Zelenskyy approaches for perilous discussions with Trump in Washington Monday
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy flies to Washington, DC on Monday under a strong American pressure to accept a rapid end of the Russian war in his country, but determined to defend Kyiv’s interests – without triggering a second oval office with US President Donald Trump.
Trump invited Zelenskyy to the White House after having deployed the red carpet for Russian president Vladimir Putin, enemy of kyiv’s Arch, at an anchorage summit, in Alaska, on Friday which shocked a lot in Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of people have died since the invasion of Russia in February 2022.
The talks in Alaska did not produce the cease-fire that Trump was looking for, and the American chief said on Saturday that he now wanted a full-fledged peace agreement and that kyiv should accept because “Russia is very great power, and they are not”.
The blunt rhetoric completely rejects the weight of waiting on Zelenskyy, putting it in a potentially perilous position while returning to Washington for the first time since his talks with Trump in the Oval Office made an evolution of acrimony in February.
The American president reprimanded Zelenskyy in front of the world media at the time, saying that the leader of Ukraine had not “owned the cards” in negotiations and that what he described as the intransigence of kyiv risked triggering the Second World War.
Trump’s prosecution of a quick agreement now comes despite an intense diplomacy of European allies and Ukraine to convince the American president that a cease-fire should come first and not once a regulation is concluded-as requested by the Kremlin.
The New York Times, citing two senior European officials, reported on Saturday that European leaders had also been invited to attend Monday meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy. Reuters could not immediately confirm the report.
Trump informed Zelenskyy about his talks with Putin during a call on Saturday that lasted more than an hour and a half, said the Ukrainian chief. They were joined after an hour by European officials and NATO, he added.
“The impression is that he wants a quick agreement at any cost,” said a familiar source with the conversation in Reuters.
President Donald Trump said there was a very good chance of “getting there” to end the war in Ukraine after his summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Putin also launched the idea that Trump went to Moscow for a follow -up meeting.
The source said that Trump had sought to convince Zelenskyy to design the idea of an agreement in which he would withdraw the troops from the partially occupied Donetsk region that Russian troops have been trying to capture for years.
Zelenskyy replied that it was not possible, said the source.
kyiv publicly rejected the idea of withdrawing from the Ukrainian international land that she controls in the context of any agreement. According to Ukrainian officials from Donetsk, serves as a fortress which retains the Russian progress deeper in the country.
Oleksandr Merezhko, head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Ukrainian Parliament, told Reuters by phone that Trump’s accent on an agreement rather than a cease-fire included great risks for Ukraine.
“In the opinion of Putin, a peace agreement means several dangerous things-Ukraine does not reach NATO, its absurd requests for denazification and demilitarization, the Russian language and the Russian Church,” he said.
Such an agreement could be politically explosive in Ukraine, Melezhko said, adding that he feared that Putin’s international isolation will end.
Security guarantees
Avoiding a rehearsal of the acrimony of the oval office from February is essential for Zelenskyy to preserve the relations of Ukraine with the United States, which always provides military assistance and shares information.
For Ukraine, robust security guarantees to prevent future Russian invasion are based on any serious peace regulations.
Two familiar sources with the case said that during their call on Saturday, Trump and European leaders discussed potential security guarantees for Ukraine which would be outside the organization of the North Atlantic Treaty but similar to article 5 of the Alliance.
NATO, which Kyiv seeks to join – although Trump has clearly indicated that it will not happen soon – concerns any attack launched on one of his 32 members as an attack against all within the framework of his article 5 clause.
One of the two sources, which asked anonymity to discuss sensitive issues, said European leaders were trying to clarify the kind of us that this guarantee would imply, but that there were not yet details.
In an apparent effort to strengthen Zelenskyy’s hand before meeting Trump, France, the United Kingdom and Germany co-organizing a video call on Sunday afternoon of the “coalition of arranged nations” which could, in one way or another, help to monitor and maintain any agreement to put an end to the fighting, said the office of the French president Emmanuel Macron.
Zelenskyy said on several occasions that a trilateral meeting with Russian and American leaders was crucial to find a way to end the Large -scale war launched by Russia three and a half years ago.
Trump this week expressed the idea of such a meeting, saying that it could happen if his bilateral discussions in Alaska with Putin were successful.
“Ukraine stresses that key problems can be discussed in terms of leaders, and a trilateral format is suitable for this,” Zelenskyy wrote on social networks on Saturday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in London on Thursday. This occurs one day before US President Donald Trump met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska to discuss a possible ceasefire in Ukraine.
Trump starts on Zelenskyy and Europe
Trump said in Alaska that “there is no agreement before there was an agreement”, after Putin said that the two leaders had hammered an “understanding” on Ukraine and warned Europe not to “torpedo the emerging progress”.
During an interview with Fox News Channel before returning to Washington, Trump insisted that the burden in the future could be on Zelenskyy to do so “, but said that there would also be an involvement of European nations.
In their statement after talking to Trump, the main European leaders said they were ready to work with Trump and Zelenskyy to “a trilateral summit with European support”.
The declaration of French, German, Italian, British, Finnish, Polish and European Union French leaders said that “Ukraine must have iron security guarantees”, and this has welcomed the desire to provide them. “It will be up to Ukraine to make decisions on its territory,” they said. “International borders should not be modified by force.”
Emmanuelle Chaze, correspondent of France24 to kyiv, said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hopes that US President Donald Trump will reach “ to exert enough pressure ” on Russian president Vladimir Putin at their Alaska summit.
The head of the EU foreign policy, Kaja Kallas, said that “the harsh reality is that Russia does not intend to end this war of soon”, noting that Moscow launched new attacks against Ukraine, even if the delegations met.
“Putin continues to drag the negotiations and hopes he is getting away. He left anchorage without committing to ending the murder,” she said.
Ukrainian and Russian forces are fighting along a 1,000 -kilometer front line. Since spring, Russian troops have accelerated their gains, capturing the most territory since the first stages of the war.
Putin ‘came out of international isolation’
Russian officials and the media took a largely positive tone after the summit on Friday, some describing it as a symbolic end to Putin’s isolation in the West.
Former President Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chief of the Russian Security Council, congratulated the summit as a breakthrough in the restoration of the high -level dialogue between Moscow and Washington, describing talks like “calm, without ultimatums and threats”.
“Vladimir Putin came to the top of Alaska with the main objective of blocking any pressure on Russia to end the war,” said Neil Melvin, director of international security at the Royal United Services Institute based in London. “He will consider the result of the summit as an accomplished mission.”
Putin “came out of international isolation” and back on the world stage as one of the two world leaders, and “was not the least challenged” by Trump, who also ignored an arrest warrant issued for Putin by the International Criminal Court, said Laurie Bristow, British ambassador to Russia from 2016 to 2020.
“Unless Mr. Putin is absolutely convinced that he cannot win militarily, the fighting will not stop,” Bristow told the Associated Press. “This is the big point to remember from the anchorage summit.”
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