Next round of peace talks to take place in week in US, says Zelensky

The president stated this in an interview with Bloomberg, Ukrinform reports.

According to Zelensky, the next round of peace talks is scheduled for Tuesday or Wednesday, although it is currently unclear whether Russia will agree to these talks in the US.

On the agenda is a US proposal to create a free economic zone as a buffer in the eastern Donetsk region. However, according to the Ukrainian president, both sides of the conflict are skeptical about this option. “None of the sides is keen on the idea of the free economic zone — neither the Russians, nor us. We have different views on it. And agreements were as follows — let’s come back with the vision of what it may look like for the next meeting,” Zelensky said in a phone interview in Kyiv on Tuesday. 

He noted that in discussions about who will control this buffer zone, the US must clarify its position. “If it is our territory — and it is our territory — then the country whose territory it is should govern it,” Zelensky believes.

The president also said that the Trump administration wants to sign all documents at once.

He noted that Ukraine will need to approve the peace agreement through either a parliamentary vote or a national referendum.

“For the time being we are also talking about a sequencing plan of all our actions, including signing of documents. I think that after our next meeting, there should be an understanding,” Zelensky stated.

According to the president, recent talks in the United Arab Emirates focused on ceasefire mechanisms and how the US would monitor them. However, he said that negotiators were unable to finalize the details without higher-level political decisions.

While negotiators carefully search for the wording of a future agreement, Zelensky said the discussions clearly showed that any truce would require monitoring with US involvement. “Russians have one wording, we have another one, the Americans have the third one. There is an understanding that there will be monitoring, but there is also an understanding more work is needed on wording and details,” he said.

As reported by Ukrinform, a few days ago, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the next round of peace talks is scheduled to take place in the US in a week. He stressed that the delegations of Ukraine and Russia have been invited to meet in a bilateral format.