Sept. 20 (UPI) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday he has talked with U.S. counterpart Donald Trump and that they have agreed to meet in New York this week as Trump seeks a deal ending Ukraine’s war with Russia.
Zelensky said in a Facebook post he had spoken with Trump in what he called “an important conversation” in which “we managed to discuss a lot.
“We agreed on a meeting in New York, and this meeting could change a lot.”
The meeting would likely happen Tuesday on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, which both presidents are scheduled to attend.
The get-together would come after Trump’s top envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff spoke to both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelensky earlier this month in a renewed peace push.
But those talks have also been accompanied by intensified fighting. Ukraine over the weekend targeted Russia with more than 1,000 drones and a newly developed ballistic missile, while Ukrainian officials said seven people died in Russian attacks in the Kyiv and Sumy regions.
Zelensky on Sunday cited this month’s shuttle diplomacy by the Trump envoys as evidence of “diplomatic momentum.
“I thanked Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner for their visit to Kyiv: we thoroughly discussed the key details, and the guys saw the situation in Ukraine. A peaceful track is our number one priority.”
The Ukrainian leader said there have been discussions about “de-escalation steps and fundamental security issues,” as well as “food security, and protecting human life.
“We are working together with the American team and are ready to take really serious steps,” he added, while thanking Trump for signing a new Russian sanctions bill.
“We all agree: peace must be.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the talks between Kushner, Witkoff and Zelensky as substantive.
“In my opinion, these were meaningful negotiations,” he said on Sept. 9. “I don’t want to judge them as good or bad, productive or unproductive, but just to note that they were meaningful. New ideas were discussed.”