US Offers Trilateral Talks With Ukraine, Russia, Zelenskiy Says

The US offered to hold talks together with Ukrainian and Russian representatives in Florida as Donald Trump’s administration pushes for a peace deal, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said. 

Whether the trilateral talks will take place depends on the US-Ukrainian negotiations that started Friday, Zelenskiy told journalists in Kyiv on Saturday. If they happen, an European delegation that is also now in Florida may join the meeting, he said. 

“The US said that they will have a separate meeting with Russia’s representatives and as far as I understand they offered the format of Ukraine-the US-Russia, and since there are also representatives from Europe, probably Europe as well,” Zelenskiy said at a joint press conference with Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro. “But logically to hold a joint meeting first we will assess the results of the US-Ukraine talks, whether they are positive or not, and we will build from that.”

The Ukrainian delegation, led by top security official Rustem Umerov, began another round of consultations with their American counterparts after US envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, held a flurry of discussions with Kyiv and its European backers in Berlin earlier in the week. 

Witkoff and Kushner are expected to meet Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev in Florida over the weekend. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also acting National Security Advisor to Trump, said on Friday that he may attend some of the meetings.

In comments after the talks in Germany, Trump hinted that Ukraine should have to give up territory currently not occupied by Russia, a demand Zelenskiy has repeatedly rejected. 

Kyiv and its partners “are carefully working at every point, at every step of an agreement so that we get not a notion about territory and resources division but an agreement on stable and lasting peace and reliable security guarantees,” Zelenskiy said. “For us, it is important to have fair peace.”

Ukraine wants to know what its partners will do if Russia attacks again after the current full-scale invasion, which the Kremlin ordered almost four years ago, is over, Zelenskiy said. These include “what a deterrence package will be, what Ukrainian army will have, which package of sanctions will be implemented,” he said.

Under the initial 28-point peace plan that the US worked out together with Russia, Ukraine is supposed to hold presidential elections. Either a ceasefire or an end of the war is needed for elections to take place, Zelenskiy said.   

“Our American partners raised this question,” Zelenskiy said. “I think if they raise it, then they know how to help us to ensure safe elections.” 

While Trump has previously pressured Ukraine to strike a deal with Russia, Rubio said on Friday that US negotiators were not leaning hard on Kyiv.

Before his return to the White House in January, Trump had claimed he would end the war on the first day of his second term. But his attempts to broker a ceasefire has foundered on Vladimir Putin’s refusal to roll back on Russia’s maximalist demands in Ukraine, including at a summit meeting between the two leaders in Alaska in August.