President Volodymyr Zelensky will meet US Vice President JD Vance on Friday at the Munich Security Conference, where they are set to discuss Washington’s push for an end to the three-year war with Russia.
US President Donald Trump will also dispatch his special envoy Keith Kellogg, who is tasked with drawing up a proposal to halt the fighting, to Ukraine a week later, a source in the Ukrainian presidency told AFP.
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Trump is pushing for a swift end to the nearly three-year war, while Zelensky is calling for tough security guarantees from Washington as part of any deal with Russia.
Kyiv fears that any settlement that does not include hard military commitments, such as NATO membership or the deployment of peacekeeping troops, will just allow the Kremlin time to regroup and rearm for a fresh attack.
Zelensky’s spokesman Serhiy Nikiforov told AFP the meeting with Vance would take place Friday on the sidelines of the Munich conference.
Meanwhile a source in the Ukrainian president’s office said Kellogg would arrive in Ukraine on February 20. They did not say where in the country Kellogg would visit. His trip would come just days before the three-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion on February 24.
Zelensky called Monday for “real peace and effective security guarantees” for Ukraine.
“Security of people, security of our state, security of economic relations and, of course, our resource sustainability: not only for Ukraine, but for the entire free world,” he said in an evening video address published on social media. “All of this is being decided now.”
Trump Floats Ukraine ‘May be Russian Someday’ Ahead of Zelensky-Vance Meeting
Trump meetings
Trump has said he wants to broker an end to the war but has not outlined a detailed proposal to bring the two sides to the negotiating table. Both Zelensky and Russian strongman Vladimir Putin have previously ruled out direct talks with each other, and there appears to be little ground where the two could strike a deal.
Putin is demanding that Ukraine withdraw from swathes of its south and east that Kyiv still has control over, and considers closer ties between Ukraine and NATO inadmissible. Zelensky has meanwhile rejected any territorial concessions to Moscow, though he has acknowledged that Ukraine might have to rely on diplomatic means to secure the return of some territory.
Zelensky said Monday that a meeting with Trump was also being arranged, but that a date had not yet been fixed. Trump said last week that he would “probably” meet Zelensky in the coming days, but ruled out personally traveling to Kyiv.
Organizers of the closely followed Munich Security Conference had confirmed earlier Monday that Zelensky would attend the Feb. 14-16 summit.
The US delegation is set to include Secretary of State Marco Rubio as well as Kellogg and Vance, MSC chair Christoph Heusgen told a Berlin press conference. There will be no representatives of the Russian government present, Heusgen said.
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