First lady Melania Trump will host Ukrainian and Russian representatives at the White House on Thursday, her office said, days after a humanitarian exchange she brokered to relieve pressure on trapped residents of a Russian-held town in southern Ukraine.
Nearly 800 people were evacuated from Oleshky last week after being trapped for months under dire circumstances, with little access to food or water. Melania Trump helped broker a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine to facilitate the residents’ escape.
The White House event will take place a week ahead of more formal talks between Ukraine and Russia in Abu Dhabi on Nov. 10-11. Those negotiations will be brokered by the U.S. The first lady’s announcement didn’t specify who from Ukraine and Russia would come to the White House event or whether any formal negotiations would take place between the two sides.
American and European officials are also expected to meet Wednesday in Brussels to discuss Ukraine’s security guarantees and postwar reconstruction.
Melania Trump worked with Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian parliament’s commissioner for human rights, and Yana Lantratova, his Russian counterpart, to facilitate the exchange. Those officials are focused on humanitarian issues, rather than broader efforts to end the war.
The first lady “will personally bring representatives of Russia and Ukraine, two nations actively at war, together at the White House,” the White House said in a statement Tuesday.
“Mrs. Trump independently initiated engagement between the two warring nations and successfully secured a ceasefire in Oleshky and the surrounding Kherson region,” the statement read.
The broader war has continued despite the ceasefire. At least 33 people were killed in a Russian airstrike on a school where humanitarian aid was being distributed in southeastern Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday. More than 50 people may still be trapped beneath the rubble.
Russian forces struck the building in Komyshuvakha, in the Zaporizhzhia region, on Monday, then targeted an underground shelter where civilians had taken cover, Ukrainian officials said. Rescue crews continued searching the wreckage Tuesday.
Zelensky said that Kyiv hopes that the Abu Dhabi meeting will pave the way for a three-way meeting with him, President Donald Trump, and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“It is this format — at the level of leaders — that can resolve the key issues needed to achieve lasting peace and guaranteed security,” Zelensky posted on his Facebook page during a visit with German leaders in Berlin.
Morgunov reported from Berlin. Mary Ilyushina in Berlin contributed to this report.
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