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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Axios on Friday that if he can agree on a peace framework with U.S. President Donald Trump when they meet this weekend, he would be willing to bring it to a referendum.
The two leaders are scheduled to meet on Sunday in Florida as part of talks to end the Ukraine-Russia war.
Zelenskyy told journalists the two will discuss security guarantees for Ukraine and that the 20-point plan under discussion “is about 90 per cent ready.”
An “economic agreement” will also be discussed, Zelenskyy said, but he was unable to confirm “whether anything will be finalized by the end” of the meeting, which reports have said will be held at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s estate in Palm Beach, Fla.
The Ukrainian side will also raise “territorial issues,” he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday he will meet with U.S. President Donald Trump in Florida over the weekend. Zelenskyy told journalists the two leaders will discuss security guarantees for Ukraine during Sunday’s talks.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine “would like the Europeans to be involved” but doubted whether it would be possible at short notice.
“We must, without doubt, find some format in the near future in which not only Ukraine and the U.S. are present but Europe is represented as well,” he said.
Zelenskyy also said Friday he had a call with Prime Minister Mark Carney, during which he updated Carney on the status of the diplomatic efforts with the U.S. “It was a very good conversation, and I appreciate it,” he wrote on social media platform X.
The Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement that Carney affirmed Canada’s commitment to Ukraine “and emphasized the need to maintain pressure on Russia to negotiate.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The announced meeting is the latest development in an extensive U.S.-led diplomatic push to end the nearly four-year war, but efforts have run into sharply conflicting demands by Moscow and Kyiv.
On Thursday, Zelenskyy said he had a “good conversation” with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday that the Kremlin had already been in contact with U.S. representatives since Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev recently met with U.S. envoys in Florida.
“It was agreed upon to continue the dialogue,” Peskov said.
Trump is engaged in a diplomatic push to end Russia’s all-out war, which began with its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy laid out a 20-point peace plan that negotiators from Ukraine and the U.S. broadly hammered out recently. Zelenskyy conceded he would be open to making the Donetsk region a demilitarized, free economic zone monitored by international forces.
Zelenskyy said Tuesday that he would be willing to withdraw troops from Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland as part of a plan to end the war if Russia also pulls back and the area becomes a demilitarized zone monitored by international forces.
Although Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Thursday there had been “slow but steady progress” in the peace talks, Russia has given no indication it will agree to any kind of withdrawal from land it has seized.
Moscow has insisted that Ukraine relinquish the remaining territory it still holds in the Donbas, an ultimatum that Ukraine has rejected. Russia has captured most of Luhansk and about 70 per cent of Donetsk — the two areas that make up the Donbas.
On the ground, two people were killed and six were wounded Friday when a guided aerial bomb hit a busy road and set cars aflame in Ukraine’s second biggest city, Kharkiv, Mayor Ihor Terekhov wrote on the Telegram messaging service.
One person was killed and three were wounded when a guided aerial bomb hit a house in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, and six people were wounded in a missile strike on the city of Uman, local officials said Friday.
Russian drone attacks on Mykolaiv and its suburbs overnight into Friday left part of the city without power. Energy and port infrastructure were damaged by drones in the city of Odesa on the Black Sea.
Ukraine, meanwhile, said it struck a major Russian oil refinery on Thursday using U.K.-supplied Storm Shadow missiles. The Ukrainian General Staff said its forces hit the Novoshakhtinsk refinery in Russia’s Rostov region.
“Multiple explosions were recorded. The target was hit,” it wrote on the Telegram messaging service.
Rostov regional Gov. Yuri Slyusar said a firefighter was wounded when extinguishing the blaze.
Ukraine’s long-range drone strikes on Russian refineries aim to deprive Moscow of the oil export revenue it needs to pursue its full-scale invasion. Russia wants to cripple Ukraine’s power grid, seeking to deny civilians access to heat, light and running water in what Ukrainian officials have said is an attempt to “weaponize winter.”
