Trump and Zelensky offered few details and did not provide a deadline for completing a peace deal, although Trump said it would be clear “in a few weeks” whether negotiations to end the war would succeed. He said a few “thorny issues” around territory must be resolved. US President Donald Trump said on Sunday, 28 December 2025, that he and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky were “getting a lot closer, maybe very close” to an agreement to end the war in Ukraine, while acknowledging that the fate of the Donbas region remained a key unresolved issue.
The two leaders spoke at a joint news conference after meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Sunday afternoon. Both leaders reported progress on two of the most contentious issues in peace talks – security guarantees for Ukraine and the division of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region that Russia has sought to capture. Zelensky said an agreement on security guarantees for Ukraine had been reached.
Trump was slightly more cautious, saying that they were 95% of the way to such an agreement, and that he expected European countries to “take over a big part|” of that effort with US backing. French President Emmanuel Macron, in an X post published after Trump met with Zelensky, said progress was made on security guarantees. Macron said countries in the so-called “Coalition of the Willing” would meet in Paris in early January to finalise their “concrete contributions”.
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Zelensky has said previously that he hopes to soften a US proposal for Ukrainian forces to withdraw completely from Donbas, a Russian demand that would mean ceding some territory held by Ukrainian forces. While Moscow insists on getting all of Donbas, Kyiv wants the map frozen at current battle lines. Both Trump and Zelensky said on Sunday that the future of the Donbas had not been settled, though the US president said discussions were “moving in the right direction”.
The US, 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. “It’s unresolved, but it’s getting a lot closer. That’s a very tough issue,” Trump said.
Nor did the leaders offer much insight into what agreements they had reached on providing security for Ukraine after the war ends, something Zelensky described Sunday as “the key milestone in achieving a lasting peace”. Russia has said any foreign troop deployment in Ukraine is unacceptable. Zelensky said any peace agreement would have to be approved by Ukraine’s parliament, or by a referendum. Trump said he would be willing to speak to parliament if that would secure the deal.
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