It appeared, at the very least superficially, to have been one of many higher face-to-face conferences between Presidents Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, their sixth in a 12 months that has seen this relationship fray to breaking level and require common and painstaking repairs.
The temper, as they emerged from the eating room at Mar-a-Lago was conciliatory. Zelensky wore a swimsuit – the identical austere black compromise assertion he had worn on the White House in October. Trump known as the meeting “terrific” and requested if Zelensky and his common who “looks like central casting” had loved the meals. Awkward, sure, however a far cry from the open humiliation of the Ukrainian chief that performed out within the Oval Office in February.
And but, beneath the veil of politeness, there was rhetoric from the US president that implies his default place in negotiations continues to be to stress Kyiv, whereas appeasing Moscow.
On the hardest query of all – territory – Trump at one level instructed it would anyway be “taken” within the coming months, asking, “are you better off making a deal now?” It was a line eerily just like that of Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov, summarizing a name between President Vladimir Putin and Trump earlier on Sunday: “Given the situation on the front lines, it would make sense for the Ukrainian regime to adopt this decision regarding Donbas without delay.”
That echo wasn’t misplaced on the Kremlin. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov famous on a name with journalists that Trump “apparently reminded them (the Ukrainian side) that Ukraine is losing land and will continue to lose it.” While Russian forces proceed to inch ahead within the japanese Donbas area, Putin has demanded that Ukraine cede land that Russia has but to grab.
The Kremlin would have already got been assured in its energy to sway the US president. In the lead-up to the Alaska summit between Trump and Putin in August, European leaders labored arduous to convey Trump spherical to the concept a ceasefire was wanted earlier than peace negotiations, one thing Moscow has all the time dismissed. In the tip, it was Putin who gained that argument, and, greater than 4 months later, Trump nonetheless seems to help his view.
“He (Putin) feels that, look, you know, they’re fighting to stop and then if they have to start again, which is a possibility, he doesn’t want to be in that position. I understand that position,” Trump mentioned Sunday.
The obvious removing of a ceasefire from the desk has now created a brand new deadlock. While Ukraine is sounding more and more open to dialogue of territorial concessions, Zelensky has made it clear that giving up, or altering the standing of, Ukrainian land would seemingly require a referendum, one thing he says can’t occur with no ceasefire lasting at the very least 60 days.
No ceasefire then means no referendum, and no referendum might imply no territorial concessions from Ukraine, and finally no deal. So, we’re again on the diplomatic merry-go-round, shopping for increasingly time for Russia to assault.
“Russia wants to continue to put pressure on us. And what does this continuation look like? War, missiles, artillery,” Zelensky mentioned in feedback to journalists Monday morning. As he spoke, most Ukrainian areas began a brand new week with common blackouts, and greater than 9,000 households within the Kyiv area awoke with no energy in any respect.
Hardly stunning then, that the Ukrainian president shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the opposite as he listened to Trump describe Putin as “very good” on the problem of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear energy plant, which Russia seized by pressure in March 2022 and has occupied ever since.
“President Putin is actually working with Ukraine on getting it open. That’s a big step when he’s not bombing that plant,” mentioned the US president.
The Zaporizhzhia plant is presently present process repairs to close by energy traces to stop a nuclear accident, in response to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The facility has been lower off from its exterior energy provide 12 instances since Russia’s occupation, and earlier this month the UN’s nuclear watchdog warned that Moscow’s fixed assaults on Ukrainian power infrastructure are also a risk to its safety. “Persistent instability in Ukraine’s electrical grid continues to undermine nuclear safety,” said Director General Rafael Grossi.
On one vital problem for Ukraine there was a small step ahead: safety ensures. Up till now, Kyiv solely had verbal assurances the US would take part in post-war safety ensures, after Trump shifted his place in August. Now these assurances are in writing, albeit with a 15-year expiry date – which Zelensky desires prolonged – and nonetheless in want of congressional approval. The ensures wouldn’t imply US troops on the bottom, however at the very least there could be help for Europe in the event that they determined to ship theirs. “We’re going to help Europe 100%, like they’d help us,” mentioned Trump.
And but till Russia and Ukraine can come collectively for direct talks, which Zelensky hopes might occur in January after one other circuit of discussions with allies, all of that is hypothetical. That prospect appeared much more distant Monday after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Kyiv of attacking one in all Putin’s residences, promising Moscow would “review” its negotiating place consequently. Zelensky rejected the declare as “another lie” from Russia.
Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, reiterated Monday that Russia desires “the withdrawal of the regime’s armed forces from Donbas beyond its administrative borders.” That, after all, contains territory Russia hasn’t been capable of occupy in almost 4 years of warfare. And in return Moscow continues to obtain reward and diplomatic overtures from the White House, with Trump chatting with Putin each earlier than and after his meeting with Zelensky.
The diplomatic merry-go-round revs up once more now going into 2026, with adviser-level conferences adopted by a gathering of the “Coalition of the Willing” in Paris in early January, after which a possible Washington summit with Trump, Zelensky mentioned Monday. Meanwhile the Trump administration has proposed that discussions proceed in a number of working teams, an thought endorsed by Moscow.
And but on this now largely predictable cycle, you possibly can’t rule out a sudden shift. In October, a pissed off Trump slapped sanctions on Russia’s oil giants, a transfer that has brought about Russian oil costs to plummet to their lowest stage for the reason that February 2022 invasion.
“Maybe the tug of war for Trump is not lost for Ukraine yet. The leaders are meeting, conversations ongoing,” wrote Orysia Lutsevych, head of the Ukraine Forum at London-based assume tank Chatham House in a submit on X. Former Russian diplomat Boris Bondarev struck a much less optimistic tone. “If you want to delay anything for (an) indefinitely long time – create a few working groups,” he wrote.
NCS’s Kevin Liptak, Victoria Butenko, Darya Tarasova, Issy Ronald, Svitlana Vlasova, Mitchell McCluskey and Aditi Sangal contributed to this report.