Zelenskyy looks to close out Ukraine peace deal at Trump meet

PALM BEACH, Florida: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will sit down Sunday (Dec 28) with Donald Trump and seek to secure the US president's stamp of approval for a new proposal to end the nearly four-year conflict with Russia.

The 20-point plan, which emerged from weeks of intense US-Ukraine negotiations, lacks Moscow's approval, and the face-to-face in Florida comes in the wake of a massive Russian missile and drone attack on Kyiv.

The meeting, to be hosted by Trump at his opulent Mar-a-Lago residence at 1pm Sunday (Monday 2am, Singapore time) according to the White House, will be the pair's first in-person encounter since October, when the US president refused to grant Zelensky's request for long-range Tomahawk missiles.

During a stopover in Canada on Saturday, Zelenskyy said he hoped the talks would be "very constructive" and said Russian leader Vladimir Putin had shown his hand with the latest assault on the Ukrainian capital.

"This attack is again, Russia's answer on our peace efforts. And this really showed that Putin doesn't want peace," he said.

EUROPEANS VOW SUPPORT

While in Canada, Zelenskyy held a conference call with European leaders who, according to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, pledged their full support for his peace efforts.

Russia has accused Ukraine and its European backers of trying to "torpedo" a previous US-brokered plan to stop the fighting.

EU chiefs Ursula von der Leyen and Antonio Costa, who participated in the conference call, said the European Union's backing for Ukraine would never falter and vowed to maintain pressure on the Kremlin to come to terms.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told state news agency TASS that Moscow would continue its "engagement with American negotiators" but criticised Europeans saying: "After the change of administration in the US, Europe and the European Union have become the main obstacle to peace."

"They are making no secret of their plans to prepare for war with Russia," Lavrov added.

"The ambitions (of European politicians) are literally blinding them: not only do they not care about Ukrainians, but they also don't seem to care about their own population."

Trump has so far been non-committal on the new peace proposal.

Zelenskyy "doesn't have anything until I approve it," the president said in an interview with Politico on Friday. "So we'll see what he's got."

The talks will address a plan that would stop the war along its current front lines and could require Ukraine to pull back troops from the east, allowing the creation of demilitarised buffer zones.

As such, it contains Kyiv's most explicit acknowledgement yet of possible territorial concessions.

But it does not envisage Ukraine withdrawing from the 20 per cent of the eastern Donetsk region that it still controls - Russia's main territorial demand.

Trump has made ending the Ukraine and Gaza wars the centerpiece of his self-proclaimed second term as a "president of peace".

But the Ukraine war has, by his own admission, proved far harder than he expected, and the president has repeatedly voiced his frustration with both sides for failing to secure a truce.

SECURITY GUARANTEES

In Canada, Zelenskyy told reporters that security guarantees would be a key focus of the talks in Florida.

"Security guarantees must be simultaneous with the end of the war, because we must be confident that Russia will not start aggression again," he stressed.

"We need strong security guarantees. We will discuss this and we will discuss the terms."

Ukraine insists it needs more European and US support in terms of funding and weaponry - especially drones.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who met with Zelenskyy during his stopover on Saturday, announced US$1.82 billion in fresh economic assistance to help Ukraine rebuild once the war ends.

The latest Russian attack, which saw 500 drones and 40 missiles pummel the Ukrainian capital and its infrastructure, knocked out power and heating to hundreds of thousands of Kyiv region residents during freezing temperatures.

Just south of the capital, Kherson city military administration said Russia launched an attack that left part of the city without electricity.