“I don’t have a deadline to end the war,” Donald Trump said after meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky. But it is clear that with the talks “in the final stages”, the tycoon’s objective is to bring home the result as soon as possible, “if things go well in a couple of weeks”. To do this, the next few days will be of feverish negotiations in Kiev, Washington and Paris, while a new phone call between Trump and Putin is expected “very soon”. Meeting with journalists in the aftermath of the Mar-a-Lago summit, Zelensky made it clear what the next steps will be in the roadmap to ending the war.
Meeting of councilors in Ukraine
“First of all, we want to hold a meeting at the level of national security advisers in the next few days,” Zelensky announced, explaining that chief negotiator Rustem Umerov has already contacted American and European officials. «And I believe that this meeting will be held in Ukraine».
The summit with European leaders in Paris
Once all the documents have been prepared at the level of advisors, “there will be a meeting at the level of European leaders with Ukraine, in an expanded format, which also includes the Coalition of the Willing”, explained the Ukrainian leader, confirming what has already been announced by his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron with whom there was a telephone conversation: “We are making progress on security guarantees which will be fundamental to building a just and lasting peace. At the beginning of January we will bring together the countries of the Coalition of the Willing in Paris to define the concrete contributions of each country”, explained the head of the Elysée. The meeting in Paris will be useful in finalizing the documents for peace.
Zelensky and allies fly to Washington
Next, Zelensky and European allies will fly to the United States to meet Donald Trump. “We are all seriously committed to ensuring that these meetings take place in January”, reiterated the Ukrainian president who from Florida, alongside Trump, had assured that Kiev “is ready for peace”.
Negotiations with Moscow and the Trump-Putin phone call
If the Western roadmap seems to be well outlined, the path that negotiations with Moscow will take in the coming days is less clear. After the phone call with Putin who anticipated the summit with Zelensky at Mar-a-Lago, the tycoon reported that they would speak with the tsar again. While Moscow denied rumors of a possible phone call between Putin and Zelensky leaked by the US media: “It is not currently under consideration,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov. For his part, Zelensky stated that «if everything proceeds step by step, there will be a meeting, one way or another, with the Russians. And we are ready for the relevant formats that we have already discussed.”