“We had a substantive conversation on all issues and highly value the progress that the Ukrainian and American teams have made over the past weeks,” Zelensky said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and Moscow currently controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory.
A proposal to turn the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, which Russia largely controls, into a demilitarised zone remains “unresolved”, Trump said.
“Some of that land has been taken,” he told reporters after the meeting. “Some of that land is maybe up for grabs, but it may be taken over the next period of a number of months.”
Moscow currently controls about 75% of the Donetsk region, and some 99% of the neighbouring Luhansk. The regions are collectively known as Donbas.
Russia wants Ukraine to pull back from the small part of the territory it still controls in Donbas, while Kyiv has insisted the area could become a free economic zone policed by Ukrainian forces.
The US president has repeatedly changed his own position on Ukraine’s lost territories, and in September stunned observers by suggesting that Ukraine might be able to take it back. He later reversed course.
“[That] is a very tough issue,” he said. “One that will get resolved.”
Security guarantees for Ukraine are “95% done”, Trump said, without formally committing to logistical support or troop deployment to help protect Ukraine from future attacks.
Trump floated the possibility of trilateral talks between the US, Russia, and Ukraine, saying it could happen “at the right time”.
While the US president is keen to add the Ukraine-Russia war to the list of conflicts he claims to have ended, he cautioned that stalled or scrapped talks that go “really badly” could mean that the war continues.
