United States President Donald Trump has announced plans to convene a face-to-face summit between Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his latest bid to end Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Trump’s proposal on Monday came as he hosted Zelenskyy and top European leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, at the White House for high-stakes talks on ending the conflict, which has raged since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Trump said he had “begun arrangements” for the summit after speaking with Putin by phone, and that he would hold a trilateral meeting with his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts following their two-way meeting.
“Again, this was a very good, early step for a War that has been going on for almost four years,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.
“Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, are coordinating with Russia and Ukraine.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte separately confirmed that Putin had agreed to the bilateral meeting, but did not specify a date or location.
Zelenskyy, who described his meeting with Trump as a “very good conversation,” told reporters that he was “ready” to meet the Russian leader one-on-one.
Moscow did not immediately confirm that it had agreed to a summit, but Russia’s state-run TASS news agency cited presidential aide Yuri Ushakov as saying that Putin and Trump “spoke in favour of continuing direct talks” between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations.
The proposals for a summit, which would be the first meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy since Moscow’s invasion, came as the fraught issue of security guarantees for Ukraine took centre stage during the talks at the White House.
The specifics of what those guarantees would look like remained unclear on Monday.
Asked if the US could send peacekeepers to Ukraine, Trump said that European countries would be the “first line of defence”, but that Washington would provide “a lot of help”.
“We’re going to help them out also, we’re going to be involved,” Trump said.
Trump said on Truth Social later that discussions had focused on which security guarantees would be provided by European countries with “coordination” by the US.
Zelenskyy said that the guarantees would be “unpacked” by Kyiv’s partners and formalised within the next week to 10 days.
While Trump has ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine, his special envoy, Witkoff, said on Sunday that Putin was open to a security guarantee resembling the 32-member alliance’s collective defence mandate.
Under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, an armed attack against any one NATO member nation is considered an attack on all members of the alliance.
Speaking on Fox News after Monday’s talks, Rutte called Washington’s commitment to be involved in guaranteeing Ukraine’s security a “breakthrough”, but said the exact nature of that involvement would be discussed over the coming days.
Rutte said the discussions had not touched on the possibility of deploying US or European troops.
“What we all agree on is that if this war does come to end… it has to be definitive,” Rutte said.
Konstantin Sonin, a Russian exile and Putin critic who is a professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, said that meaningful security guarantees for Kyiv would need to include European troops on the ground.
“This is all ‘unacceptable’ to Putin, so for European leaders, it is the question how to persuade President Trump that without such guarantees, the war, even if it stops now, will start again in the near future,” Sonin told Al Jazeera.
Sonin said that Ukraine had been failed by “written” guarantees for decades, including during Moscow’s 2014 invasion and occupation of Crimea.
“Russia has signed many international treaties recognising Ukraine’s sovereignty and borders – including Putin himself signing one such treaty in 2004 – and still violated all of these treaties, both in 2014 and 2022,” Sonin said.
“This is all to say that the sticking point is not the language in some documents,” he added.
The issue of what territory Kyiv might be asked to give up in a peace deal also remained unclear after the talks at the White House.
Ahead of the meeting, Trump warned that the return to Ukraine of Russian-occupied Crimea would be off the table in any negotiated settlement.
Trump has indicated that a deal to end the war would involve “some swapping, changes in land” between Russia and Ukraine.
Russia controls about one-fifth of Ukraine, according to open-source estimates. Ukraine, which took control of a large swath of Russia’s Kursk region during a surprise counter-offensive last year, is not believed to hold any Russian territory at present.
Speaking on Fox News, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said both Moscow and Kyiv would have to make concessions for a deal.
“Obviously, land or where you draw those lines – where the war stops – is going to be part of that conversation,” Rubio said.
“And it’s not easy, and maybe it’s not even fair, but it’s what it takes in order to bring about an end to a war. And that’s been true in every war.”
Zelenskyy, who has repeatedly ruled out handing over Ukrainian territory to Moscow, said on Monday that land would be an issue for him and Putin to work out between them.
“We will leave the issue of territories between me and Putin,” Zelenskyy told reporters.
Yurii Poita, an analyst at the Kyiv-based Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies, said the meeting could be cautiously described as a success for Ukraine given its positive atmosphere and Trump’s apparent desire to resolve the conflict on terms acceptable to Kyiv.
“While ‘security guarantees’ previously demanded by Kyiv caused irritation in the US, we now see that the parties are beginning to work on the outlines of these security guarantees and the broader security architecture that would ensure long-term peace and prevent a renewed Russian attack on Ukraine,” Poita told Al Jazeera.
Still, Poita said, the talks left “complex issues” outstanding.
“If the Russian leadership does not feel significant pressure – primarily economic and sanctions-related – Russia will ignore calls for peace or will set unacceptable conditions for Ukraine,” he said.
“Second, the specific elements of security guarantees for Ukraine: will they be provided, and will there be something akin to NATO’s Article 5 for Ukraine from Western countries? Will Western military contingents be deployed in Ukraine to strengthen security?”
