After a whirlwind of a weekend, Donald Trump and his administration appear closer than his predecessor ever was to ending the three-year-long war in Ukraine.
But comments from the White House, European leaders and Russia on Monday and Tuesday make it clear that there’s still at least one major gulf that needs bridging.
Trump returned to Washington this weekend from Alaska, where the U.S. president met for a summit with Russia’s Vladimir Putin that was sharply criticized by his adversaries and a source of real concern for Europe, after which it appeared that the U.S. was on the verge of negotiating away swaths of Ukrainian territory without any input from Kyiv.
On Monday, he met with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House alongside a cadre of European leaders from Germany, France, the U.K. and elsewhere. An eyebrow-raising scene played out this time in Washington, D.C., as world leaders crowded around the Resolute Desk like schoolchildren and Trump at one point dismissed them for an impromptu call with Putin. Afterwards, the pro-Ukraine delegation was echoing a level of optimism that the White House was eager to echo at a press briefing on Tuesday.
Yet, there was one other development that took place over Monday and Tuesday that could keep progress towards a peace agreement elusive. On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that the Trump administration was wholly opposed to deploying troops to support Ukraine under any circumstances, and was only considering acting as a coordinator for a security agreement between Ukraine and its European neighbors. She couldn’t tell reporters where common ground on the issue still existed with Russia — which separately indicated through statements that a European security force in Ukraine was off the table.
"U.S. boots will not be on the ground in Ukraine,” Leavitt said on Tuesday. “But we can certainly help in the coordination, and perhaps provide other means of security guarantees to our European allies.”
The erosion of that common ground that Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff eagerly proclaimed had been found in an interview Sunday could present the biggest obstacle to a long-term peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia going forward.
On Sunday, the administration’s go-to conflict resolution expert was on CNN, telling Jake Tapper that Putin had agreed to allow “Article 5-like protections” to Ukraine, something he called a “game-changer” in the path towards a peace deal.
“We got to an agreement that the United States and other European nations could effectively offer Article 5-like language to cover a security guarantee,” Witkoff said.
By Tuesday afternoon, it was completely unclear whether that was still a feasible suggestion. Russian officials repeated their objections to NATO forces entering Ukraine under any circumstances. The White House rejected the prospect of U.S. boots on the ground at any point. Yet Zelensky, in his own statements, has made clear that his government will not lay down arms without a concrete arrangement protecting his country’s sovereignty and borders from future Russian aggression. He wrote on Saturday on Twitter/X: “Security must be guaranteed reliably and in the long term, with the involvement of both Europe and the U.S.”
It’s a demand seen all the more crucial by Kyiv, given that Trump is now talking openly about ceding the Donbas region, part of which is occupied by Ukrainian forces, to Putin as a concession to make a deal.
On Tuesday, Leavitt was pressed further to confirm that Vladimir Putin agreed to meet with Volodymyr Zelensky within two weeks, something the Kremlin has not yet stated definitively.
Just the development of the two leaders in the same room would present a massive step forward in the Russia-Ukraine peace talks. But Russian officials previously agreed to begin “direct” talks with Ukraine in May, only for those plans to be abandoned. Kremlin officials seemed to already be moving in that direction on Tuesday, saying that talks needed to begin “gradually”.
"We're going to find out about President Putin in the next couple of weeks," Trump himself told reporters on Tuesday. "It's possible that he doesn't want to make a deal."
