Will meet Trump in Florida on 28 Dec for Ukraine security guarantees: Zelenskyy

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday that he is scheduled to meet US President Donald Trump in Florida over the weekend, as Washington steps up diplomatic efforts to broker an end to Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Speaking to journalists, Zelenskyy said Sunday’s talks would focus primarily on security guarantees for Ukraine, adding that a 20-point framework currently under discussion was “about 90 per cent ready”.

He said an “economic agreement” would also be on the agenda, though he cautioned that it was unclear whether any deal would be finalised by the end of the meeting. Kyiv also intends to raise what Zelenskyy described as “territorial issues”.

Ukraine, he said, wants Europe to be involved in the process, but acknowledged that such participation may be difficult to arrange at short notice. “We must, without doubt, find some format in the near future in which not only Ukraine and the US are present, but Europe is represented as well,” Zelenskyy said.

The meeting marks the latest development in an intensive US-led diplomatic push to bring the nearly four-year war to a close, though negotiations have repeatedly run aground on sharply conflicting positions held by Kyiv and Moscow.

Zelenskyy’s remarks followed his comments on Thursday that he had held what he described as a “good conversation” with US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.

In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday that Russia had already been in contact with US officials after Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev met American counterparts in Florida. “It was agreed upon to continue the dialogue,” Peskov said.

Trump has been pursuing diplomatic channels to end Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began on 24 February 2022, but his efforts have so far been hampered by incompatible demands from both sides.

Earlier this week, Zelenskyy said Ukraine would be prepared to withdraw troops from parts of its eastern industrial heartland as part of a peace plan, provided Russia also pulls back and the area is turned into a demilitarised zone under international monitoring.

While Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday that peace talks were showing “slow but steady progress”, Moscow has given no indication that it is willing to relinquish territory it has seized. Instead, Russia has demanded that Ukraine surrender the remaining areas it controls in the Donbas — a condition Kyiv has flatly rejected. Russian forces currently occupy most of Luhansk and roughly 70 per cent of Donetsk, the two regions that make up the Donbas.

Fighting meanwhile continued on the ground. One person was killed and three others injured when a guided aerial bomb struck a house in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, while six people were wounded in a missile attack on the city of Uman, local officials said on Friday.

Overnight Russian drone strikes on Mykolaiv and its outskirts knocked out power to parts of the city, while energy and port infrastructure was damaged in the Black Sea city of Odesa.

Ukraine, for its part, said it had struck a major Russian oil refinery on Thursday using UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles. Ukraine’s General Staff said its forces hit the Novoshakhtinsk refinery in Russia’s Rostov region, reporting “multiple explosions” and a confirmed strike.

Rostov regional governor Yuri Slyusar said a firefighter was injured while battling the blaze.

Kyiv has increasingly targeted Russian refineries with long-range strikes in an effort to cut off oil export revenues that fund Moscow’s war effort. Russia, meanwhile, has continued attacks on Ukraine’s power grid, a strategy Ukrainian officials say is aimed at denying civilians heat, electricity and running water in an attempt to “weaponise winter”.