Peace Deal On Horizon? Trump & Zelensky To Meet Sunday

Peace Deal On Horizon? Trump & Zelensky To Meet Sunday via Associated Press Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will meet with US President Donald Trump on Sunday in Mar-a-Lago to talk peace with Russia, Zelensky's top officials have confirmed. Ukraine is touting that a deal is close - and yet outside observers might easily note that huge hurdles remain. Zelensky also stated on Telegram that "Many things can be decided before the new year." And yet he is still rejecting Russia's main sticking point - the demand to control the entirety of the Donbas region under any final peace settlement. Moscow also wants international legal recognition (and so, from Washington) of the eastern territories as being part of the Russian Federation. Some level of progress must have been made in negotiations over the draft - at least from the US point of view - given that Trump said previously he would only meet Zelensky if he felt a deal was close. Zelensky said Friday morning, "We are not losing a single day. 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." At the same time, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia had received and reviewed information shared by Russian negotiator Kirill Dmitriev following his recent talks with the Witkoff-Kushner delegation in Miami. Crucially the latest talks included top negotiators from both Russia and Ukraine directly engaging. A senior US official characterized the talks involving envoys Rustem Umerov and Kirill Dmitriev as "positive and constructive." "We've gone as far as possible with the Russians and the Ukrainians. We've made more progress in the last two weeks than the last year. We want to push the ball into the goal. We're heading in the right direction," the official was quoted in Axios as saying. Another point of contention between Moscow and Kiev is expected to be the strong security guarantees for Ukraine backed by the West. Zelensky has been pushing that they are akin to NATO's Article 5 - but it's unlikely the Kremlin would go for anything approaching this language. Breakthrough on the territory issue? Not likely from Russia's point of view, given that what Zelensky is proposing still sounds like a temporary solution, and not the kind of full, legal, and permanent recognition the Kremlin seeks. Russia has emphasized many times it won't contemplate a merely temporary truce. Ukraine is ready to withdraw 'heavy forces' from the parts of the Donbas region it still controls if Russia mirrors the pullback as part of a peace deal, the Ukrainian president said. https://t.co/TYR3EghM4fpic.twitter.com/u85fSKR0re "The U.S. and Europe will provide Ukraine with security guarantees. If Russia invades Ukraine there will be a military response and sanctions will be reinstated," Zelensky told reporters earlier this week. As for the still open question of territorial concessions, Zelensky has maintained that if land is given up, then this must be decided by the Ukrainian people in a popular referendum....

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