During his meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House, US President Donald Trump expressed cautious optimism over the ongoing diplomatic efforts. He said if his meeting with Zelensky went well, he expected to hold a trilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin with the objective of ending the Ukraine-Russia war.
“We will have a trilateral if today goes well,” Trump said, adding that he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin “wants the war to end.”
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 Putin, who he met last week.
"I don't think you need a ceasefire," Trump said, sitting alongside Ukraine's President Volodymyr 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."
Zelensky thanked Trump for hosting the talks, which will be expanded to include European leaders later in the day. "Thank you for (the) invitation and thank you very much for your efforts, personal efforts to stop killings and stop this war," he said.
Trump said that his country will be involved in providing security guarantees as part of a peace agreement on ending Russia's war. He said that while European countries are "the first line of defense because they are there, they are Europe, we're going to help them out also. We'll be involved."
Ahead of the meeting, Zelensky had said he will discuss securing Western security guarantees for Kyiv during the meeting with President Trump and top European leaders.
The US President is pushing Ukraine to make major concessions following his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska last week, saying Kyiv must give up Crimea and abandon its NATO ambitions. Those are two of Moscow's top demands.
But Zelensky, who huddled with the Europeans before they all went to the White House to meet Trump, urged Trump to bring "peace through strength" against Russia and stressed the need for US security guarantees.
Later today, Trump will meet separately with the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Finland, as well as NATO chief Mark Rutte and European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen.
A Trump-Putin summit in Alaska last week failed to produced a ceasefire in the nearly three-and-a-half-year war that began with Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Afterwards, Trump dropped his previous insistence on a ceasefire in favor of seeking a complete peace deal, meaning negotiations could proceed while the war goes on. He also alarmed Kyiv and European capitals by repeating a number of Russian talking points.
Trump said Sunday that Zelensky could end the war "almost immediately, if he wants to" but that, for Ukraine, there was "no getting back" Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, and "NO GOING INTO NATO."
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