Zelensky to meet Trump in 'near future' on Ukraine war
· RTE.ieUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that he will meet his US counterpart, Donald Trump, soon as part of efforts to end the Russian invasion.
"We have agreed on a meeting at the highest level - with President Trump in the near future. A lot can be decided before the New Year," Mr Zelensky said on social media.
The comments came after the latest round of negotiations between US and Ukrainian teams produced a 20-point plan to end the war, which has been sent to Moscow for feedback.
The latest proposal would freeze the frontline and remove a requirement for Kyiv to legally renounce its bid to join NATO, President Zelensky said earlier this week.
Russia has shown little inclination that it will abandon its hardline territorial demands that Ukraine withdraw from the eastern Donbas and relinquish its NATO ambitions.
Moscow has said it is "formulating its position" and declined to comment on the specifics of the latest plan.
Yesterday, Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said progress to end the war was "slow but regular".
Russia reported to be open to territory swap
President Vladimir Putin has told some of Russia's top businessmen that he might be open to swapping territory controlled by Russian forces in Ukraine but that he wanted the whole of Donbas, Kommersant newspaper reported.
Its Kremlin correspondent, Andrei Kolesnikov, said that that Mr Putin briefed top businessmen on the details of the plan at a late-night Kremlin meeting on Christmas Eve.
"Vladimir Putin asserted that the Russian side is still ready to make the concessions that he made in Anchorage. In other words, that 'Donbas is ours,'" Kommersant - one of Russia's top newspapers - reported.
In essence, he wants the whole of Donbas but outside that area "a partial exchange of territories from the Russian side is not ruled out," Mr Kolesnikov wrote.
Russia controls all of Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, about 90% of Donbas, 75% of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and slivers of the Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions, according to Russian estimates.
According to Kommersant, President Putin also raised the issue of the Zaporizhzhia power plant, the largest nuclear facility in Europe, at his meeting with businessmen.
He is quoted as saying that joint Russian-US management of the site was being discussed.
Mr Putin also said that the United States had expressed an interest in crypto mining near the plant and that the facility should be used to partially supply Ukraine, Kommersant said.