By Independent News Roundup
RT: US President Donald Trump greets Ukrainian Vladimir Zelensky at his Mar-a-Lago club on December 28, 2025 in Palm Beach, Florida. © Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke with his US counterpart, Donald Trump, for over an hour by phone, shortly before Trump's scheduled meeting on Sunday with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky in Miami.
Zelensky, who faces another corruption scandal implicating lawmakers that erupted over the weekend, is following up on days of negotiations in Florida between Ukrainian and US negotiators on a potential deal to end the Ukraine conflict.
Shortly before Zelensky's arrival, Trump announced on his Truth Social that he had had a “very productive” conversation, while the Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov said that both “hold broadly similar views” and that a temporary ceasefire would only prolong the conflict.
A 20-point proposal revealed by Zelensky ahead of the meeting has been dismissed by Moscow, which called it “radically different”
from what Russia and the US had discussed on the issue. Earlier,
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said that Moscow was “fully” ready to move forward with the peace process while Kiev and its European backers seek to derail it.
Trump has invited media representatives to attend the meeting, and our updates will follow events and reactions.
During the meeting, Zelensky told Trump it was the first time he had visited the Mar-a-Lago residence, to which the US president replied the place was “very conducive to deals.”
© Getty Images / Joe Raedle Mar-a-Lago staffers are also serving food to the press, Deutsche Welle correspondent Misha Komadovsky has said. “No cameras allowed,” he added.
Now, Mar-a-Lago staffers are serving food to press. No cameras allowed.
— Misha Komadovsky (@komadovsky) December 28, 2025
🥗 🥩 On the menu:
Pigs in a blanket, steak, fries, coconut shrimp, cookies and water.
Among the food served were pigs in a blanket, steak, fries, and coconut shrimp.
The meeting has been going for more than two hours as of now.
While the journalists were waiting, they claimed to have seen the menu for the Ukrainian delegation, which reportedly included steaks with fries and chicken broth.
Moscow dismissed the Ukrainian leader's initiative as a non-starter. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Friday that the proposal could “barely” be called a peace plan. It is “radically different” from what Moscow was discussing with Washington, he added.
The 20-point plan revealed by Zelensky ahead of the meeting includes NATO Article 5-style guarantees for Kiev, as well as a fixed deadline for Ukraine’s EU membership. Kiev also expects to be allowed to keep an 800,000-strong army and freeze the hostilities along the current frontline. Ukraine demanded $800 billion to rebuild its economy.
Zelensky also seeks to assume partial control over the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant located in a region that is now officially part of Russia. The US would be the second nation controlling the station under the plan.
FILE PHOTO: Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky. ©
Global Look Press / Michael Kappeler
The talks also come as Ukraine is reeling from a series of high-profile corruption scandals. The latest one broke out on Saturday, just a day before the Florida meeting, when Ukraine's anti-graft agencies reported uncovering a criminal vote-rigging and bribery scheme involving serving members of the Ukrainian parliament.
READ MORE: New corruption scandal erupts in KievLast month, the anti-corruption bodies revealed another scheme involving a close associate of Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky, Timur Mindich, who ran a $100 million kickback scheme in the energy sector, which heavily depends on Western aid.
The scandals have reportedly weakened Zelensky’s position and made him more receptive to US-mediated peace efforts. In mid-December, the Washington Post reported that the Mindich scandal forced the Ukrainian leader to enter negotiations on the US-backed peace plan that he and Kiev’s European backers had previously rejected.
The meeting comes just a day after the Russian Defense Ministry reported liberating several settlements, including the strategic town of Gulaypole in Zaporozhye Region, in the latest push on the frontline, where Russian troops have been on the offensive for months. Putin congratulated the military on the success during a meeting with top generals at a command post on Saturday.
Control over Gulaypole, which was a backbone of a fortified area of 76 square kilometers, opens “good prospects” for further advances in the area, the president said. Russian troops also finished clearing operations in Dmitrov (known as Mirnograd in Ukraine), a strategic town in the Donetsk People’s Republic. The Russian president called the development a major step towards liberating the rest of the region.
There will be a security agreement, and it “will be strong” ahead of the meeting, according to Trump.
"The European nations are very most involved in that, they are very much involved in protection, the European nations are really great... I think you can say there is nobody bad, they all wanna get it done".
Zelensky will hold a separate press conference “via a WhatsApp group chat” with journalists after meeting with Trump, a Ukrainian reporter who worked for US state-run VOA, Katerina Lisunova, has claimed.
The Ukrainian team included Kiev’s top negotiator, Rustem Umerov, Economy Minister Aleksey Sobolev, Chief of the General Staff, Major General Andrey Gnatov among others. Kiev’s ambassador to Washington, Olga Stefanishyna, was present at the negotiating table as well. © Getty Images / Joe Raedle
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