Jewish Political Briefing, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025
By Donald H. Harrison in San Diego
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday became the fifth international leader to meet with U.S. President Donald J. Trump at Mar-A-Lago, his exclusive club and formal family residence in Palm Beach, Florida.
Zelenskyy also was the second Jewish leader to have that honor, preceded by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in December of last year, a time in which Trump had been elected to succeed Joe Biden as President but in which Trump hadn’t taken office yet. Netanyahu is scheduled to meet Trump again on Monday, again at Mar-A-Lago. (The club’s Spanish-language name recognizes that the 17-acre estate on which its 126 rooms sit stretches from the Atlantic Ocean on the east to Lake Worth Lagoon on the west.)
The other three international leaders, whom Trump had entertained separately at Mar-A-Lago during his first administration, were Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, China’s President Xi Jinping, and Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro.
Zelenskyy and an entourage of Ukrainian officials met for lunch that was served in Mar-A-Lago’s dining room, which features a 29-foot-long pietra dura marble-top dining table. Trump administration officials attending the event included Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Special Peace Envoy Steve Witkoff, and Trump’s son-in-law and envoy Jared Kushner.
Zelenskyy went in and out of his meeting with Trump saying that realization of a 20-point peace proposal was 90 percent there. Trump identified one area still awaiting resolution as whether Russia or Ukraine would keep the land in the Donbas region in Eastern Ukraine that Russia now occupies. Another is the fate of a Ukrainian nuclear power reactor, which Russian troops captured and now occupy.
Trump also said after the meeting that he would confer later on Sunday with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. He also had a telephone call with Putin prior to the meeting.
The American President started the joint news conference by saying he and Zelenskyy had together reported the results of their meeting in a telephone call to the officials of the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and to Europe’s national leaders of Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Poland, and the United Kingdom.
“We’ll see if it gets done, but it’s very close,” Trump said.
Zelenskyy provided the news conference with a status checklist, but neither leader spoke in specifics.
“Twenty-point peace plan, 90 percent agreed … U.S-Ukraine security guarantees, 100 percent agreed… U.S.-Europe-Ukraine security guarantees, almost agreed … military dimension, 100 percent agreed … Prosperity plan being finalized,” Zelenskyy said.
“And we agree that security guarantees are the key milestone in achieving lasting peace and our teams will continue working on all aspects,” he added.
In a written statement on X issued following the meeting, Zelenskyy said: “I thank @POTUS Donald Trump for a great meeting. We had a substantive discussion on all issues, and we much appreciate the progress achieved by American and Ukrainian teams in recent weeks. Special thanks to Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner for their engagement and full commitment, as well as to our team — first of all, to Rustem Umerov and Andrii Hnatov.
“We discussed all the aspects of the peace framework and achieved significant results. We also discussed the sequence of further actions. We agreed that security guarantees are key on the path to achieving a lasting peace, and our teams will continue working on all aspects. We agreed that our teams would meet as early as next week to finalize all discussed matters. We also agreed with President Trump that he will host Ukrainian and European leaders in Washington, D.C., in January.”
“Ukraine is ready for peace,” its president declared.
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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World.