“Maybe very close to peace.” What we know about the results of the meeting between Trump and Zelenskiy

US President Donald Trump says he and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky are “increasingly close, maybe very close” to an agreement to end the war in Ukraine, a different tone from previous meetings between the two leaders, Reuters and CNN note.

Teams from the US, Ukraine and Europe will continue to meet in the coming weeks, likely in Washington, Donald Trump, who is expected to hold talks with Putin again, said on Sunday.

The two held a joint news conference after their meeting Sunday afternoon at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

We'll know if there's peace in 'a few weeks'

Both said progress had been made on two of the most contentious issues in the peace talks – security guarantees for Ukraine and the division of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.

Neither Trump nor Zelenskiy revealed many details or set a deadline for finalizing the peace deal, although Trump said it would be “in a few weeks” whether negotiations to end the war were successful. He said some “thorny issues” related to the territory needed to be resolved.

Zelensky said an agreement was reached on security guarantees for Ukraine. Trump was a bit more cautious, saying they were 95 percent of the way to such a deal and that he expected European countries to “take a big part” of that effort, with US support.

French President Emmanuel Macron, in a post published after the meeting between Trump and Zelenskiy, said that progress had been made in terms of security guarantees. Macron said countries in the so-called “Coalition of the Will” would meet in Paris in early January to finalize their “concrete contributions”.

Talks 'heading in the right direction'

Zelenskiy previously said he hoped to modify the US proposal that Ukrainian forces withdraw completely from the Donbas, a claim by Russia that would mean ceding part of the territory controlled by Ukrainian forces. While Moscow insists on getting all of Donbas, Kiev wants the map to remain unchanged, at the current battle lines.

Both Trump and Zelenskiy have now said that the future of Donbass has not yet been decided, although the US president has said that the talks are “going in the right direction”. The United States, seeking a compromise, has proposed a free economic zone if the Ukrainians leave, although it remains unclear how that would work in practical terms.

“It's not solved, but it's very close to being solved. It's a very difficult problem,” Trump said.

The two did not provide many details on the agreements they reached on securing Ukraine after the war ends, which Zelenskiy said on Sunday was “an essential reference point in achieving lasting peace”.

Russia has so far stated that any deployment of foreign troops to Ukraine is unacceptable.

Zelenskiy stressed that any peace deal would have to be approved by Ukraine's parliament or through a referendum. Trump said he would be willing to go to the parliament in Kiev if that would secure the deal.

Trump spoke on the phone with Putin before the talk with Zelenskiy

Shortly before Zelenskiy and his delegation arrived at Trump's Florida residence, he had a phone conversation with Vladimir Putin described as “productive” by the US president and “friendly” by Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov.

Ushakov, who is in Moscow, said Putin told Trump that the 60-day truce proposed by the European Union and Ukraine would prolong the war. The Kremlin adviser also said that Ukraine must make a decision on Donbas “without delay”.

Trump said he and Putin spoke for more than two hours. He said the Russian president had pledged to help rebuild Ukraine, including by providing cheap energy. “Russia wants Ukraine to succeed,” Trump said. “It sounds a little strange,” he added.

Trump said he would call Putin again after the meeting with Zelenskiy.

“The whole world appreciates the peace efforts of President Trump and his team,” Kirill Dmitriev, Putin's special envoy, wrote on the X social network after Trump's meeting with Zelenskiy.

Russia controls all of Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, and since the start of the invasion nearly four years ago has taken control of about 12 percent of its territory, including about 90 percent of Donbas, 75 percent of Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, and small parts of Kharkiv, Sumy, Nikolaev and Dnipropetrovsk regions.