Trump pressures Zelenskyy to end war ahead of White House meeting Megan LebowitzAugust 18, 2025 at 2:30 AM WASHINGTON — Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will meet with President Donald Trump on Monday afternoon at the White House, just days after Trump and Russia's President Vladimir Putin le...
- - Trump pressures Zelenskyy to end war ahead of White House meeting
Megan LebowitzAugust 18, 2025 at 2:30 AM
WASHINGTON — Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will meet with President Donald Trump on Monday afternoon at the White House, just days after Trump and Russia's President Vladimir Putin left an Alaska summit without a ceasefire deal.
Zelenskyy is traveling to Washington, D.C., alongside several European leaders, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
Trump's sit-down with the leaders will come as he's intensified his efforts in recent weeks to end the war in Ukraine, a more than three-year conflict he insists would not have taken place had he been in office.
Following his meeting with Putin, Trump shifted his aim toward establishing a full-fledged "peace agreement" between Russia and Ukraine, bemoaning ceasefire agreements as unstable. At the same time, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday on NBC News' "Meet the Press" that a ceasefire was "not off the table," though Russia has not agreed to stop fighting.
In a post to Truth Social Sunday night, Trump appeared to place the onus of ending the war on Zelenskyy, while emphasizing that Ukraine must give up Russian-annexed Crimea and its hopes of joining NATO — a key demand from Putin.
"President Zelenskyy of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight," Trump said.
A day earlier, Trump indicated in a post on Saturday that if talks with Zelenskyy are successful on Monday, he will facilitate further discussions with Putin in hopes of reaching a permanent end to the war.
The meeting will give the leaders the opportunity to discuss future security guarantees for Ukraine, which U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff floated as potentially looking similar to NATO's Article 5.
Ukraine hoped to use the meeting to negotiate an ironclad security guarantee, similar to Article 5, and convince Trump that a temporary ceasefire is necessary to begin real peace talks, according to a Ukrainian source familiar with the goals. The security guarantees should be treaty-level obligations, the source said, which require Senate approval.
A GOP lawmaker who declined to be identified echoed the need for U.S. security guarantees.
Similarly, a European official said that the meeting would be focused in part on clarifying what security guarantees would look like. Trump has floated land "swapping," but the official said that their belief was that Ukraine would never give up all of its eastern Donbas region, much of which Russia controls. Europe, the official said, would also likely want to participate in any final negotiations for a peace agreement.
Zelenskyy said in a post on X late Sunday that he had arrived in Washington. "I am confident that we will defend Ukraine, effectively guarantee security, and that our people will always be grateful to President Trump," he said. He emphasized that "Russia must end this war, which it itself started."
The Ukrainian president's visit will be his first to the White House since a February meeting devolved into a stunning confrontation between Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Zelenskyy. The moment, which played out live on television, shocked Ukrainian allies and marked a sharp shift in the United States' years-long support for an ally embroiled in a bloody war that began with Russia's invasion.
Monday's meeting comes after the White House welcomed Putin to Alaska, a controversial move that garnered further criticism when the U.S. rolled out a red carpet for Putin and took the controversial step of allowing the Russian autocrat to ride privately with Trump in "The Beast," a presidential vehicle.
The meeting, which excluded Zelenskyy, ultimately concluded without a ceasefire deal. The leaders departed Alaska after hosting a 12-minute press event where they did not take questions or announce deliverables.
Trump announced his meeting with Zelenskyy in the early hours of Saturday morning, adding in a post to Truth Social that "if all works out, we will then schedule a meeting with President Putin."
The future of major sticking points in discussions to end the war — the status of Russian-occupied Ukrainian land and security guarantees to prevent a future Russian invasion — remained murky over the weekend.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday that there "have to be some security guarantees for Ukraine," noting that the issue would be discussed "over the next few days." Witkoff said Sunday that security guarantees could resemble NATO's Article 5, which triggers a response by the entire coalition if one member is attacked.
In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," Witkoff said that "the United States is potentially prepared to be able to give Article 5 security guarantees, but not from NATO, directly from the United States and other European countries."
The Ukrainian president celebrated what he called "a historic decision" for the U.S. to participate in security guarantees, saying in a post to X on Sunday that they "must really be very practical, delivering protection on land, in the air, and at sea, and must be developed with Europe's participation."
Zelenskyy will also have the opportunity during Monday's meeting to address Trump's comments on the future of Ukrainian land occupied by Russia.
In the days ahead of the Alaska summit, Trump said that an end to the war would include "some swapping of territories." Zelenskyy promptly shot down the prospect, saying that "Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier."
Rubio said Sunday on NBC News' "Meet the Press" that "no one is pushing Ukraine to give that up," referring to land occupied by Russia. But later that morning, Trump appeared to undercut Rubio's remarks when he reposted a Truth Social user who declared, "Ukraine must be willing to lose some territory to Russia otherwise the longer the war goes on they will keep losing even more land!!"
Trump left his meeting with Putin without announcing any ceasefire or peace agreements. The president told reporters on his way to Alaska that "I'm not going to be happy" if the meeting did not lead to a ceasefire. He also said that Russia would face "economically severe" consequences if Putin did not seem interested in peace.
However, Rubio said Sunday on "Meet the Press" that he did not believe "new sanctions on Russia are going to force him to accept the ceasefire."
Witkoff defended the president after he failed to secure a ceasefire, saying on "Fox News Sunday" that a ceasefire often precedes a peace deal, and "the president has always talked about a ceasefire until he made a lot of different wins in this meeting and began to realize that we could be talking about a peace deal."
"The ultimate deal here is a peace deal," Witkoff added.
Trump's Friday meeting with Putin was a stark contrast from Zelenskyy's February trip to the White House, when Trump and Vance publicly berated Zelenskyy, arguing he was not grateful enough for U.S. support.
"You're gambling with World War III, and what you doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country, that's backed you," Trump told Zelenskyy at the time. The meeting was ultimately cut short.
The two leaders have met since then, though not at the White House. Trump and Zelenskyy met at the Vatican in April on the sidelines of the pope's funeral, and they met again privately at the NATO summit in June.
Trump has previously falsely called Zelenskyy a "dictator" and falsely accused Ukraine of starting the war. The war began when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Source: "AOL General News"
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