Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday that he expects to meet U.S. President Donald Trump “in the near future,” signaling renewed momentum in diplomatic efforts to end the nearly four-year war between Russia and Ukraine.
“We are not losing a single day. We have agreed on a meeting at the highest level – with President Trump in the near future,” Zelenskyy wrote on X, adding that “a lot can be decided before the New Year.”
His comments followed what he described as a “good conversation” Thursday with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Trump has launched a diplomatic push to end the war, but his efforts have run into sharply conflicting demands from Moscow and Kyiv.
Zelenskyy said Tuesday he would be willing to withdraw Ukrainian troops from the country’s eastern industrial heartland as part of a plan to end the war, provided Russia also pulls back and the area becomes a demilitarized zone monitored by international forces.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Thursday there had been “slow but steady progress” in peace talks, but Russia has given no indication it would agree to any withdrawal from territory it has seized.
Moscow has instead demanded that Ukraine relinquish the remaining land it controls in the Donbas – an ultimatum Kyiv has rejected.
Russia has captured most of the Luhansk region and about 70% of the Donetsk region, which together make up the Donbas.
On the battlefield, one person was killed and three others were wounded when a guided aerial bomb struck a house in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, local officials said Friday. Six people were also wounded in a missile strike on the central city of Uman.
Russian drone attacks overnight into Friday on the southern city of Mykolaiv and its suburbs left parts of the city without power, officials said. Drone strikes also damaged energy and port infrastructure in the Black Sea port city of Odesa.
Meanwhile, Ukraine said it struck a major Russian oil refinery Thursday using British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles. Ukraine’s General Staff said its forces hit the Novoshakhtinsk refinery in Russia’s Rostov region.
“Multiple explosions were recorded. The target was hit,” the General Staff wrote on Telegram.
Rostov regional Gov. Yuri Slyusar said a firefighter was wounded while extinguishing the blaze.
Ukraine’s long-range drone and missile strikes on Russian refineries aim to deprive Moscow of oil export revenue used to finance its full-scale invasion.
Russia, meanwhile, has sought to cripple Ukraine’s power grid, targeting energy infrastructure in what Kyiv officials describe as an attempt to “weaponize winter” by cutting civilians off from heat, light and running water.
