Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is to meet with US President Donald Trump tomorrow as he and European allies push for a trilateral summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite signs the Russian leader is not open to concessions to end the war in Ukraine.
“Ukraine reaffirms its readiness to work with maximum effort to achieve peace,” Zelenskiy wrote on social media after a call with Trump yesterday.
Trump confirmed the Ukrainian president’s visit to Washington in a Truth Social post, and said a meeting with Putin and Zelenskiy could be scheduled “if all works out.”
Photo: Bloomberg
Zelenskiy and European leaders spoke with Trump as the US president flew back from Friday’s talks in Alaska with Putin, which failed to deliver a path to end the war.
Trump said on the call that while it is up to Ukraine to decide on what to do with its territory, Putin’s stance has not changed — he still wants Kyiv to cede control of the entire Donbas region in Ukraine’s east, people familiar with the matter said.
Zelenskiy has repeatedly ruled out giving up all of Donetsk and Luhansk, which Moscow’s forces only partially control and have so far failed to take militarily. Russia would halt advancing its claims over the parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions it does not now control, effectively freezing the battlelines there, the people said.
Trump told the leaders that he was prepared to contribute to guaranteeing Ukraine’s security as long as it did not involve NATO, they added.
The president suggested Putin would be OK with that, the people said.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who was on the call with Trump, confirmed that the US president had raised the idea of a security guarantee “inspired” by NATO’s Article 5, which she has been pushing for several months.
The starting point for the proposal was defining a collective security clause “that would allow Ukraine to benefit from the support of all its partners, including the US, [which would be] ready to act in case it is attacked again,” Meloni said in a statement.
The US president wrote that his meeting with Putin and the call with Zelenskiy both went “very well,” adding that “it was determined by all” that the best way to end the war was to achieve a peace agreement and “not a mere Ceasefire Agreement.”
Trump’s statement came after he previously said that a ceasefire would be his key demand of Putin at the summit.
European leaders also said that it would be up to Ukraine to make decisions on its territory.
“International borders must not be changed by force,” they said in a seperate statement signed by the leaders of France, Italy, Germany, Finland, Poland, the UK and the president of the European Commission.
They also said Moscow “cannot have a veto” on Ukraine joining the EU or NATO, adding that they were “ready to work ... towards a trilateral summit with European support.”
“We are clear that Ukraine must have ironclad security guarantees to effectively defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity,” and “no limitations should be placed on Ukraine’s armed forces or on its cooperation with third countries,” the European leaders said.
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