For Zelensky, Just Keeping Trump Talking About Ukraine Peace Deal Counts as a Win

Though discussions produced little tangible progress, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine at least avoided the type of setbacks that have blighted earlier meetings.

A new round of peace talks between President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and President Trump on Sunday seems to have produced little beyond a promise to meet again next month and a reminder of how distant a peace deal remains.

Yet for Mr. Zelensky, even a stalemate in the discussions counts as a measure of success.

Following setbacks in U.S. support for Ukraine this year, one of Mr. Zelensky’s main priorities when meeting Mr. Trump has been to prevent talks from derailing. After the meeting, Mr. Trump signaled 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 had spoken with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia just before meeting Mr. Zelensky, the type of last-minute Russian intervention that has derailed Ukrainian hopes before.

Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump spoke again early Monday, when the Russian leader said that Ukraine had fired a barrage of drones at his country residence — a claim that Ukraine said was fabricated to undermine peace talks. Speaking to reporters later, Mr. Trump appeared to accept the allegation at face value and said he was angry about it, but conceded that he had seen no evidence to back it up, and that it was “possible, too, I guess,” that the claim was false.

Mr. Zelensky’s meeting with Mr. Trump may give the Ukrainian leader hope that Kyiv and Washington have become more closely aligned in the peace negotiations. Several European leaders also joined the talks by phone, and Mr. Zelensky said that the United States might host a new round of negotiations next month that could include them.

“The fact that they’re talking is a victory in and of itself,” Harry Nedelcu, a senior director at Rasmussen Global, a research organization, said of the American and Ukrainian presidents.

Still, Mr. Zelensky acknowledged some division between them on Monday, noting that while Mr. Trump has agreed to help secure Ukraine, he offered such guarantees for only 15 years, short of the several decades that Mr. Zelensky and Ukrainians seek.

“The challenge for Zelensky is to demonstrate to Trump that he’s doing his best to deal with Trump’s version of the peace plan while making it digestible for the Ukrainian society,” Mr. Nedelcu said.

At the heart of that challenge are key sticking points, chiefly the fate of Ukrainian-held territory in the eastern Donetsk region. Russia wants Ukraine to cede the land, something Mr. Trump has encouraged Kyiv to do, but opinion polls show that a majority of Ukrainians oppose territorial concessions.

After the meeting, Mr. Zelensky struck a hopeful tone. “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 proposals remained unresolved in a draft peace deal, including Donetsk and control of 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 Mr. Trump unexpectedly announced that he had held a “good and very productive telephone call” with Mr. Putin.

In October, Mr. Trump held a similar unannounced call with Mr. Putin shortly before meeting with Mr. Zelensky to discuss supplying Kyiv with powerful U.S. 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.

Sunday’s call did not appear to have the same influence on Mr. Trump. After meeting Mr. Zelensky, the American president refrained from echoing the Kremlin’s demands and did not publicly pressure Ukraine to cede land and strike a deal quickly. “This is not a one-day-process deal,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “This is very complicated stuff.”

On Monday, the Kremlin said it would harden its stance on ending the war, in light of the alleged drone attack on one of Mr. Putin’s residences. The Russian leader also ordered his generals to continue advancing to capture the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, in an apparent effort to increase pressure on Mr. Zelensky. A regional capital of about 700,000 people, Zaporizhzhia has been relatively far from the scene of the most-active fighting in Ukraine’s east, but Russian troops have recently made gains toward it.

Mr. Putin issued the order while meeting Monday with senior commanders who delivered reports on the situation at the front lines. This was the third time in two weeks that Mr. Putin publicly discussed the state of fighting in Ukraine with his top brass, highlighting the Kremlin effort to project strength and demonstrate to Washington that it had a battlefield advantage.

After meeting with Mr. Trump, Mr. Zelensky said that the peace plan was “90 percent” complete, the same progress he reported before flying to Florida. He added that Ukraine and its American and European allies were very close to agreement on the security guarantees Kyiv is seeking to prevent further Russian aggression.

The current draft peace plan says the United States, NATO and Europe will provide Ukraine with so-called Article 5-like guarantees — a reference to NATO’s mutual defense clause requiring members of the military alliance to come to one another’s aid in the event of an attack.

Mr. Zelensky said Mr. Trump had agreed to provide Ukraine with guarantees only for 15 years. “We would very much like the guarantees to be longer,” he told reporters. “And I told him that we would really like to consider the possibility of 30, 40 or 50 years.”

Mr. Nedelcu, the analyst, was more cautious regarding progress on security guarantees. He said European allies had yet to agree on what they could realistically provide Ukraine to deter another Russian attack, with discussions continuing on whether to deploy European troops to Ukraine — a red line for Moscow in any negotiations. An Article 5-like commitment to defend Ukraine might also prove too vague to be an effective deterrent.

On the territorial issue, Ukraine has offered as a compromise the creation of a demilitarized zone from which both Ukrainian and Russian troops would pull back. Mr. Zelensky said Ukrainians should vote on the proposal through a referendum held before a peace deal is finalized — a step that would first require a cease-fire.

Russia has rejected the idea of a cease-fire, and has shown no indication that it is willing to accept anything short of Ukraine relinquishing the Donetsk region, including areas that Ukraine still controls.

Asked about progress in resolving the territorial issue, Mr. Trump 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 another round of talks next month 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 Mr. Trump. Their presence as full participants rather than belated troubleshooters could help Ukraine strengthen its position.

On Monday, Mr. Zelensky outlined “a course of action” to keep the talks on track and bolster that alignment. He said he hoped that American, European and Ukrainian advisers would meet in the coming days, followed by a meeting of European and Ukrainian leaders. Then, another round of talks would take place with the United States, this time including Europe.

“And after that, if everything proceeds step by step, there will then be a meeting in one format or another with the Russians,” Mr. Zelensky said.

Ségolène Le Stradic and Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting.

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