U.S. President Donald Trump said peace efforts on Ukraine were "getting close" ahead of a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Davos on Thursday, as U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff said negotiations were down to one last issue, Reuters reported.
U.S. and Ukrainian officials have spent weeks in frenetic shuttle diplomacy as Kyiv faces pressure from Trump to secure peace in the nearly four-year-old war, despite few signs Moscow wants to stop fighting.
"I think they're getting close. A lot of people are being killed. We've got to get it done," Trump said as Zelenskiy arrived at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort. The Ukrainian presidency said in a statement shortly after 1 p.m. local time in Davos (1200 GMT) that the meeting had begun.
Zelenskiy had said earlier this week he would only travel to Davos if he could sign agreements with Trump on U.S. security guarantees and post-war reconstruction funding for Ukraine.
On Wednesday, Trump announced he would meet Zelenskiy on the sidelines of the gathering, adding that a deal was "reasonably close".
The two leaders have met around half a dozen times face-to-face since Trump returned to the White House last year and upended U.S. policy on Ukraine by embracing diplomacy with Russia.
Zelenskiy, saddled with an energy crisis at home from Russian air strikes that have left swathes of the capital and other regions without power and heating, was due to deliver a speech after his meeting with Trump, his spokesperson said.
If both sides want to solve this, we're going to get it solved," Witkoff told an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos. "I think we've made a lot of progress."
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