{"id":214837,"date":"2025-12-28T15:42:31","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T15:42:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/214837\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T15:42:31","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T15:42:31","slug":"zelenskiy-says-decisions-on-peace-depend-on-kyivs-partners-ahead-of-meeting-with-trump-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/214837\/","title":{"rendered":"Zelenskiy says decisions on peace depend on Kyiv\u2019s partners ahead of meeting with Trump \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy<\/a> and US president Donald Trump<\/a> will meet in Florida on Sunday to hammer out a plan to end the war in \u200dUkraine<\/a>, but face major differences on crucial issues and provocations from Russian air attacks. <\/p>\n

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said ahead of his meeting with Donald Trump that Kyiv was doing everything to end its war with Russia but that ultimately securing peace would depend on its partners.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are some of the most active diplomatic days of the year, and much can be resolved before the new year, and we are doing everything for this, but whether there will be decisions depends on the partners,\u201d he wrote on the Telegram app in comments before talks in Florida\u200b.\u200b<\/p>\n

He added that Ukraine\u2019s partners should increase pressure on Moscow \u201cso that the Russians feel the consequences of their own aggression\u201d.<\/p>\n

Russia<\/a> struck Kyiv and other parts of war-torn Ukraine with hundreds of missiles and drones on Saturday, knocking out power and heat in parts of the capital. <\/p>\n

The Ukrainian president called it Russia\u2019s response to \u200dthe ongoing US-brokered peace efforts. <\/p>\n

Mr Zelenskiy has told journalists that he plans to discuss the fate of eastern Ukraine\u2019s contested Donbas region during the meeting at Trump\u2019s Florida residence, as well as the future of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and other topics.<\/p>\n

The Ukrainian president and his delegation arrived in Florida late on Saturday, Ukraine\u2019s deputy foreign minister Serhiy Kyslytsya said on X.<\/p>\n

\u201cGood evening, Florida!\u201d Mr Kyslytsya wrote, accompanying the post with a photo of an aircraft bearing the US president\u2019s surname on the fuselage.<\/p>\n

Moscow has repeatedly insisted that Ukraine yield all \u200cof the Donbas, even areas still under Kyiv\u2019s control, and Russian officials have objected to other parts of the latest proposal, sparking doubts about whether Russian president Vladimir Putin would accept whatever Sunday\u2019s talks might produce. <\/p>\n

The Ukrainian president told Axios on Friday he still hopes to soften a \u2060US proposal for Ukrainian forces to withdraw completely from the Donbas. Failing that, Zelenskiy said the entire 20-point plan, the result of weeks of negotiations, should be put to a referendum vote. Axios said \u200cUS \u200bofficials \u200dviewed Zelenskiy\u2019s willingness to hold a referendum as a major step forward and a sign that he was no longer ruling out territorial concessions, although he said Russia would need to agree to a 60-day ceasefire to allow Ukraine to prepare for and hold such a vote. <\/p>\n

A recent poll suggests that Ukrainian voters may also reject the plan. Zelenskiy\u2019s in-person meeting with Trump, scheduled for 1pm (6pm Irish time), follows weeks of diplomatic efforts. European allies, while at times cut out of the loop, have stepped up efforts to sketch \u2060out the contours of a postwar security guarantee for Kyiv that would be supported by the United States.<\/p>\n

Kyiv and Washington have agreed on many issues, and Zelenskiy said on Friday that the 20-point plan \u2060was 90 per cent finished. But the issue of what territory, if any, will be \u2060ceded to Russia remains unresolved. While Moscow insists on getting all of the Donbas, Kyiv wants the map frozen at current battle lines.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0From Zelenskiy\u2019s jaw-dropping White House meeting to Prince Andrew\u2019s loss of royal titles: 12 history-making moments of 2025Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\"TheThe motorcade with US president Donald Trump leaves Trump International Golf Club on the way to his Mar-a-Lago club. Photograph: Joe Raedle\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

The United States, seeking a compromise, has proposed a free economic zone if Ukraine leaves the area, although it remains unclear how that zone would function in practical terms. Zelenskiy, whose past meetings with Trump have not always gone smoothly, \u200dworries along with his European allies that Trump could sell out Ukraine and leave European powers to foot the bill for supporting a devastated nation, after Russian forces took 12 to 17 square km (4.6-6.6 square miles) of its territory per day in 2025. Russia controls all of Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, and since its invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago has taken control of about 12 per cent of its territory, including about 90 per cent of Donbas, 75 per cent of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and slivers of the Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions, according to Russian estimates.<\/p>\n

Putin said on December 19th that he thought a peace deal should be based on conditions he set out in 2024: Ukraine withdrawing from all of the Donbas, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and Kyiv officially renouncing its aim to join Nato.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian officials and European leaders view the war as an imperial-style land grab by Moscow and have warned that if Russia gets its way with Ukraine, it will one day attack Nato members. The 20-point \u200cplan was spun off from a Russian-led 28-point \u200cplan, which emerged from talks between US special envoy Steve Witkoff, Mr Trump\u2019s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Russian special envoy Kirill Dmitriev, and which became public in November.<\/p>\n

Subsequent talks between Ukrainian officials and US negotiators have produced the more Kyiv-friendly 20-point plan.<\/p>\n

\"UkrainianUkrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Photograph: Sergey Dolzhenko\/EPA <\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s air attacks show that Putin does not want peace, Mr Zelenskiy said to reporters after arriving in Halifax, \u200cNova Scotia, where he met with Canadian prime minister Mark Carney.<\/p>\n

In a brief statement with Mr Zelenskiy by his side, Carney said peace \u201crequires a willing Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe barbarism that we saw overnight \u2013 the attack on Kyiv \u2013 shows just how important it is that we stand with \u2060Ukraine in this difficult time,\u201d Mr Carney said, pledging 2.5 billion Canadian dollars (\u20ac1.5 billion) in additional economic aid to Ukraine.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Zelenskiy \u2018doesn\u2019t have anything until I approve it\u2019, says Trump ahead of meeting on SundayOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, who spoke with Mr Zelenskiy along with other European leaders on Saturday, said on X that their shared objective remained \u201ca just and lasting peace\u201d that preserved Ukraine\u2019s sovereignty and territorial integrity, while strengthening the country\u2019s security and defence capabilities. Mr Zelenskiy said he would speak with European leaders again after his meeting with Trump. \u2013 Reuters <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy and US president Donald Trump will meet in Florida on Sunday to hammer out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[969,42,43,3589,40,38,41,39,9688,115,58419],"class_list":["post-214837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-russia","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-ukraine-crisis","tag-united-states","tag-volodymyr-zelenskiy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}