Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that the United States had offered to hold trilateral negotiations with Russia and Ukraine, the latest attempt to break the deadlock in negotiations to end the nearly four-year-long war.
Zelensky told journalists in Kyiv on Saturday that Washington offered to host trilateral talks between Russian and Ukrainian representatives in Florida. If this were to happen, a European delegation might also join the talks, he said, Bloomberg reported.
The U.S. is holding peace talks with Russia and Ukraine separately over the weekend, with a high-level Russian delegation meeting with Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner in Miami, Florida.
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Trump has injected hope into his stalled efforts to bring an end to the deadliest war in Europe since World War II over the past month, with U.S. negotiators shuttling between Russian and Ukrainian delegations. This hasn’t been reflected in battlefield developments, however, with fighting as intense as ever.
Odessa, Ukraine’s key port city, has been the subject of unrelenting Russian attacks for over a week, with missiles and drones battering energy and port infrastructure. The key city was subjected to a week-long blackout after a critical hit on energy infrastructure last week, with Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko describing the strikes as having delivered “painful blows to Ukraine’s energy sector.”
Russia struck Odessa again over the night of Dec. 19-20, strikes that were particularly deadly by the standards of the war.
“At night, the enemy launched a ballistic strike on the port in Odesa. As of now, the number of dead has unfortunately increased to eight, about 30 people have been injured,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Aleksey Kuleba wrote in a Telegram update.
“The attack does not stop. After 8 a.m., another attack was recorded on the port of Pivdennyi – there are hits in the storage tanks,” he added.
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The energy situation has reached a critical point in Ukraine. Zelensky admitted earlier this week that there hasn’t been a single power plant in the country that hasn’t been hit by Russia over the course of the war. This year has seen the first occurrence of prolonged blackouts in major Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv, a situation only set to get worse as winter’s freezing temperatures continue.
Despite this, Zelensky has maintained that Ukraine won’t accept any ceding of territory to Moscow as part of a peace deal — a central demand from Russia, which demands the ceding of the entire Donbass as a precondition for peace. The issue of territory has emerged as one of the biggest sticking points, alongside security guarantees for Ukraine, NATO membership, and the presence of peacekeeping troops in the country after the war.