Trump to meet with Zelensky as the US envoy says to end the war with Russia to a single issue

US President Donald Trump will meet with Volodymyr Zelensky in Davos on Thursday, after his envoy Steve Witkoff expressed optimism about concluding an agreement to end the war in Ukraine.

“I think we’ve got it down to one issue and we’ve discussed iterations of that issue, and that means it’s going to be resolved,” Witkoff said ahead of his trip to Moscow for talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Witkoff did not specify an issue but the recent talks focused on the future status of Ukraine’s industrial center in the Donbas, with a proposal for a demilitarized and free economic zone in exchange for security guarantees for Kyiv.

“If both sides want to work it out, we can work it out,” Witkoff said.

Ahead of Witkoff’s visit to Moscow with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, the US president said on Wednesday that he thought Putin and Zelensky were at a point where they could come together and reach an agreement: “If they don’t, they’re stupid.”

Last week, Trump said he thought Putin was “ready to make a deal” but that Zelensky was “not very ready”.

The Ukrainian president traveled overnight to get to Davos on Thursday.

He initially halted his trip to deal with the aftermath of Russian strikes on Kyiv’s electricity infrastructure that left large areas of the capital without heating, water or electricity during the worst winter in nearly four years of Russia’s all-out war. Thousands of apartment blocks remain without heating.

There is concern in Kyiv that Trump’s spat with his European Nato allies over the future of Greenland has distanced him from the war in Ukraine.

Zelensky said after talks with Trump in Miami late last month that a 20-point US plan to end the war is 90% ready and that Ukraine’s position on the Donbas, in eastern Ukraine, is different from Russia’s.

Specifically, Zelensky has offered to withdraw troops from the 25% of the Donetsk region still controlled by Ukraine up to 40km (25 miles), to create an economic zone, if Russia does so. Russian forces have been slowly advancing in the east over the past year and Putin is known to want to control the entire region.

Another major point Zelensky highlighted last month was the future control of Ukraine’s massive Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which was seized by Russia in March 2022.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that the discussion with the American envoys would continue “on the Ukrainian issue and other related topics” and declined to say whether he shared Witkoff’s optimism in reaching an agreement.

Putin has also not decided whether to join Trump’s Gaza Peace Council.

Ukraine’s president hopes to sign two key documents with Trump in Davos covering future security guarantees as well as economic development, but said there was “a mile left to complete these documents”.

It is not yet clear if any signings will take place at their meeting at the World Economic Forum.

However, the head of Ukraine’s national security and defense council, Rustem Umerov, said on Wednesday night that his team in Davos discussed issues of economic development, post-war recovery and security guarantees with their US counterparts.