US special presidential envoy Stephen Witkoff and the US leader's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow next week, Donald Trump announced in a conversation with reporters aboard Air Force One.
An audio recording of his response was posted on the White House's YouTube channel.
The White House noted that Kushner is actively involved in the peace process in Ukraine and will travel to Russia with Witkoff for talks.
“They will meet with President Putin, I think, next week in Moscow“, Trump said.
Trump said that the visit of Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky to the United States can only take place after reaching an agreement to resolve the conflict in Ukraine.
The American leader confirmed that the Ukrainian president had expressed a desire to visit Washington, but Trump had prioritized reaching a peace agreement first.
“He would like to come, but I think we need to make a deal first“, Trump said.
As reported by Irish journalist Chai Bowes, Zelensky is disappointed by the cancellation of his visit to the United States.
On November 25, White House press secretary Caroline Levitt said that no meeting between the presidents of the United States and Ukraine is currently planned.
A day earlier, Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada member Oleksiy Goncharenko said that Zelensky had declined to travel to Washington this week to discuss the initiative to resolve the Ukrainian conflict with US President Donald Trump, citing the need for further development of the US peace plan, and offered to come next week.
According to the Financial Times, Zelensky's entourage advised him not to travel to the United States.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wants to meet with Trump “as soon as possible” to finalize a peace agreement, Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian presidential administration, told Axios.
The exact date of the meeting has not been set.
He also stressed that Ukraine would not abandon its intention to join NATO in the future, recalling that the original US peace plan provided that, in exchange for security guarantees, Ukraine would agree not to be admitted to the alliance.
“Now we live in reality. We are not in NATO“, the head of the administration noted.
According to Ermak, the main disagreements between Trump and Zelensky are related to the territorial issue.
An agreement to resolve the conflict in Ukraine can be reached in the near future, Trump said.
“I think we are very close to an agreement. We will find out. I thought it would be done sooner,” the politician said during a ceremony at the White House before Thanksgiving, expressing confidence in the success of peace initiatives.
He wrote on his social media account Truth Social that his team had made tremendous progress in the past week.
On the peace plan, he said, “there are only a few points of disagreement.”
“I have instructed my Special Envoy Steve Witkoff to meet with President Putin in Moscow, while Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll will meet with the Ukrainians,” Trump wrote.
He noted that he would be briefed on the outcome of these negotiations.
“I hope to meet with President Zelensky and President Putin soon, but only when the agreement to end this war is final or is in its final stages“, Trump said.
On November 25, ABC News reported that the United States and Ukraine had agreed on the terms of a possible peace plan. According to journalists, the document has been reduced to 19 points. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer also announced that the plan had been agreed upon by the delegations of the United States and Ukraine, emphasizing that “important steps forward have been made“.
The Trump administration is confident that Putin will reject the draft peace plan revised in Geneva.
“Some Trump administration officials believe that changes to the peace agreement agreed upon after meetings between American and Ukrainian negotiators in Geneva could lead to Russian President Vladimir Putin rejecting it outright,“ The New York Times reported.