Ahead of a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders at the White House on Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump threw cold water on one of Kyiv’s main demands that talks on ending the war in Ukraine should be focused on achieving a ceasefire.
“I don’t think you need a ceasefire,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, sitting alongside Zelensky. “I know that it might be good to have, but I can also understand, strategically, why one country or the other wouldn’t want it. You have a ceasefire, and they rebuild, and rebuild, and rebuild. And maybe they don’t want that.”
Zelensky and other European leaders are convening with Trump for a high-stakes meeting aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, days after the American president held a short summit with Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska.
Trump said he was planning to call Putin immediately after Monday’s talks, adding that he would urge the leaders of the two warring countries to hold a trilateral peace summit with the United States.
“If we don’t have a ‘trilat,’ then the fighting continues,” Trump told reporters. “I think if we have a ‘trilat’ there’s a good chance of maybe ending [the war].”
Wearing a black suit jacket and dress shirt, Zelensky was greeted at the White House by a smiling Trump, who pumped his fist in the air before shaking hands with the Ukrainian leader. Asked by reporters if he had anything to say before the meeting, Trump said: “We love them.”
Other European leaders, including EU Commission head Ursula von der Leyen, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron, arrived at the White House earlier in the day and are expected to play a mediating role in talks as they try to present a united front.
“A big day at the White House,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform ahead of the rapidly organized meeting. “We have never had so many European Leaders here at one time. A great honor for America!!! [Let’s] see what the results will be???”
Trump and Zelensky are expected to discuss Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demands for ending the war in Ukraine, which the Kremlin leader outlined during last week’s summit in Alaska.
While the exact details of those demands have not been made public, a flurry of reports over the weekend suggest they hinge on Kyiv ceding claim to the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, including territory not currently occupied by Russian forces.
Just days before he met with Putin, Trump himself had said that “There’ll be some land swapping going on.” And on Sunday, he urged Ukraine to give up annexed Crimea, as well as abandon its ambitions to join NATO, both key demands from Putin.
Ukraine has repeatedly rejected handing over its territory to Russia as a precondition for peace, but White House officials are likely hoping that new Russian concessions will nudge Kyiv toward some kind of settlement with Moscow.
In an interview with CNN on Sunday, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff said that the United States and Russia had agreed on a security guarantee framework for Ukraine that would represent a major shift in Moscow’s acceptable conditions for ending the war.
“We got to an agreement that the United States and other European nations could effectively offer ‘Article 5-like language’ to cover a security guarantee,” Witkoff said, referring to NATO’s collective defense clause.
Trump had briefed Zelensky on his meeting with Putin in an hour-long phone call aboard Air Force One after leaving the Alaska summit. Facing what is likely to be intense pressure to accede to Moscow’s demands, Zelensky met privately with European allies dubbed the “coalition of the willing” over the weekend to prepare for his meeting with Trump.
On Monday, Zelensky said that he was determined to achieve “a reliable and lasting peace for Ukraine and for the whole of Europe.”
“We understand that we shouldn't expect Putin to voluntarily abandon aggression and new attempts at conquest. That is why pressure must work,” he wrote in a post on X shortly before arriving at the White House. “Ukraine is ready for a real truce and for establishing a new security architecture. We need peace.”
Trump’s short-term goal — echoed in his Oval Office comments to reporters — now appears to be organizing a trilateral meeting between him, Putin and Zelensky, something both the U.S. and Ukrainian leaders have previously called for without any success, and Putin is likely to reject that kind of meeting again.
Zelensky said over the weekend that “new sanctions must follow” if the Russian president refuses to sit down with him.
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