Zelenskyy Calls for January Summit, Invites Trump to Kyiv in Strategic Pivot

Zelenskyy Calls for January Summit, Invites Trump to Kyiv in Strategic Pivot

KYIV — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has explicitly called for a summit involving U.S. and European leaders to take place as early as January, a move designed to widen the diplomatic table just 48 hours after his bilateral talks with Donald Trump.

The push for a January gathering follows Zelenskyy’s Dec. 28 meeting with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago. While that engagement focused on ceasefire frameworks, Zelenskyy is now pivoting toward a format that includes European guarantors. This strategy aims to balance Washington’s aggressive mediation efforts with broader continental security commitments, ensuring Kyiv is not locked into a strictly bilateral negotiation track with the incoming U.S. administration.

Crucially, Zelenskyy stated it would be "useful" for President Trump to visit Ukraine, placing a potential Kyiv visit on the diplomatic docket for January. For market watchers, this invitation creates a tangible logistical pathway for a second face-to-face meeting between the two leaders in the first month of 2026. It also serves as a test of Washington's commitment: a visit would force the U.S. President to witness the conflict’s reality firsthand, potentially bridging the gap between Mar-a-Lago’s diplomatic ambitions and the battlefield’s grim logistics.

The probability of a wider engagement involving Vladimir Putin has also shifted. By affirming his readiness to meet the Russian leader "in any format," Zelenskyy has aligned Kyiv with reported U.S. efforts to broker direct communication with Moscow. This removes a primary diplomatic obstacle, theoretically opening the door to a trilateral scenario.

However, signals from Moscow remain mixed. Despite reports that Putin has privately conveyed a desire to end the war in communications with Trump, Zelenskyy noted on Dec. 29 that these overtures are contradicted by unabated Russian missile strikes. While the diplomatic architecture for a historic summit is being assembled, the timeline depends on whether Russian military actions begin to correlate with the diplomatic rhetoric circulating between Washington, Kyiv, and Moscow.