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Trump Delivers Remarks in a Bilateral Meeting with the President of Ukraine, Dec. 28, 2025

December 28, 2025 · The White House · 0:23:10

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

President Donald Trump delivered remarks alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at Mar-a-Lago on December 28, 2025, after their bilateral meeting and lunch. He said he had held an excellent phone call with President Putin lasting over two hours before the meeting, and that after it the two presidents spoke jointly with European leaders — among them, as he listed them, Presidents Macron, Stubb, and Nawrocki, Prime Ministers Støre, Meloni, and Starmer, Chancellor Merz, NATO Secretary General Rutte, and Commission President von der Leyen.

“We covered, somebody would say, 95 percent,” the President said. “I don’t know what percent, but we have made a lot of progress on ending that war… I do think we’re getting a lot closer, maybe very close.” He thanked the negotiators in the room — Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary Pete Hegseth — and said the talks would continue over the following weeks, with another conversation the next day. The war, he said, is “certainly the most deadly war since World War II, probably the biggest war since World War II.”

Why it matters

The remarks are the public readout of the December 28 Mar-a-Lago meeting — the closest-to-a-deal framing the President had given the Ukraine negotiation to that point, with the percentage, the Putin call, and the European-leaders call all stated on the record in one sitting, and the principals he credited named from the stage.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the “95 percent” / “maybe very close” progress claim, as stated by the President at these remarks, is the dated benchmark against which the Ukraine negotiation is tracked from this date. Noted for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Delivers Remarks in a Bilateral Meeting with the President of Ukraine,” Mar-a-Lago, December 28, 2025 (official upload, embedded above). All characterizations as stated at the event.