The U.S.-Ukraine negotiations in Florida extended into three days and then were paused yesterday, after Ukraine’s acting president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was brought into the discussion. U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, along with unofficial advisor Jared Kushner, spent two days with Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council head Rustem Umerov and the Chief of Staff Andrii Hnatov.
Axios cited “people familiar with the matter” to report that the issues of territories, as well as security guarantees, were raised. According to the source, the discussion of the territories was difficult, and the hardest part was that “Russia still demands that Ukraine withdraw troops from the parts of the Donbass it controls, but the United States is trying to develop new options to overcome this problem.” During his trip to India on Dec. 4, Putin had stated that Russia would push Ukrainian troops out of Donbass by force if they refused to withdraw.
So, even though the region voted overwhelmingly to secede from Ukraine, and later to join the Russian Federation, Zelenskyy wouldn’t agree to include the remaining section of the Donetsk Region in a deal. Otherwise, Axios reported that the U.S. has offered security guarantees and, on that, they made “significant progress and neared agreement.”
