Trump-Zelenskyy meet at Mar-a-Lago on Ukraine peace plan

On 28 December 2025 Presidents Trump and Zelenskyy met at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida, to advance a US-mediated Ukraine-Russia peace framework — the fourth direct encounter of the two leaders in 2025, following the 28 February Oval Office meeting that ruptured publicly, the 26 April encounter at the Vatican during Pope Francis’s funeral, and the 18 August White House meeting that followed the 15 August Trump-Putin summit in Anchorage.¹² Zelenskyy publicly described the framework as a 20-point plan “approximately 90 percent” agreed, with the US-Ukraine bilateral security guarantees fully agreed for a duration of 15 years, a separate US-Europe-Ukraine multilateral security-guarantee track in near-final form, and the military provisions of the plan agreed.³ Coordination with European partners has continued through diplomatic channels in Berlin and other capitals on the multilateral track; territorial questions remain unresolved.⁴

1. A 20-point framework with multiple security-guarantee tracks shifts complexity away from a single bilateral instrument and toward a layered structure. Each track requires its own implementation pathway; US security guarantees provided as a sole-executive agreement do not require Senate advice and consent under Article II § 2 cl. 2 of the Constitution, and their durability across administrations depends on the agreement’s legal form, any implementing legislation, and their interaction with prior commitments such as the 30 April 2025 U.S.-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund.⁵⁶

2. The territorial sequencing question — ceasefire on current lines first, or final settlement first — is the principal procedural disagreement reported from the negotiating tracks; Ukraine has refused territorial concessions in the Donbas as a precondition to settlement.⁷

3. The U.S. Congress is not party to executive negotiations but retains the power of the purse and a separate role in sanctions-regime modification under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, 50 U.S.C. §§ 1701-1708, and under § 216 of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), Pub. L. 115-44, which establishes a congressional review window for proposed easing of Russia sanctions.⁸⁹ Any settlement implementation that requires statutory sanctions relief flows through those notification windows.