Zelenskyy aides to meet Trump team in Florida for talks on peace plan

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Senior Ukrainian officials are to meet Donald Trump’s negotiating team in Florida on Sunday, starting what could be a pivotal week of diplomacy in a US push to end Russia’s years-long invasion.

The gathering, expected to include Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, follows talks in Geneva last week where the two sides reported progress towards a peace plan. Kyiv and its European partners have been seeking substantial changes to an initial proposal drawn up by the US, which had significant Russian input.

The intensifying peace diplomacy comes amid mounting political and military challenges for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who dismissed his powerful chief of staff on Friday amid a widening corruption probe that had sucked in several members of his inner circle and senior government officials.

Russian forces this week continued their large-scale missile and drone attacks on Ukraine’s capital and critical infrastructure as troops on the ground in the eastern Donetsk region pressed ahead with assaults on key strongholds.

Ukraine, meanwhile, continued its drone attacks on Russian oil and gas facilities and vessels belonging to its shadow fleet in the Black Sea, including the Russian oil terminal near the southern port of Novorossiysk that is owned by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium.

That attack on Saturday prompted a stern response on Sunday from Kazakhstan, which called on Kyiv to halt strikes on the facility that handles about 1 per cent of global oil supplies, including from Kazakhstan, where the pipeline begins.

Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy’s longtime right-hand man, had led the Ukrainian negotiating team in previous rounds.

But following his resignation on Friday, responsibility for negotiations was passed to Rustem Umerov, the secretary of the country’s National Security and Defense Council. He has been implicated in the corruption probe but is not a suspect, according to authorities. Joining him is first deputy foreign minister Sergiy Kyslytsya, an experienced diplomat and negotiator who sat at the table with the Russians in peace talks this spring that made no progress.

The US is expected to be represented by secretary of state Marco Rubio, Witkoff and Kushner. Trump has said that Witkoff and possibly Kushner might travel to Moscow later in the week to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Leaked transcripts of phone calls between Witkoff and Russian officials published by Bloomberg earlier this week showed that an original 28-point peace proposal had been designed with Russia’s input. That plan was described by Ukrainian and European officials as being staunchly pro-Russian.

Trump last week issued an ultimatum to Kyiv to sign that deal by Thanksgiving. But Zelenskyy said that would force him to make a “difficult choice — either loss of dignity, or the risk of losing a key partner”. He successfully pushed back, securing a meeting between his negotiators and Trump’s team in Geneva.

After several hours of painstaking talks in Switzerland, the group whittled the initial 28-point proposal down to about 19 points, watered down several contentious terms and set aside the thorniest ones for Zelenskyy and Trump to decide on. Those issues include the issue of territory, security guarantees and language around Ukraine’s desire to join Nato, according to Ukrainian officials. 

European governments had presented several counterpoints to the original US proposal made with Russian input, which helped the Ukrainians secure better terms in Geneva. But otherwise Kyiv’s European partners have been largely excluded from the negotiations.

The biggest question hanging over the US-Ukraine talks is how any proposal agreed between them might be agreed by the Russians, who have maintained a maximalist position and have expressed confidence that they currently hold the battlefield initiative in the war. Putin has shown openness to a deal only if it is done on his timeline and terms.

Earlier this week, Russia blamed the Europeans and Kyiv for spoiling the initial proposal, or what the Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov described as the “only substantive thing” on the table. Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov warned that if the revised plan “erased . . . key understandings” reached earlier between Putin and Trump, the situation would be “fundamentally different”.

Nevertheless, Zelenskyy appeared optimistic, telling Ukrainians in his evening address on Saturday that the American side was “demonstrating a constructive approach” to the talks that were set to continue on Sunday.

He added: “In the coming days it is feasible to flesh out the steps to determine how to bring the war to a dignified end.”