Zelensky hopes to clinch peace deal for Ukraine in meeting with Trump

(AFP) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, will meet Sunday in Florida with his American counterpart, Donald Trump, seeking his approval for a new proposal aimed at ending the nearly four-year-long conflict with Russia.

The 20-point plan, the fruit of weeks of intense U.S.-Ukraine negotiations, lacks Moscow's approval, and the face-to-face meeting in Florida will come in the wake of a massive Russian missile and drone strike against Kiev.

The meeting, hosted by Trump at his opulent Mar-a-Lago residence, will be the first in-person meeting between the two leaders since October, when the U.S. president refused to grant Zelensky's request for long-range Tomahawk missiles. The meeting will take place at 1 p.m. local time.

During a stopover in the Canadian city of Halifax on Saturday, Zelensky said he hoped the talks would be "very constructive" and said Russian President Vladimir Putin had shown his cards with the latest attack on the Ukrainian capital.

"This really shows that Putin doesn't want peace. ... We want peace," he noted.

Since Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, much of the east and south of the country was devastated by fighting and tens of thousands of people have been killed.

"Full support"

In Halifax, Zelensky held a teleconference with European leaders, who confirmed their "full support" for the peace efforts, according to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

E.U. leaders Ursula von der Leyen and Antonio Costa, who participated in the teleconference, assured that the European Union's support for Ukraine will never waver.

Russia has accused Ukraine and its European allies of trying to "torpedo" an earlier U.S.-mediated plan to stop the fighting.

Adding more pressure on the ground, Moscow announced Saturday the capture of two more villages in eastern Ukraine, Myrnohrad and Huliaipole.

Quoted by Tass news agency, Putin argued that "the leadership of the Kiev regime is in no hurry to resolve this conflict peacefully."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Tass early Sunday that "the European Union has become the main obstacle to peace."

So far, Trump has not committed to the new peace proposal.

The talks will address a plan that would halt the war along the current front lines and could require Ukraine to withdraw troops from the east, allowing for the creation of demilitarized buffer zones.

The text contains the most explicit acknowledgment yet by Kiev of possible territorial concessions. But it does not envisage Ukraine withdrawing from the 20% of the eastern Donetsk region it still controls, which is Russia's main territorial demand.

But the war in Ukraine has turned out to be much more difficult than he expected, and President Trump has repeatedly expressed frustration with both sides for failing to reach a truce.