Security promises, a suit jacket and no shouting: The key takeaways from Trump’s meeting with Zelensky
President Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump held a meeting at the White House on Monday that was a far-cry from the shouting match which erupted in February.
The Ukrainian president was joined by senior European leaders for the meeting with Trump, which came days after the US president held a landmark summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin.
And despite positive sounds emerging from world leaders following Monday’s summit, there were few details provided by Washington about the US security guarantees that are crucial to a future peace deal.
Here are the key takeaways from Monday’s White House summit.
It appears that we are closer than ever to witnessing Zelensky meet with the Russian leader in person for the first time since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022.
Trump had already declared that he was arranging a time and a place for the meeting and had called Putin to discuss this. A bilateral meeting between Putin and Zelensky would be followed by a trilateral meeting involving the US president, Trump said.
“We are ready for a trilateral,” Zelensky declared on Monday. He has been pushing for such a meeting for months, but Moscow has repeatedly rejected the idea. Whether Trump has successfully convinced Putin to take part remains uncertain.
Deterring future Russian aggression against Ukraine has been a central focus for Kyiv in its international diplomatic efforts.
While Trump has repeatedly ruled out Ukraine joining Nato, his envoy Steve Witkoff said that Putin had agreed to allow “Nato-style” protection for Ukraine after their meeting on Friday. Moscow has not commented on this.
On Monday, Trump did express vague support for security guarantees. European countries “want to give protection and they feel very strongly about it and we’ll help them out with that,” he said.
With Europeans looking to set up a force that could backstop any peace agreement in Ukraine, Trump suggested that Putin would be open to accepting security guarantees.
French president Emmanuel Macron said that talks to determine what the US is willing to provide will start as soon as Tuesday.
European leaders who attended the White House summit were all careful to heap praise on Trump ahead of, during and after the meeting.
But they did raise their desire for a temporary ceasefire to allow for thorough peace negotiations to follow – something which Trump initially supported but appears to have de-prioritised in favour of a long-term peace plan desired by Putin.
