For Zelensky, just keeping Trump talking counts as a win

KYIV – A new round of peace talks between President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and President Donald Trump seems to have produced little beyond a promise to meet again in January and a reminder of how distant a peace deal remains.

Yet for Mr Zelensky, even a stalemate in the discussions counts as progress.

Following setbacks in US support for Ukraine in 2025, one of Mr Zelensky’s main priorities when meeting Mr Trump was to prevent talks from derailing.

After the meeting on Dec 28, Mr Trump signalled that he would remain engaged in the negotiations, a win for Ukraine given his repeated threats to walk away.

Mr Trump also backed away from setting another deadline to reach a peace deal, after having previously floated Thanksgiving and Christmas as target dates.

“I don’t have deadlines,” Mr Trump told reporters as he greeted Mr Zelensky at Mar-a-Lago in Florida for the talks. “You know what my deadline is? Getting the war ended.”

Most important for Ukraine, Mr Trump did not echo Russia’s maximalist demands to stop the fighting, a departure from earlier in his term when he often appeared to side with the Kremlin.

The change was also notable because Mr Trump spoke with President Vladimir Putin
of Russia just before meeting Mr Zelensky, the type of last-minute Russian intervention that has derailed Ukrainian hopes before.

That may leave Mr Zelensky confident that Ukraine and Washington are more closely aligned in the peace negotiations. Several European leaders also joined talks by phone, and Mr Zelensky said the United States might host a new round of negotiations in January that could include them.

“We had a really great discussion on all the topics, and we appreciate the progress that was made by American and Ukrainian teams in recent weeks,” Mr Zelensky said.

Still, he acknowledged that several sticking points remained in a draft peace deal, including the fate of Ukrainian-held land in the east and a Russian-occupied nuclear power plant.

As Mr Zelensky arrived in Florida, some Ukrainians were concerned that he might walk into another meeting where Mr Trump would pressure him to strike a quick peace deal on Moscow’s terms. The concern grew when the White House unexpectedly announced that Mr Trump had spoken with Mr Putin.

In October, Mr Trump held a similar unannounced call with Mr Putin shortly before meeting with Mr Zelensky to discuss supplying Ukraine with powerful US cruise missiles.

In that call, Mr Putin appeared to have steered Mr Trump away from selling the missiles. Mr Trump later told Mr Zelensky that Ukraine would not get the weapons during a meeting described as tense by European officials.

Mr Trump said the call on Dec 28 with Mr Putin had been “good and very productive”.

Mr Yuri Ushakov, the top foreign policy aide to Mr Putin, said in a news briefing that the conversation lasted more than an hour. He also reiterated the Kremlin’s position that Ukraine should cede territory in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine to achieve peace.

Mr Trump said he would call Mr Putin again after meeting Mr Zelensky, though it was not immediately clear whether he did.

Unlike in October, however, Mr Trump refrained on Dec 28 from echoing the Kremlin’s demands and did not pressure Ukraine to strike a deal quickly.

“This is not a one-day-process deal,” Mr Trump told reporters. “This is very complicated stuff.”

Mr Zelensky said the peace plan was “90 per cent” complete, the same progress he reported before flying to Florida.

He added that US and European allies were nearly aligned on the security guarantees they would offer Ukraine to prevent further Russian aggression. He also emphasised Ukraine’s proposal of compromise on the territorial issue: a demilitarised zone from where both Ukrainian and Russian troops would pull back.

Mr Trump struck a more cautious tone when asked about progress in the talks.

“The word ‘agreement’ is too strong,” he said. On resolving the territorial issue, he said, “I would not say ‘agreed’, but we’re getting closer to an agreement
on that.”

Perhaps the most promising development for Ukraine was Mr Trump’s apparent willingness to hold a round of talks in January in the United States, potentially with European leaders at the table.

In past negotiations, European leaders were brought in to salvage talks after disagreements between Mr Zelensky and Trump. Their presence as full participants rather than belated troubleshooters could help Ukraine strengthen its position. NYTIMES