\n<\/p>\n
Diplomacy over the Russia-Ukraine war is in its \u201cfinal stages\u201d, said US President Donald Trump as he welcomed\u00a0Ukraine\u2019s leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy to his Florida estate.<\/p>\n
The two leaders stood outside the Mar-a-Lago resort on Sunday and addressed reporters as they prepared to discuss a new proposal to end the bloody conflict.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n The US president has been working hard to end the nearly four-year war in Ukraine for much of his first year back in office, showing irritation with both Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin while publicly acknowledging the difficulty of ending the fighting.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019re \u2026 in final stages of talking and we\u2019re going to see. Otherwise, it\u2019s going to go on for a long time, and millions of additional people will be killed,\u201d said Trump, adding he did not have a deadline for the process.<\/p>\n \u201cI do believe that we have the makings of a deal that\u2019s good for Ukraine, good for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n He added there would be \u201ca strong agreement\u201d to guarantee Ukraine\u2019s security, one that would involve European countries.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have two willing parties. We have two willing countries \u2026 The people of Ukraine want [the war] to end, and the people of Russia want it to end, and the two leaders want it to end,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n Russia intensified its attacks on Ukraine\u2019s capital in the days before the Florida meeting.<\/p>\n Zelenskyy, by Trump\u2019s side, said he and the US president would discuss issues of territorial concessions, which have so far been a red line for his country. He said his negotiators and Trump\u2019s advisers \u201chave discussed how to move step by step and bring peace closer\u201d and would continue to do so in Sunday\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n During recent talks, the US agreed to offer certain security guarantees to Ukraine similar to those offered to other members of NATO.<\/p>\n The proposal came as Zelenskyy said he was prepared to drop his country\u2019s bid to join the security alliance if Ukraine received NATO-like protection designed to safeguard it against future Russian attacks.<\/p>\n Oleksandr Kraiev, an analyst with the think-tank Ukrainian Prism, said the people of Ukraine are \u201cquite cynical\u201d about the talks brokered by the United States.<\/p>\n \u201cWe tried this in 2015, 2016, 2017, and unfortunately each time the Russians broke even the ceasefire regime, not even talking about the peace process,\u201d he told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n \u201cSo we have little faith that a proper peace process will take place. As of now we\u2019re striving for a ceasefire as a precondition for any kind of talks\u2026 We cannot trust the Russians with a peace deal, but a ceasefire is something we\u2019re working on.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s upbeat tone comes despite widespread scepticism in Europe about Putin\u2019s intentions after Russia carried out another massive bombardment of the Ukrainian capital just as Zelenskyy headed to Florida.<\/p>\n Before Zelenskyy arrived, Trump spoke with Putin by phone for more than an hour and said he planned to speak again after the Zelenskyy meeting \u2013 catching Ukrainian leaders off guard, reported Al Jazeera\u2019s Shihab Rattansi.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom what we\u2019re hearing, the Zelenskyy delegation here have been blindsided yet again by Donald Trump. And according to the Russians, it was at the Americans\u2019 insistence there should be a call with Vladimir Putin the hour before Zelenskyy arrived,\u201d said Rattansi, speaking from Palm Beach, Florida.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, while there is talk about land concessions from Ukraine\u2019s side, they are outside the framework Zelenskyy is hoping for.<\/p>\n The Kremlin gave a more pointed readout of Trump\u2019s talks with Putin, saying the US leader agreed a mere ceasefire \u201cwould only prolong the conflict\u201d as it demanded Ukraine compromise on territory.<\/p>\n Zelenskyy said last week that he would be willing to withdraw troops from Ukraine\u2019s eastern industrial heartland as part of a plan to end the war, if Russia also pulls back and the area becomes a demilitarised zone monitored by international forces.<\/p>\n Putin has publicly said he wants all the areas in four key regions captured by his forces, as well as the Crimean Peninsula, illegally annexed in 2014, to be recognised as Russian territory. He also insisted that Ukraine withdraw from some areas in eastern Ukraine that Moscow\u2019s forces have not captured.<\/p>\n Kyiv has publicly rejected all those demands.<\/p>\n Trump has been somewhat receptive to Putin\u2019s conditions, making the case that the Russian president can be persuaded to end the war if Kyiv agrees to cede Ukrainian land in the Donbas region, and if Western powers offer economic incentives to bring Russia back into the global economy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Diplomacy over the Russia-Ukraine war is in its \u201cfinal stages\u201d, said US President Donald Trump as he welcomed\u00a0Ukraine\u2019s leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy to his Florida estate. The two leaders stood outside the Mar-a-Lago resort on Sunday and addressed reporters as they prepared to discuss a new proposal to end the bloody conflict. Recommended Stories list of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6799,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
\u2018Blindsided yet again\u2019<\/h2>\n
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