U.S. President Donald Trump intends to leave Russia and Ukraine to arrange a meeting between their leaders without taking a direct role for now, according to administration officials familiar with the matter, marking a step back from his efforts to mediate an end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
اضافة اعلان
From Trump’s perspective, the next stage for ending the war involves a bilateral meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the officials said.
In recent days, Trump told his advisers that he plans to host a trilateral meeting with the two leaders only after they meet first, although the timing of that initial encounter remains unclear. Trump does not plan to intervene in the process.
In a phone interview Tuesday with WABC host Mark Levin, Trump said he believes it is better for Putin and Zelensky to meet without him initially. “I just want to see what happens at the meeting. They are setting it up, and we’ll see what happens,” he added.
Trump’s hesitation to push for a meeting comes after he recently acknowledged that ending the war in Ukraine is more difficult than he expected, following his campaign claim last year that he could resolve it within 24 hours.
Since then, Trump has sought a quick peace agreement, and after meetings with Zelensky and European leaders at the White House on Monday, he said he had taken steps to arrange a bilateral meeting.
A senior administration official described Trump’s stance as a “wait-and-see” approach to determine whether a Putin-Zelensky meeting can be scheduled.
However, there have been no tangible signs of progress recently, and the White House does not have a shortlist of potential locations for the meeting.
A White House statement said: “Trump and his national security team continue to engage with Russian and Ukrainian officials on a bilateral meeting to stop the killing and end the war… It is not in the national interest to negotiate these issues publicly.”
Following White House meetings, Trump spoke with Putin in a call lasting about 40 minutes. Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy aide, later said that the two leaders agreed to appoint senior negotiators to hold direct talks between Russia and Ukraine.
This suggests a bilateral meeting may remain distant, even as NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte expressed optimism about its possibility within two weeks. Putin has previously rejected Zelensky’s attempts for a face-to-face meeting since the start of the war.
At a White House press conference Monday evening, Zelensky said the European leaders’ meeting with Trump focused on security guarantees for Ukraine in any peace agreement to prevent Russia from resuming its invasion.
Trump offered to contribute to security guarantees but later ruled out deploying U.S. forces on the ground in Ukraine. Any U.S. assistance is expected to come in the form of intelligence sharing or possibly air support.
Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, told CNN’s State of the Union after the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska that Putin agreed the United States could provide Ukraine with security guarantees similar to NATO’s Article 5 collective defense provision.
Witkoff said: “We were able to secure this concession: that the United States can provide Article 5-like protection, which is a key reason Ukraine seeks NATO membership.”
However, Putin’s acceptance of NATO-style guarantees may not be straightforward. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov suggested that Russia itself be one of the guarantor states for Ukraine—a proposal a White House official said was privately ridiculed.
Lavrov said: “The Ukrainian side proposed, and our delegation agreed, to draft security guarantees involving all permanent members of the UN Security Council—Russia, China, the United States, France, and the United Kingdom.”
Following White House meetings, Zelensky also proposed purchasing $90 billion of U.S. weapons through Europe for security guarantees, as well as buying U.S. drones for Ukraine. It remains unclear whether this is part of the arms deal Trump announced last month, according to The Guardian.
