President Donald Trump said he will meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday.
The president’s meeting with Zelenskyy is scheduled to take place after a Gaza Board of Peace event in Davos and follows bilateral meetings on Wednesday with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and the leaders of Poland, Belgium and Egypt.
The president’s meeting comes amid an apparent standstill in negotiations. Russia has continued to pound Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with missiles and drones barrages. Electricity in Kyiv is inconsistent and with this winter turning into an exceptionally frigid one — with temperatures dropping below minus 20 degrees Celsius — there’s mounting worry in Kyiv about how the country can persevere without much greater assistance from Western allies, including the United States, when it comes to air defense.
Special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner will travel to Moscow later Thursday, where they are scheduled to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin. They will then go on to the United Arab Emirates for working groups.
Asked whether Russia was serious about an agreement, Witkoff said Putin invited the pair to Moscow.
“The Russians have invited us to come and that’s a significant statement from them,” Witkoff said in an interview with Bloomberg television in Davos on Wednesday.
On Monday, the president said he invited Putin to join his Gaza Board of Peace, while the Russian military continues strikes on Kyiv. Trump and Zelenskyy emerged from their meeting at Mar-a-Lago in Florida last month expressing optimism that they were on the precipice of a peace deal to end the war with Russia. Trump said at the time that critical sticking points could be ironed out over a few more weeks. But, more recently, Trump, in an interview with Reuters, suggested Zelenskyy was an impediment to peace.
Plans for the pair to meet at Davos have see-sawed. Initially, the U.S. and Ukraine eyed Davos as a venue to sign an economic deal meant to bring prosperity to the country after the war ends, according to two people familiar with the matter. One of them, a foreign official, said Ukraine is still ready to sign and it depends on the U.S. side.