Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will meet United States President Donald Trump in Washington, DC, on Monday to discuss an end to Moscow’s more than three-year war in Ukraine, a meeting announced hours after Trump’s talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska ended without a concrete deal.
In a post on his Truth Social platform after holding phone conversations with European Union and NATO leaders, Trump said the talks with Putin on Friday “went very well”.
“It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up,” Trump wrote.
Speaking to top officials in Moscow a day after the talks in Alaska, Putin said the talks had been “timely” and “very useful”, according to the Kremlin.
“We have not had direct negotiations of this kind at this level for a long time,” he said, adding: “We had the opportunity to calmly and in detail reiterate our position.”
“The conversation was very frank, substantive, and, in my opinion, brings us closer to the necessary decisions,” Putin said.
Al Jazeera’s Osama Bin Javaid, reporting from Moscow, said the talks have been largely considered a success in Russia.
“Trump’s remarks on the need for a larger peace agreement fall in line with what Putin has been saying for the last few months,” he said.
On Saturday, the Ukrainian leader and his European allies, who have been seeking a ceasefire, welcomed the Trump-Putin talks but emphasised the need for a security guarantee for Kyiv.
Zelenskyy, who was publicly berated by Trump and his officials during his last Oval Office meeting in February, said, “I am grateful for the invitation.” The Ukrainian leader said he had a “long and substantive conversation with Trump” after the summit.
“In my conversation with President Trump, I said that sanctions [on Russia] should be tightened if there is no trilateral meeting, or if Russia evades an honest end to the war,” the Ukrainian leader said.
He said Ukraine needs a real, long-lasting peace, and not “just another pause” between Russian offensives.
“Security must be guaranteed reliably and in the long term, with the involvement of both Europe and the US,” he said on X after a call with the European leaders.
Zelenskyy stressed that territorial issues can only be decided with Ukraine.
Trilateral meeting
In his first public comments after the Alaska talks, Zelenskyy said he supported Trump’s proposal for a meeting involving Ukraine, the US and Russia, adding that Kyiv is “ready for constructive cooperation”.
“Ukraine reaffirms its readiness to work with maximum effort to achieve peace,” the Ukrainian president posted on X.
But Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said on Russian state television on Saturday that a potential meeting involving Trump, Putin and Zelenskyy had not been raised during the US-Russia discussions.
“The topic has not been touched upon yet,” Ushakov said, according to the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.
Trump rolled out the red carpet on Friday for Putin, who was in the US for the first time in a decade, but gave little concrete detail afterwards of what was discussed.
Trump said in Alaska that “there’s no deal until there’s a deal” after Putin claimed the two leaders had hammered out an “understanding” on Ukraine and warned Europe not to “torpedo the nascent progress”.
Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford, reporting from Kyiv, said that Trump has been heavily criticised by the US media over the meeting in Alaska.
“They are concerned about what has been described as far more of a conciliatory tone by Trump towards Putin without coming out of that meeting with even a ceasefire,” he said.
Stratford said that eyes are now on Monday’s meeting in Washington, DC, as Zelenskyy and Trump try to set up a trilateral summit with Putin.
“If all works out, we will then schedule a meeting with President Putin,” the US president said.
During an interview with the Fox News channel after the talks, Trump insisted that the onus going forward might be on Zelenskyy “to get it done,” but he said there would also be some involvement from European nations.
Meanwhile, several European leaders on Saturday jointly pledged to continue to support Ukraine and maintain pressure on Russia until the war in Ukraine ends.
In a statement, European Union leaders, including the French president and German chancellor, outlined key points in stopping the conflict.
They said: “Ukraine must have ironclad security guarantees to effectively defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Russia cannot have a veto against Ukraine‘s path to the EU and NATO, the statement said. “It will be up to Ukraine to make decisions on its territory. International borders must not be changed by force.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Saturday that the US is ready to be part of security guarantees for Ukraine.
“[The] good news is that America is ready to participate in such security guarantees and is not leaving it to the Europeans alone,” Merz told the German public broadcaster ZDF after being briefed together with other European leaders by Trump on his talks with Putin.
The leaders of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden said in a statement that achieving peace between Ukraine and Russia requires a ceasefire and security guarantees for Ukraine.
“We welcome President Trump’s statement that the US is prepared to participate in security guarantees. No limitations should be placed on Ukraine’s armed forces or on its cooperation with other countries,” the statement said.
Shifting battlefield lines
The ebb and flow of the battlefield lines in Ukraine has taken on greater political significance as Trump pushes for an end to the war, with Russia advancing in Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast, part of the Donbas region .
Zelenskyy had revealed on Tuesday that Russia wanted Ukraine to withdraw from the remaining 30 percent of Donetsk that it still controls as part of a deal, stating that he would not agree on the basis that it was unconstitutional and that it would incentivise Russian aggression.
Ahead of Putin’s meeting with Trump, Zelenskyy had played down Russian advances in the region, as Moscow’s troops reportedly closed in on the strategic town of Pokrovsk, having seized the village of Yablunivka and the settlement of Oleksandrohrad.
On Saturday, as Russia’s Defence Ministry said that it had taken control of the village of Kolodyazi in Donetsk, Zelenskyy maintained in a post on X that Ukrainian troops were “defending our positions along the entire front line”, achieving “successes in some extremely difficult areas in the Donetsk region”.
On other fronts, Russia’s Defence Ministry also said on Saturday that it controlled Vorone in the Dnipropetrovsk region.
The Ukrainian military said that it had pushed Russian forces back by about 2km (1.2 miles) on part of the Sumy front in northern Ukraine, with fighting raging near the villages of Oleksiivka and Yunakivka, which both lie close to the Russian border.
