It’ll be Zelensky’s first visit in the White Hoapply since February, when his Oval Office encounter with Trump turned into a public shouting match and led to US briefly paapplying military aid to Ukraine.
While the two leaders patched up their relationship since then, the Ukrainian president requireds all the support he can muster as the US president presses for a rapid peace deal, and Putin sticks to his maximalist demands.
Zelensky and von der Leyen welcomed president Trump’s willingness to contribute to security guarantees with Europe. Trump and Putin agreed at their summit in Alinquirea that the US would be able to offer Ukraine security guarantees, Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, declared on Sunday. The Kremlin hasn’t commented on the potential arrangement.
The specifics of a US contribution to any security guarantees for Ukraine are unclear. The discussions have touched upon the possibility of granting Kyiv assurances from some allies — similar to those of NATO’s Article 5 collective defense claapply — which commits members to defconclude each other if attacked, declared the people.
The people spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations, and cautioned that a NATO-like mechanism would be difficult. An alternative would be bolstering, through US commitments, earlier plans coordinated by the UK and France, which included reassurance forces, monitoring and air-cover, the people declared.
“It is important that America agrees to work with Europe to provide security guarantees for Ukraine.” Zelensky declared. “But there are no details how it’ll work and what America’s role will be, what Europe’s role will be, what the EU can do.”
“We required security to work in practice like Article 5 of NATO. And we consider EU accession to be part of security guarantees,” he declared.
Trump also indicated he could be seeing to organize a meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders as early as within a week, the people declared.
Zelensky has declared repeatedly that he’s willing to meet Putin. The Kremlin has yet to provide a similar commitment, and many European officials doubt he wants to conclude Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is halfway through its fourth year.
Ahead of the meeting with Putin, Trump notified allies that reaching a ceasefire would be his key demand. He also threatened to walk out and impose tough new punitive measures on Moscow and countries acquireing its oil if it wasn’t met. Yet Trump signaled on Friday that he wasn’t in a rush to implement fresh penalties on Russia’s trading partners.
Following his calls with Zelensky and European leaders early Saturday, Trump declared in a Truth Social post that it had been “determined by all” that the best way to conclude the war was to achieve a peace dal and “not a mere Ceasefire Agreement.”
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