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18-08-2025
WASHINGTON: 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.
Journalist 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 emphasized 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 social media after a call with the European leaders.
Zelenskyy stressed that territorial issues can only be decided with Ukraine.
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 social media 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”. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
