WEST PALM BEACH, Florida (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump will host his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Sunday to try to close out a peace agreement that would end nearly four years of war that began with Moscow\u2019s invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
The two will meet at Mar-a-Lago, Trump\u2019s private club in Palm Beach, Florida, where the U.S. president is spending the holidays and has an agenda mostly filled with daily rounds of golf. Zelenskyy said<\/a> the two planned to discuss security and economic agreements and he will raise \u201cterritorial issues\u201d as Moscow and Kyiv remain fiercely at odds<\/a> over the fate of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.<\/p>\n In the days before the meeting, Russia has intensified its attacks<\/a> on Ukraine\u2019s capital, using missiles and drones to attack Kyiv and try to increase the pressure on Zelenskyy.<\/p>\n \u201cUkraine is willing to do whatever it takes to stop this war,\u201d Zelenskyy posted Saturday on X. \u201cWe need to be strong at the negotiating table.\u201d<\/p>\n In response to the attacks, he wrote: \u201cWe want peace, and Russia demonstrates a desire to continue the war. If the whole world \u2014 Europe and America \u2014 is on our side, together we will stop\u201d Russian President Vladimir Putin<\/a>. <\/p>\n In a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Saturday, Zelenskyy said the key to peace is \u201cpressure on Russia and sufficient, strong support for Ukraine.\u201d To that end, Carney announced $2.5 billion Canadian (US$1.8 billion) more in economic assistance from his government to help Ukraine rebuild.<\/p>\n Denouncing the \u201cbarbarism\u201d of Russia\u2019s latest attacks on Kyiv, Carney credited both Zelenskyy and Trump with creating the conditions for a \u201cjust and lasting peace\u201d at a crucial moment.<\/p>\n Trump and Zelenskyy sitting down face-to-face also underscored the apparent progress made by Trump\u2019s top negotiators in recent weeks as the sides traded draft peace plans and continued to shape a proposal to end the fighting. Zelenskyy told reporters Friday that the 20-point draft proposal negotiators have discussed is \u201cabout 90% ready\u201d \u2014 echoing a figure, and the optimism, that U.S. officials conveyed when Trump\u2019s chief negotiators met with Zelenskyy in Berlin<\/a> earlier this month.<\/p>\n During the recent talks, the U.S. agreed to offer certain security guarantees to Ukraine<\/a> similar to those offered to other members of NATO. The proposal came as Zelenskyy said he was prepared to drop his country\u2019s bid to join the security alliance if Ukraine received NATO-like protection that would be designed to safeguard it against future Russian attacks. <\/p>\n \u2018Intensive\u2019 weeks ahead<\/p>\n Zelenskyy also spoke on Christmas Day with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump\u2019s son-in-law. The Ukrainian leader said in a post on X that they discussed \u201ccertain substantive details of the ongoing work\u201d and cautioned in a subsequent post that \u201cthere is still work to be done on sensitive issues\u201d and \u201cthe weeks ahead may also be intensive.\u201d<\/p>\n The U.S. president has been working to end the war<\/a> in Ukraine for much of his first year back in office, showing irritation with both Zelenskyy and Putin while publicly acknowledging the difficulty of ending the conflict. Long gone are the days when, as a candidate in 2024, he boasted that he could resolve the fighting in a day.<\/p>\n