During a phone call with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, US President Donald Trump told him he wanted to reach a peace deal as soon as possible, Axios reported, citing a Ukrainian official and two sources familiar with the conversation.
“Zelensky said he hoped the war would end this year, to which Trump responded that the war had gone on too long and expressed a desire for it to end in a month,“ one of the sources said.
The Ukrainian official also said that Trump had confirmed his readiness to provide Ukraine with significant US security guarantees as part of a potential peace deal with Russia.
Special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, also participated in Zelensky's phone call with Trump.
Zelensky said they discussed issues "that our representatives will work on" in Geneva at a bilateral meeting on February 26, as well as "preparations for the next meeting of the full negotiating teams in a trilateral format in early March." He expressed hope that the meeting "will provide an opportunity to move to negotiations at the leadership level."
Witkoff said the day before that a new round of trilateral talks between Russia, Ukraine and the United States to resolve the conflict could take place within the next ten days. A TASS source previously reported that the meeting had been postponed to early March.