Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will be joined by European leaders on Monday in Washington, DC, in his quest to bring an end to the Ukraine war. Following his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, US President Donald Trump abandoned his calls for a ceasefire and the threat of punitive measures against Russia.
Prior to the Alaska summit on Friday, which Ukraine and its European allies were not invited to, one of Trump’s main goals had been to secure a ceasefire in Ukraine, more than three years after Russia’s invasion.
As part of a deal to end the three-and-a-half-year conflict, Putin agreed at the summit with Trump to let the US and its European allies offer Ukraine a security guarantee like NATO’s collective defence mandate, special US envoy Steve Witkoff said on Sunday.
“We were able to win the following concession: That the United States could offer Article 5-like protection, which is one of the real reasons why Ukraine wants to be in NATO,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Witkoff added it was the first time he had heard Putin agree to that.
Speaking in Brussels on Sunday, following in-person meetings with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and other European leaders virtually, Zelenskyy stated that peace negotiations should be centered on the Ukraine war’s existing front lines.
The Ukrainian president reiterated his long-standing stance that a ceasefire must be established before a final agreement can be negotiated. “We need real negotiations, which means we can start where the front line is now.” He said that European leaders support this.
Trump, who has long advocated for talks on a final peace deal, rejected an immediate ceasefire after the Alaska summit on Friday with Putin failed to produce any significant breakthrough.
Following his meeting with Putin, the US president reportedly informed European leaders that he had offered to back a plan to end the conflict in which Ukraine ceded some of its land to Russia, according to a report in New York Times.
Ukraine and its European allies have been uneasy about Trump’s land swap proposal from the beginning and have denounced Putin’s position as a means of buying time and pressuring Russia’s military advances.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, Finland’s President Alexander Stubb, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and von der Leyen will travel with Zelenskyy to Washington, DC, on Monday for talks with Trump. Presenting a unified front between Ukraine and its European partners is the aim of Monday’s negotiations in Washington.
The White House announced that Trump will meet with Zelenskyy in the Oval Office at 1:15 p.m. EDT (1715 GMT) and with all of the European leaders in the East Room of the White House at 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT).