WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is meeting at the White House on Monday with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an accelerating effort to end a grinding war with Russia on terms acceptable to both sides.
Trump greeted the Ukrainian leader with a smile and a warm handshake upon his arrival at the White House — a stark difference from the tense televised meeting the two men held in in February in the Oval Office.
Fresh off a summit meeting in Alaska with Russia’s leadership, Trump summoned Zelenskyy to see if they can resolve sticking points centered on Ukraine’s future security and the status of territory that the Russian military has seized in eastern and southern Ukraine. A number of European leaders also arrived at the White House on Monday, working toward a breakthrough in a more than three year conflict that Trump himself has cautioned could erupt in a third world war if allowed to persist.
As a condition of ending the war, Russian President Vladimir Putin has insisted that his country retain about 20% of Ukrainian territory that it now controls. For his part, Zelenskyy has said that Ukraine’s constitution forbids him to cede any territory.
“Our main goal is a reliable and lasting peace for Ukraine and for the whole of Europe,” Zelenskyy posted on X Monday afternoon, before his sit-down with Trump. “And it is important that the momentum of all our meetings lead to precisely this result.”
Trump scheduled a full slate of afternoon meetings with Zelenskyy along with European officials including French President Emmanuel Macron, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Europe looms large in any peace deal reached between the combatants. Looking to prevent future Russian attacks, European nations would be an important part of any security guarantees that Ukraine has requested as part of any peace deal.
“Ukraine is ready for a real truce and for establishing a new security architecture,” Zelenskyy wrote in his social media post. “We need peace.”
Zelenskyy’s last visit to the White House went poorly. Trump and Vice President JD Vance took a harsh tone with the Ukrainian leader, whose country was invaded by the Russian military in February 2022. They berated him over the war’s trajectory, with Trump telling Zelenskyy he didn’t hold any “cards” in a peace negotiation.
Lately, Trump has ratcheted up his efforts to secure a peace deal. With an eye on the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump met privately with Putin at a military base in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday to jumpstart peace talks. Though he said before the meeting he wanted a ceasefire, Trump left the nearly three hour meeting without one and said he was shifting his aim toward a full-fledged “peace agreement.”
The Trump administration’s messaging has at times been muddled. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that a ceasefire was “not off the table.”
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 that if talks with Zelenskyy are successful, he will facilitate further discussions with Putin in hopes of reaching a permanent end to the war.
The meeting gives 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 hopes 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.
Vance is also attending Monday’s meeting with Trump and Zelenskyy.
The 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 Ukrainian territories partially occupied by Russia and security guarantees to prevent a future Russian invasion — remained murky over the weekend.
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.