Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky‘s upcoming return to the White House will likely go smoother if Vice President JD Vance does not attend, a senior Ukrainian official has said.
The Ukrainian leader’s now-infamous trip to the White House in late February saw Zelensky berated by President Donald Trump and the vice president in front of the world’s cameras. The visit was a dip in already strained relations between Kyiv and the Trump administration, a hideous diplomatic moment Ukrainian officials have been keen to rectify as U.S. efforts to reach a deal to end the fighting grind on.
It will be better for the Ukrainian delegation if Vance is not present for Monday’s meeting, Oleksandr Merezhko, the chair of Ukraine’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee and a member of Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, told Newsweek.
The February Oval Office meeting saw Vance “provoking” the Ukrainian leader, Merezhko said.
In among various barbed exchanges, Vance told Zelensky: “Offer some words of appreciation for the United States of America and the president who’s trying to save your country.”
Zelensky “learned his lesson” from February, and will aim to strike a diplomatic and respectful tone, Merezhko said.
The Trump administration is less likely to “bully him again” if the Ukrainian leader is joined by Ukraine’s European allies, Merezhko added.
A number of Europe’s heads of state have confirmed they will make the journey to Washington for the meeting at the White House with Zelensky, including British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron. Finnish President Alexander Stubb may attend, Politico reported on Sunday. The Finnish leader has bonded with Trump over a shared love of golfing while leading a country with a significant land border, and apprehension toward, Russia.
Also expected to attend are Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the European Commission, and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who has pieced together a close relationship with Trump while corralling Europe toward unity.
Europe has jostled hard to maintain relevance in U.S.-brokered peace talks over Ukraine, looking on with nervousness at the apparent reluctance of the current administration to punish Russia or leverage significant concessions from Moscow despite its threats to do so.
European leaders met virtually with Zelensky and Trump ahead of the Republican‘s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, reiterating that Ukraine should be involved in negotiations and that international borders should not be changed by force.
The issue of which territory Russia and Ukraine will control in a ceasefire agreement has been one of the biggest obstacles to a deal to end the fighting.
Russia annexed Crimea, the peninsula to the south of mainland Ukraine, in 2014, and backed separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine that are collectively known as the Donbas, Ukraine’s industrial heartland.
In fall 2022, after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in the February, Russia declared Donetsk and Luhansk as annexed territory now part of Russia, along with the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. While Russia controls the vast majority of Luhansk, Ukraine retains its grip on about a quarter of Donetsk and of much of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Russia’s claim to these regions is not internationally recognized.
The Kremlin has positioned its territorial demands as a key sticking point in negotiations. Kyiv has repeatedly said it will not reward Russia’s invasion with territory, and to cede these areas would go against the country’s constitution.
After the Anchorage summit, Trump told European leaders that he backed a plan in which Ukraine would cede territory it still controlled to Russia, The New York Times reported, citing two senior European officials. Reuters reported that Russia had said it would offer slivers of land it currently controls in Ukraine in exchange for Kyiv ceding chunks of land in the east that Russia does not currently control, citing sources briefed on the Kremlin’s thinking.
Under the proposal, Ukraine would fully withdraw from Donetsk and Luhansk, with the current front lines in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions to the south frozen in place, according to the report.
Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, said on Sunday that despite the Alaska summit yielding no deal, Ukraine would have “Article 5-like” protections to ward off any future attempt by Russia to attack its neighbor. Article 5 is the provision in NATO’s founding treaty that means that an attack on any member country in the alliance is treated as an attack on all. It is not clear how the arrangement Witkoff referred to would work.
Ukraine has consistently said it needs security guarantees, and not to be bound by any limits on the size of its military. Kyiv also wants to be on the path to NATO and European Union membership. Russia wants Ukraine to be a neutral state.
Expectations are low for the Monday meeting, Merezhko said.
“You cannot reconcile them,” he said, referring to the Ukrainian and Russian demands.
“Now it is really up to President Zelensky to get it done,” Trump told Fox News following the Alaska summit. “I would also say the European nations have to get involved a little bit.”
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