For Zelensky, Just Keeping Trump Talking About Ukraine Peace Deal Counts as a Win

Though discussions produced little tangible progress, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine at least avoided the type of setbacks that have blighted earlier meetings.

Dec. 29, 2025Updated 9:45 a.m. ET

A new round of peace talks between President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and President Trump on Sunday seems to have produced little beyond a promise to meet again next month and a reminder of how distant a peace deal remains.

Yet for Mr. Zelensky, even a stalemate in the discussions counts as a measure of success.

Following setbacks in U.S. support for Ukraine this year, one of Mr. Zelensky’s main priorities when meeting Mr. Trump has been to prevent talks from derailing. After the meeting on Sunday, Mr. Trump signaled that he would remain engaged in the negotiations — a win for Ukraine given his repeated threats to walk away. Mr. Trump also backed away from setting another deadline to reach a peace deal, after having previously floated Thanksgiving and Christmas as target dates.

“I don’t have deadlines,” Mr. Trump told reporters as he greeted Mr. Zelensky at Mar-a-Lago in Florida for the talks. “You know what my deadline is? Getting the war ended.”

Most important for Ukraine, Mr. Trump did not echo Russia’s maximalist demands to stop the fighting, a departure from earlier in his term when he often appeared to side with the Kremlin. The change was also notable because Mr. Trump had spoken with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia just before meeting Mr. Zelensky, the type of last-minute Russian intervention that has derailed Ukrainian hopes before.

That outcome may leave Mr. Zelensky hopeful that Kyiv and Washington have become more closely aligned in the peace negotiations. Several European leaders also joined Sunday’s talks by phone, and Mr. Zelensky said that the United States might host a new round of negotiations next month that could include them.

“The fact that they’re talking is a victory in and of itself,” Harry Nedelcu, a senior director at Rasmussen Global, a research organization, said of the American and Ukrainian presidents.

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