Vladimir Putin is unlikely to fear any pressure from Donald Trump to end the war in Ukraine and will continue delaying any progress towards peace after the US and Ukraine said an agreement was “closer than ever”.
The US President and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence on Sunday to discuss a revised 20-point peace plan to end the Ukraine-Russia war, with the former declaring “peace is closer than ever before.”
Speaking to members of the press after the discussion over lunch at Trump’s Florida residence, the 47th US president said he aimed to end the almost four-year conflict, which he called “ the biggest war, certainly the deadliest war since World War Two.”.
Trump said on Sunday that agreement on this point was close to 95 per cent complete, though some “thorny” issues remained, particularly around the future of Ukraine’s contested Donbas region, which Russia aims to control fully.
Moscow currently holds roughly 75 per cent of Donetsk and nearly 99 per cent of neighbouring Luhansk, regions collectively known as Donbas.
After the talks, Trump told reporters that a deal on Donbas remained “unresolved, but it’s getting a lot closer.” The region’s future has been a major sticking point, with Russia consistently refusing to compromise on its goal of complete control.
The Kremlin reiterated on Monday that Ukraine should withdraw its troops from the areas of Donbas still under Kyiv’s control, though its spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, agreed with Trump that the talks to end the war were in their final stage.
Zelensky said the US had offered security guarantees for an extendable 15-year period, though Kyiv wants the option of extending this to 50 years. He hoped the guarantees would take effect immediately after signing a peace deal, Reuters reported. The duration has not yet been commented on by the US.
Peskov said that Trump and the Russian President were expected to have another phone call “very soon,” following their conversation ahead of Trump’s meeting with Zelensky in Florida yesterday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Donald Trump at the Mar-a-Lago club in Florida on Sunday (Photo: Joe Raedle/ Getty Images)Ahead of the Sunday meeting with Zelensky, Trump wrote on Truth Social that his one-hour-and-15-minute call with Putin had been “good and very productive”. The timing of their next call has not been announced.
One former Ukrainian diplomat, Maria Drutska, said Putin was trying to “sabotage things” by ringing Trump before he met Zelensky. Putin used the same tactic previously before Zelensky met Trump in Washington in October. Following that, Trump backtracked on giving long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine.
After the Florida talks this weekend Trump also suggested again the possibility of trilateral talks between the US, Russia, and Ukraine “at the right time”. While he is eager to add the Ukraine-Russia conflict to the list of wars he claims to have ended, he cautioned that stalled or failed negotiations could prolong the conflict.
However, Putin is unlikely to agree to any deal that is acceptable to Ukraine, having repeatedly made clear his aim of subjugating the country in its entirety, experts warned.
“Putin is deeply intent on destroying Ukraine and continues to live under certain illusions about the fragility of the front, ” said Dr Victoria Vdovychenko, joint programme leader for the Future of Ukraine Programme at the University of Cambridge.
Vdovychenko said the as-yet unsigned deal was unlikely to be bad for Russia. Rather, following the talks in Florida, she said Russia did not recognise their results, especially as Ukraine’s troops are still in Donbas.
“There should be no expectations of good news from the negotiation track. The war will continue—at the very least through the first half of 2026,” she said.
Russian officials are giving no ground on their maximalist demands. The Kremlin adviser Yuri Ushakov, said Trump “listened carefully” to Russia’s assessment of the conflict on Sunday, and that the US and Russia agreed that a ceasefire proposed by Ukraine and Europe was “fraught with renewed hostilities” and would prolong the fighting.
The US think-tank the Institute for the Study of War poured cold water on the notion that Russia would greenlight the current deal, pointing out that recent statements from the Kremlin contrast with positions that Trump’s claims to be a basis for ending the war.
The Institute said its continued assessment was that “Kremlin statements demonstrate that Russia’s goals in Ukraine exceed territorial demands such as the seizure of Donetsk Oblast and that a peace deal that does not address Russian demands of Nato and the West outside of Ukraine will not satisfy Russia, nor lead to a lasting peace that can normalise Russian-European or US-Russian relations”.
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Vdovychenko said until the peace deal was signed and sealed, it was impossible to know whether the negotiation of the framework would be integrated into a binding legal act, stating that emphasis on what the talks were about specifically would make it easier to analyse whether this would have effects for Russia and Ukraine.
“Putin will attempt to buy a little more time, hoping for a miracle. Since 2024, he and his inner circle have been operating with increasingly short time horizons.
“For now, he will try to delay a decision. For how long? The answer is straightforward: as long as he can, without falling out with Trump. He has already stopped fearing Trump — but he still fears quarrelling with him.”
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