President Donald Trump insisted Monday that his latest White House talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy should not be viewed as a last-ditch bid to broker peace with Russia, framing the effort as an ongoing process rather than a final attempt.
“I can never say that. It’s never the end of the road,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “People are being killed, and we want to stop that. So I would not say it’s the end of the road. No, I think we have a good chance of doing it now. It’s been almost four years now that, a lot of people were killed last week, a lot of people last week. I mean, millions of people killed, but a lot of people last week, for whatever reason, a big number, a lot of soldiers, both on both sides. And, I know the president. I know myself, and I believe Vladimir Putin wants to see it ended.”
The White House meeting followed Trump’s encounter with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, just days earlier. Trump confirmed he spoke with Putin before sitting down with Zelenskyy and planned to call the Russian leader again after completing discussions with Zelenskyy and other European heads of state.
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This marks Zelenskyy’s first visit to Washington since February, and he reportedly arrived alongside several key European leaders, among them British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. All have voiced strong support for Ukraine.
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Trump also raised the possibility of deploying American troops to Ukraine in the event a peace framework is reached, saying U.S. involvement would focus on guaranteeing security.
“We will give them very good protection, very good security. That’s part of it,” Trump noted.
While stressing that specifics are still under discussion, Trump said any plan would be closely coordinated with European allies. “They’ll all be involved, but there’ll be a lot of help when it comes to security, there’s going to be a lot of help, it’s going to be good,” he said. “They are first line of defense, because they’re there, they’re Europe, but we’re going to help them out also, we’ll be involved.”
Although Trump previously dismissed NATO membership for Ukraine as part of a peace deal, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff told CNN on Sunday that Putin had agreed to allow U.S. and its allies to extend security guarantees similar to NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense clause.
“We were able to win the following concession that the United States could offer Article 5-like protection, which is one of the real reasons why Ukraine wants to be in NATO,” Witkoff said.
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