putin shows few signs of softening demands<\/b>
\nMeeting to follow flurry of talks among US, Russian and Ukrainian envoys, but Putin shows few signs of softening demands
Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to travel to the US in the coming days for a key meeting with Donald Trump, 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\u2019s national security and defence council, on new contacts with US officials.
\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.
Washington has not publicly confirmed the meeting. A reporter for Axios, Barak Ravid, said on X that Trump and Zelenskyy were expected to meet on Sunday at Trump\u2019s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.
The possible meeting follows a burst of diplomatic activity last weekend in Miami, where Trump\u2019s peace envoy, Steve Witkoff, met separately with Russian and Ukrainian representatives, as well as Trump\u2019s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
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.
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.
According to Kommersant, one of Russia\u2019s best-connected newspapers, Putin also signalled 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.
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.
On Friday, the Kremlin said Putin\u2019s top foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, 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 insisted it is prepared to continue fighting in Ukraine if no peace deal is reached, saying it is confident it can 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 Kupyansk 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