President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shake hands at the start of a joint news conference following a meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Ukraine and Russia are “closer than ever” to a peace deal, President Donald Trump said Sunday as he hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at his Florida resort.

He acknowledged, however, that the negotiations are complex and could still fail, leaving the war to drag on for years.

The president’s statements came after the leaders met for talks following what Trump called an “excellent” 2 1/2 hours of telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose invasion of Ukraine sparked the war nearly four years ago.

Trump said he believed Putin still wanted peace, even as Russia launched a new round of attacks on Ukraine while Zelensky flew to the United States for the latest round of negotiations.

“Russia wants to see Ukraine succeed,” Trump said at a late afternoon news conference as he stood alongside Zelensky after their meeting. He repeatedly praised his counterpart as “courageous”.

Both Trump and Zelensky acknowledged that thorny questions remain, including whether Russia can retain the Ukrainian territory it controls, as well as security guarantees for Ukraine to ensure it is not invaded again in the future. After their discussion, they convened a large group of European leaders, including Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, and the leaders of Finland, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Poland.

Zelensky said Trump had agreed to host European leaders again, possibly at the White House, sometime in January. Trump said the meeting could take place in Washington or “somewhere.”

Zelensky thanked Trump for his work. “Ukraine is ready for peace,” he said.

Trump and Putin will talk again

Trump said he would follow the meeting with another call to Putin. Earlier on Sunday, Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuriy Ushakov, said the Trump-Putin call was initiated by the American side and was “friendly, benevolent and pragmatic.” Ushakov said Trump and Putin agreed to speak again “quickly” after Trump’s meeting with Zelensky.

But Ushakov added that a “bold and responsible political decision is needed by kyiv” on the bitterly contested Donbass region in eastern Ukraine and other disputed issues for there to be a “complete cessation” of hostilities.

Both leaders identified the choice of the future of the Donbas region as a major sticking point.

Trump said the sides were moving closer to a deal. “It’s a very difficult issue but one that I think will be resolved,” he said.

Zelensky said: “Our attitude is very clear. That is why President Trump said that this is a very difficult issue and, of course, we have different positions on this with Russia.”

However, Trump said he still believed Putin was “very serious” about ending the war, even as Russia continued to strike targets in Ukraine while Zelensky traveled to the United States. Trump said: “I think Ukraine has also launched some very powerful attacks. »

He raised the possibility that the negotiations could still fail.

“In a few weeks we’ll know one way or the other, I think,” Trump said. “We might have something where something you don’t think about is a big thing and breaks it. Look, this was a very difficult negotiation. Very detailed.”

The meeting between Trump and Zelensky underscored the apparent progress made by Trump’s top negotiators in recent weeks, as the sides exchanged draft peace plans to end the fighting. Zelenskyy told reporters Friday that the 20-point draft proposal discussed by negotiators was “about 90 percent ready” — echoing a figure and optimism expressed by U.S. officials when Trump’s chief negotiators met with Zelenskyy in Berlin this month.

During recent negotiations, the United States agreed to offer Ukraine certain security guarantees similar to those offered to other NATO members. The proposal comes as Zelensky says he is ready to abandon his country’s candidacy for the security alliance if Ukraine benefits from NATO-like protection, intended to protect it against future Russian attacks.

“Intensive” weeks to come

Zelensky also spoke on Christmas Day with US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. The Ukrainian leader said they discussed “some substantive details” and warned that “there is still work to be done on sensitive issues” and that “the coming weeks could also be intense.”

The US president has worked to end the war in Ukraine for much of his first year in office, venting anger at both Zelensky and Putin while publicly acknowledging the difficulty of ending the conflict. Gone are the days when, as a candidate in 2024, he boasted of being able to resolve fights in a day. Indeed, on Sunday, Trump spoke several times about the complexity of the negotiations.

After welcoming Zelensky to the White House in October, Trump demanded that Russia and Ukraine stop fighting and “stop at the battle line,” implying that Moscow should be able to hold on to the territory it captured from Ukraine.

Zelensky said last week he would be ready to withdraw his troops from Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland as part of a plan to end the war, if Russia also withdrew and the area became a demilitarized zone monitored by international forces.

Putin wants Russian achievements to be preserved, and more

Putin has publicly stated that he wants all areas of four key regions that have been captured by his forces, as well as the Crimean peninsula, illegally annexed in 2014, to be recognized as Russian territory. He also insisted that Ukraine withdraw from some areas of eastern Ukraine that Moscow’s forces have not captured. Kyiv has publicly rejected all these demands.

The Kremlin also wants Ukraine to abandon its NATO candidacy. He warned that he would not accept the deployment of troops from the military alliance and that he would consider them a “legitimate target”.

Putin also said Ukraine must limit the size of its army and grant official status to the Russian language, demands he made from the start of the conflict.

Ushakov told business daily Kommersant this month that Russian police and national guards would remain in parts of Donetsk – one of the two main regions, along with Luhansk, that make up the Donbass region – even if it became a demilitarized zone under a possible peace plan.

Ushakov warned that trying to reach a compromise could take a long time. He said U.S. proposals that took Russian demands into account had been “worsened” by changes proposed by Ukraine and its European allies.

Trump appeared somewhat receptive to Putin’s demands, saying the Russian president could be persuaded to end the war if kyiv agreed to cede Ukrainian lands in the Donbas region and if Western powers offered economic incentives to bring Russia back into the global economy.