President Donald Trump says Ukraine and Russia are “closer than ever before” to a peace deal, but he acknowledged negotiations could still break down and leave the war dragging on for years.
After a two-hour meeting in Florida with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump conceded “one or two tough” issues – over territory and how the war might end – still needed to be resolved, an indication of progress made but no breakthrough.
Earlier Trump had what he described as an “excellent” two-and-a-half-hour phone conversation with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
Trump says Ukraine peace deal ‘closer than ever’ after meeting with Zelenskyy
Donald Trump admitted “thorny” questions over the future of the eastern Donbas region have yet to be resolved, after meeting on Sunday with Zelenskyy.
Trump said a draft agreement to end the war was nearly “95% done”. “I really think we are closer than ever with both sides,” he said, adding that Putin also wants to “see it happen”.
The 2025 US economy in charts
The US economy is thriving, according to Donald Trump. But on two areas the president has pledged to rapidly improve – jobs and prices – the results have so far been lackluster, and the government’s own official statistics paint a more complicated picture.
US strikes on Nigeria and Syria ‘consistent’ with policy to combat IS
Mike Turner, an Ohio congressman on the US House armed services committee, has said the country’s recent military strikes in Nigeria and Syria are consistent with American foreign policy to combat Islamic extremism.
Turner denied the strikes represent a different second-term approach to military force. With respect to the Islamic State, he told ABC’s This Week, US policy is “very consistent” in defeating it whether in Iraq, Syria or “here in Nigeria”.
FBI deploys more resources to ‘dismantle fraud schemes’ in Minnesota
The FBI has deployed additional personnel and investigative resources to Minnesota to “dismantle large-scale fraud schemes exploiting federal programs”, director Kash Patel said on social media on Sunday.
Patel said the agency had already dismantled a $250m fraud scheme that stole federal food aid meant for vulnerable children during the Covid pandemic in a case that led to 78 indictments and 57 convictions.
What else happened today:
A powerful winter storm was sweeping east from the Plains on Sunday, driven by what meteorologists describe as an intense cyclone that is expected to impact much of the US with a mixture of snow, ice, rain and strong winds.
Overdoses have been declining nationally since 2023, and public health experts have been unable to agree as to why. The decline has been uneven across states, and West Virginia, long known as the epicenter of the opioid crisis, is also among the states that have most reduced overdose fatalities, as noted in a recent Guardian analysis.
A surge in the price of silver to record highs this month has prompted a warning from Elon Musk that manufacturers could suffer the consequences.
Bernie Sanders amplified his recent criticism of AI on Sunday, linking the financial ambition of “the richest people in the world” to economic insecurity for millions of Americans – and calling for a potential moratorium on new datacenters.
Catching up? Here’s what happened on 27 December 2025.
