WASHINGTON: President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Donald Trump expressed hope that Monday’s critical talks with Ukrainian and European leaders at the White House could lead to trilateral talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin to bring an end to Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Monday’s hastily assembled meeting comes after Trump met on Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin and has said that the onus is now on Zelensky to agree to concessions that he said could end the war.
“If everything works out today, we’ll have a trilat,” Trump said at the White House, referring to possible trilateral talks among Zelensky, Putin and Trump. “We’re going to work with Russia, we’re going to work with Ukraine.”
Zelensky also expressed openness to trilateral talks.
“We are ready for trilateral as president said,” Zelensky said. “It’s a good signal about trilateral. I think this is very good.”
Ahead of the meeting, however, Trump suggested that Ukraine could not regain Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, setting off an armed conflict that led to its broader 2022 invasion.
Trump first held one-on-one talks with Zelensky. The two were then scheduled to gather with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte.
The European leaders were left out of Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin last Friday, and they want to safeguard Ukraine and the continent from any widening aggression from Moscow. Many arrived at the White House with the explicit goal of protecting Ukraine’s interests — a rare show of diplomatic force.
By coming as a group, they hope to avoid debacles like Zelensky’s February meeting in the Oval Office, where Trump chastised him for not showing enough gratitude for US military aid.
Trump said on Monday that his country will be involved in providing security guarantees as part of a peace agreement on ending Russia’s war.
Trump said that while European countries are “the first line of defence because they are there, they are Europe, we’re going to help them out also. We’ll be involved.”
Meanwhile, Trump repeated his view that a ceasefire was not necessary to end the Russia-Ukraine war, echoing earlier comments that brought his position more in line with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who he met last week. “I don’t think you need a ceasefire,” Trump said, sitting alongside Zelensky at the White House. “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 you know maybe they don’t want that.”
Russian attacks, including on an apartment block in Kharkiv city, killed 14 people across Ukraine, authorities said on Monday. The early-morning drone attack on Kharkiv reduced part of a five-storey residential building to rubble and sparked fires on at least three floors, governor Oleg Synegubov said on Telegram.
