Washington, Aug 19 (IANS) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that he had a “very good conversation” with US President Donald Trump ahead of their multilateral meeting with other European leaders.
Zelensky gave an upbeat assessment of talks with Trump and said that they discussed security guarantees for Ukraine.
“I think that we had a very good conversation with President Trump , and it really was the best one — or, sorry, maybe the best one will be in the future,” Zelensky said at an expanded meeting with European leaders.
“We spoke about very sensitive points.”
Zelensky added that a truce in the war is needed to make it possible for Ukrainians to engage in a democratic, open, and legal election.
Trump met for about an hour at the White House on Monday with Zelensky in an accelerating effort to end a grinding war with Russia on terms acceptable to both sides.
Trump greeted the Ukrainian leader on Monday afternoon with a smile and warm handshake — a stark difference from the tense televised meeting the two men held in February in the Oval Office.
Fresh off a summit in Alaska with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump summoned Zelensky to see if they can resolve sticking points centered on Ukraine’s future security and the status of territory that the Russian military has seized in eastern and southern Ukraine.
Trump also said that Putin “agreed that Russia would accept security guarantees for Ukraine, and this is one of the key points that we need to consider, and we’re going to be considering that at the table, also who will do what essentially,” ahead of a meeting with European leaders.
“I think the European nations are going to take a lot of the burden. We’re going to help them and we’re going to make it very secure,” Trump added.
A number of European leaders joined Zelensky and Trump at the White House on Monday to work toward a breakthrough in a more than three year conflict that Trump himself has cautioned could erupt in a third world war if allowed to persist.
Asked if US troops would help secure a peace deal, Trump did not rule out the possibility.
As a condition of ending the war, Putin has insisted that his country retain about 20 per cent of Ukrainian territory that it now controls. For his part, Zelensky has said that Ukraine’s constitution forbids him to cede any land.
Trump and Zelenskyy spoke to the press corps in the Oval Office before meeting privately.
The US President suggested he won’t abandon efforts to forge a peace deal, though he conceded the Russia-Ukraine conflict has proved particularly stubborn.
“It’s never the end of the road,” Trump said.
“People are being killed and we want to stop that. So, I would say it’s not the end of the road. I think we have a good chance of doing it.”
Zelensky sat to Trump’s right in a dark, formal outfit complete with a collar — a departure from his normal wartime garb, which Trump remarked upon favourably. (At Zelensky’s last meeting at the White House a reporter asked him why he wasn’t wearing a suit).
When a reporter asked if he was prepared redraw Ukraine’s map if it would end the war sooner, Zelensky did not answer directly.
“We need to stop this war,” he said.
“To stop Russia, we need support from American and from European partners.”
Trump said he will call Putin when he’s done with the negotiations for Monday with Zelensky and other European leaders.
Depending on the progress made, he said he would try to convene a meeting that hasn’t happened since the war began — a trilateral summit with himself, Putin and Zelensky.
“A lot of people were killed last week,” Trump said, adding, “And I know the president (Zelensky), I know myself and, I believe, Vladimir Putin want to see it ended.”
Trump scheduled a full slate of afternoon meetings with Zelensky along with European officials, including French President Emmanuel Macron, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Upon finishing his meeting with Zelensky, Trump and the Ukrainian President went straight to another meeting with the European leaders.
“We will come to a resolution today I think on almost everything, including probably the security,” Trump said before the start of that meeting.
Europe looms large in any accord between the combatants. Looking to prevent future Russian attacks, European nations would be an important part of any security guarantees that Ukraine has requested as part of any peace deal.
Yet when asked if he would deploy Americans to Ukraine to help preserve a peace deal, Trump did not dismiss the idea out of hand.
“We’re going to work with Ukraine, we’re going to work with everybody and we’re going to make sure that if there is peace, the peace is going to stay longterm,” he said.
With the TV cameras present, the tone was far more cordial than in Zelensky’s last visit.
In that February meeting, Vice President J.D. Vance sat beside Trump and berated Zelensky for not showing enough gratitude to the President. This time, Vance sat in the same place but stayed silent.
In the last visit, Trump memorably told Zelensky that he didn’t hold any “cards” and and that his country was “in big trouble”.
“You’re gambling with World War III, and what you doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country, that’s backed you,” Trump told Zelensky at the time.
The meeting was ultimately cut short.
Who holds the better “cards” at this point? a reporter asked Trump on Monday.
“I don’t want to say that,” the President replied.
Trump has lately stepped up his role in ending the conflict. He met privately with Putin at a military base in Anchorage on Friday to jumpstart peace talks.
Trump and Putin strode down a red carpet together before a private meeting that lasted nearly three hours.
Though he said beforehand he wanted a ceasefire, Trump left the summit without one and said he was shifting his aim instead toward a full-fledged “peace agreement”.
In a post to Truth Social on Sunday night, Trump seemed to place the onus of ending the war on Zelensky.
Trump wrote that Ukraine must give up Russian-annexed Crimea and also abandon any hopes of joining NATO — one of Putin’s demands.
“President Zelensky of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight,” Trump wrote in his post.
Zelensky took a different posture. In a post on X on late Sunday, he wrote that “Russia must end this war, which it itself started”.
The meetings on Monday give the leaders a forum to discuss future security guarantees for Ukraine, which US special envoy Steve Witkoff floated as potentially looking similar to NATO’s Article 5.
A challenge for Zelensky is persuading Trump that Russia should give up the territory it seized by force.
In the run-up to the Alaska summit, Trump said that an end to the war would include “some swapping of territories”.
Zelensky promptly shot down the prospect, saying that “Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier”.
–IANS
int/khz
