Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his European allies arrived in Washington on Monday, eager to know what commitments Donald Trump made at his summit with Vladimir Putin and worried that he might force Kyiv to make unacceptable concessions.
Trump will host Zelensky and several European leaders to discuss the potential peace agreement terms he discussed with Putin in Alaska last Friday. According to a person familiar with the matter, the US is expected to focus on the territorial concessions demanded by Russia, while Kyiv will seek to determine possible security guarantees.
Anxiety hangs over the allies, who have little means to counter the demands that Trump may make of Ukraine, and they doubt whether Putin is truly committed to peace. Another challenge comes from Trump himself: he wants a quick peace deal but offers no clear explanation of how to achieve it.
Other people familiar with the matter said Trump told leaders of other countries in a weekend conference call that he was willing to accept U.S. participation in guaranteeing Ukraine’s security. All the people familiar with the matter requested anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
He also told allies that he hopes to reach an agreement as soon as possible and will urge Ukraine to agree, with the goal of holding a meeting between Putin and Zelensky within a week. Given that many issues remain unresolved, many Europeans consider this timetable overly ambitious.
Insiders said that Trump disclosed some of the content of his conversation with Putin to the leaders of allied countries during their phone calls, but did not reveal too many details. Senior European diplomats privately expressed dissatisfaction with the outcome of the summit and pointed out that Putin seemed to have benefited the most from it.
Trump posted on the Truth Social website that Zelensky “could almost immediately end the war with Russia if he wanted to, or he could continue fighting.” He hinted that Crimea would not be returned and said Ukraine would not be allowed to join NATO, but did not provide more details.
Leaders are still weighing the fact that Trump’s own team is trying to lower expectations for a quick resolution.
“We still have a long way to go,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who attended the summit, told Fox News on Sunday. “We are not at the brink of a peace agreement. We are not at the brink of an agreement. But I do think progress has been made.”
Over the weekend, Trump played golf and sidestepped further news about his meeting with the Russian president. He posted on Truth Social that the media had “distorted the facts related to me.”
“Whatever I say or do, they won’t report me truthfully,” he said. “I had a great meeting in Alaska about Biden’s stupid war, a war that never should have happened!!!”
In a series of TV interviews, Rubio said that Monday’s talks would focus on Ukraine’s security guarantees, including what contributions the US would make. He also said that even if the negotiations broke down, the US would not suffer much and the continuation of the war would not have a significant impact on the daily lives of Americans. This implies that Trump might be willing to stay completely out of it.
The situation is critical. Russia is making slow but steady progress in eastern Ukraine, and after Trump cut US aid, Europe may find it difficult to fill the gap in weapons and ammunition.
According to a previous Bloomberg report, Trump said in the call that Putin wants Ukraine to give up all control over the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk provinces in the Donbas region, reiterating the previous demand. This would give Russia the military victory it has been unable to achieve since the outbreak of the war in 2014, while Ukraine still maintains tight defenses in the region.
Russia will also cease to advance its sovereignty claims over the parts of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions in Ukraine that it has not yet controlled, effectively freezing the frontline at its current position. The Kremlin may also withdraw its troops from the northeastern part of Ukraine close to the Russian border, where its forces only control small patches of land.
This raises the possibility that any “land swap” in the deal Trump hinted at would benefit Putin, allowing him to control areas beyond those he has occupied, while Ukraine would make concessions and give up land that originally belonged to it.
