President Trump and European leaders met for a one-of-a-kind summit at the White House on Monday to push toward a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.
But by the end of a marathon day of meetings, details on what such an agreement might entail remained elusive.
One major bit of news did emerge: Trump announced he had called Russian President Vladimir Putin and is working on arranging a meeting between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. He would then work on all three of them, meeting sometime after. A time and location, however, is to be determined.
The high-stakes discussions between Trump, Zelensky and a host of European leaders who descended on the White House involved talks of establishing a ceasefire as a peace agreement is sorted out as well as what security guarantees for Ukraine would look like.
Everyone seemed to keep the mood delicately cordial, keeping the focus on the collective goal of ending the war.
Trump did not engage with questions that set him up to criticize Ukraine. European officials credited Trump for opening up a path to peace, and Zelensky repeatedly thanked Trump for his efforts to stop the war, a far different atmosphere than the one Zelensky was met with in February.
European leaders appeared to support the idea of a trilateral meeting between Trump, Zelensky and Putin, though some stressed the importance of getting some type of ceasefire or commitment from Russia before that meeting takes place.
“I can’t imagine that the next meeting would take place without a ceasefire,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said during a roundtable discussion. “So let’s work on that, and let’s try to put pressure on Russia because the credibility of these efforts, these efforts we are undertaking today are depending on at least a ceasefire from the beginning of the serious negotiations from next step on.”
Trump was non-committal to securing a ceasefire, suggesting it was not a prerequisite to finalizing a larger peace deal.
“We’re going to let the president go over and talk to the president, and we’ll see how that works out,” Trump responded to Merz. “In the six wars that I’ve settled, I haven’t had a ceasefire. We just got into negotiations…. so if we can do the cease fire, great and if we don’t do a cease fire, because many other points were given to us.”
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called a trilateral meeting to end the war “the sensible next step,” insisting that peace for Ukraine has to involve Ukraine.
“Because I think if we can ensure that that is the progress out of this meeting, both security guarantees and some sort of progress on trilateral meeting of some sort to bring some of the difficult issues to a head, then I think today will be seen as a very important day in recent years,” Starmer said.
Ahead of the bilateral meeting with Zelensky in the Oval Office, Trump punted on a question from reporters about security guarantees for Ukraine, turning to Europe as the potential first line of defense.
“When it comes to security, they’re going to be a lot of help… they’re going to be the first line of defense because they’re there. They’re Europe,” Trump said.
“We’ll be involved,” he added. “But we’re going to help them out, we’re going to be involved.”
Trump has said it will be up to Ukraine to determine the issue of potential territorial concessions as part of any peace agreement, though he has at times indicated there will need to be “land swaps.” An image posted by a top White House staffer on Monday showed Trump and Zelensky standing in front of a map of Ukraine that outlined which areas were occupied by Russian forces.
The overall tone of Monday’s meetings was markedly different from Zelensky’s last visit to Washington, when Trump and Vice President Vance accused him of being ungrateful for U.S. support and questioned his leverage in the war against Russia. Vance said nothing during in front of cameras at Monday’s Oval Office meeting.
Trump greeted Zelensky with a pat on the back, and Zelensky expressed his appreciation for Trump’s efforts to end the war on multiple occasions.
The Ukrainian president specifically thanked first lady Melania Trump multiple times throughout the day for the letter she penned to Putin about the plight of children throughout Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Trump had delivered the letter to Putin ahead of their meeting in Alaska on Friday. Zelensky gave Trump a meeting from his wife to give to the first lady, also thanking her.
Zelensky wore a black military style suit after his outfit in February drew the ire of Trump supporters and he appeared friendly with Trump during the family photograph in the White House with the European leaders.
The Ukrainian president, surrounded by the European leaders, had said he hopes that the “best” meeting may be in the future, suggesting his openness to talks with Putin.
It was not immediately clear if Putin would agree to a meeting in person with Zelensky, or if Russia would agree to a peace deal that contained security guarantees for Ukraine.
“I hope that we will find decisions and what is very important that all the sensitive things, territorial, etc, we will discuss on the level of leaders during trilateral meeting and President Trump will try to organize such meeting, and he said that he will come or not come. Ukraine will be happy if you came,” Zelensky said.
Trump replied to Zelensky: “If both of you want me there, I will be there.”
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