US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky held a “productive” discussion on the sidelines of Pope Francis’ funeral as the White House ramps up its push to strike a deal to end the war in Ukraine.
White House communications director Steven Cheung confirmed in a statement Saturday morning that Trump and Zelensky met ahead of the funeral of Pope Francis.
Trump and Zelensky “met privately today and had a very productive discussion,” Cheung’s said. “More details about the meeting will follow.”
Trump and Zelensky had not met in person since an unprecedented shouting match at the White House in February, when the US leader berated the Ukrainian president for not demonstrating enough gratitude for American support in his country’s fight against Russia.
During that meeting, both Trump and US Vice President JD Vance raised their voices, accusing Zelensky of standing in the way of a peace agreement with Russia. Zelensky was essentially kicked out of the White House following the Oval Office blowout.
Saturday’s meeting comes amid an increasingly urgent White House effort to strike a peace deal.
Trump said after landing in Rome that Russia and Ukraine were “very close” to a deal to end the three-year war, after his top envoy met with President Vladimir Putin on Friday in talks described by Moscow as “constructive.”
Kyiv and Moscow have not met directly since the early weeks of Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of its smaller neighbor. Any direct talks would likely require further discussion and add delay to the diplomacy the Trump adminsitration has hoped will yield results in a matter of days.
Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff spent three hours meeting with Putin at the Kremlin on Friday, Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters after the meeting, adding that the talks were “constructive and very useful.”
Witkoff’s trip to Russia, his fourth since Trump returned to the White House in January, came at a crunch time. The US president’s self-imposed deadline to end the war within his administration’s first 100 days is nearing.
CNN reported Friday that two diverging visions of a peace deal are at the heart of recent negotiations: one supported by Ukraine and its European allies, and another backed by the Trump administration.
A European official familiar with the different drafts said the Ukrainian and European proposal envisaged a ceasefire followed by discussions about territory, with Kyiv receiving defense guarantees from its allies along the lines of those found in NATO’s Article 5.
Witkoff’s version proposed the recognition of Crimea as Russian by the United States, “robust security guarantees” for Ukraine, Kyiv not joining NATO and sanctions against Russia being lifted, the official said.
Recognizing Russian control of Crimea, the southern Ukrainian peninsula Moscow illegally annexed in 2014, would cross a major red line for Ukraine and its European allies.
It would also reverse around a decade of US foreign policy.
Zelensky rejected the idea earlier this week, saying there was “nothing to talk about,” as such a recognition would be against Ukraine’s constitution.
The US has been applying more pressure on Ukraine after threatening last week it could walk away from the talks “within days” if it becomes clear a deal cannot be reached.
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