According to a White House official, the two men had a telephone exchange on Wednesday before resuming negotiations on Thursday in Geneva.
President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky had a telephone exchange on Wednesday, as confirmed by the White House official to AFP. “I just spoke with President Donald Trump,” Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed on social media. “President Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were also in the conversation,” he added.
This meeting, which “lasted about 30 minutes,” according to Ukrainian presidential advisor Dmitro Lytvyn, took place the day before a meeting on Thursday between Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Oumerov and Messrs. Witkoff and Kushner.
The Kremlin’s economic commissioner Kirill Dmitriev also planned to go to Geneva Thursday “to continue negotiations with the Americans on the economic front,” according to a source cited by the Russian state news agency Tass on Wednesday. Dmitriev has met with the two American envoys several times to discuss negotiations aimed at resolving the conflict in Ukraine.
Washington is pushing to end the war, triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the worst armed conflict in Europe since World War II with hundreds of thousands of deaths and injuries, millions of Ukrainians refugees, and massive destruction in eastern and southern Ukraine.
Considered “complex issues”
“We discussed the issues that our representatives will address tomorrow in Geneva during the bilateral meeting,” said Zelensky, “as well as the preparations for the next full negotiating team meeting, which will take place in trilateral format at the beginning of March with Russia.”
“We expect this meeting to provide an opportunity to elevate the discussions to the level of leaders,” added the Ukrainian head of state. He had already affirmed that a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin should take place to resolve the most delicate points of the talks.
Negotiations are based on a U.S. plan unveiled late 2025, mainly focusing on the fate of Donbass, the major industrial basin in eastern Ukraine. Moscow demands that Ukrainian forces withdraw from the areas they still control in the Donetsk region, something Kyiv refuses. “President Trump supports this series of steps. It’s the only way to resolve all the complex and sensitive issues and finally end the war,” declared Zelensky.
Geneva meetings
Geneva hosted in mid-February a precedent cycle of talks between Ukrainians and Russians under American mediation, which did not lead to tangible results. Furthermore, on Wednesday Volodymyr Zelensky specified that Thursday’s discussions would also focus on the economic plan for the “recovery” of Ukraine, devastated by the conflict with Russia, and the preparation for a new exchange of prisoners of war between Kyiv and Moscow.
Since the start of the massive Russian offensive against Ukraine, these exchanges have been one of the few concrete advances from contacts between the two belligerents. Thursday’s U.S.-Ukrainian meeting aims to “explore different ways in which we could achieve a peace agreement,” explained Steve Witkoff on Tuesday, speaking by video at a conference in Kyiv.
Ukraine marked on Tuesday the four-year anniversary of the beginning of the invasion of its territory, with President Zelensky congratulating that Vladimir Putin did not “achieve his war goals” or “break the Ukrainians,” while Russia threatened to “continue” hostilities.
