Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, will meet with Donald Trump in an attempt to get the US president's blessing for a fresh plan to put an end to the nearly four-year conflict with Russia.
The face-to-face in Florida comes after a devastating Russian missile and drone strike on Kyiv, and the 20-point proposal, which resulted from weeks of intense US-Ukraine negotiations, is not approved by Moscow.
This will be their first face-to-face meeting since the US president turned down Zelenskyy's request for long-range Tomahawk missiles in October.
The meeting is set for Sunday at 1:00 pm (1800 GMT). Trump claimed to have had a fruitful conversation with Vladimir Putin, his Russian counterpart, just prior to the planned summit. "I just had a very good and productive telephone call with President Putin of Russia."
During a layover in Canada on Saturday, Zelenskyy expressed his expectation that the negotiations would be "very constructive" and claimed that Putin had demonstrated his intentions with the most recent attack on the Ukrainian capital.
"Once more, Russia is responding to our attempts at peace with this strike. He added, "And this clearly demonstrated that Putin doesn't want peace."
While in Canada, Zelenskyy held a conference call with European leaders who, according to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, promised to fully support his peace initiatives.
Ukraine and its European supporters have been accused by Russia of attempting to "torpedo" a prior US-brokered proposal to end hostilities.
Russia declared on Saturday that it has taken the towns of Myrnograd and Guliaipole in eastern Ukraine, adding to the strain on the battlefield.
"If the authorities in Kyiv don't want to settle this business peacefully, we'll resolve all the problems before us by military means," Putin stated on Saturday.
Additionally, he was cited as adding that "the leaders of the Kyiv regime are in no hurry to resolve this conflict peacefully." Joining Zelenskyy's conference call were EU leaders Ursula von der Leyen and Antonio Costa, who pledged to keep up pressure on the Kremlin and declared that the bloc's support for Kyiv will never waver.
Moscow will continue its "engagement with American negotiators," according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who also chastised the Europeans. "After the change of administration in the US, Europe and the EU have become the main obstacle to peace," Lavrov stated.
