President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, US President Donald Trump, and seven European leaders met at the White House on August 18. The number of world leaders in the US president’s administration has never been so high at the same time. They discussed security guarantees for Ukraine and trilateral talks between the presidents of the US, Ukraine, and Russia.
First, Trump and Zelenskyy held a bilateral meeting with delegations. Then, multilateral talks were held.
Among the European leaders were:
- European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen;
- NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte;
- French President Emmanuel Macron;
- Finnish President Alexander Stubb;
- German Chancellor Friedrich Merz;
- Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni;
- British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Trump promoted the idea of immediately concluding a complete peace agreement, not a truce. He appealed to the fact that in six months of his second term, he had already “ended six wars in this way”.
French President Macron, German Chancellor Merz, and British Prime Minister Starmer stressed that a truce must first be reached, and only then a peace agreement.
Macron raised the issue of pan-European security and proposed holding a quadrilateral meeting after the trilateral meeting, adding Europeans.
The negotiations focused on the issues of Ukrainian security guarantees. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said that the parties would begin by considering guarantees such as those in Article 5 of the NATO charter. After the meeting, Trump wrote on Truth Social that the parties discussed what guarantees “various European countries, coordinated by the United States, would provide.”
Trump reiterated that Ukraine would not be admitted to NATO, but promised that “we will provide them with outstanding security guarantees.”
At the briefing, Zelenskyy announced a package of Ukrainian proposals for the purchase of US weapons worth $90 billion — they should become part of the security guarantees.
According to him, the issues of security guarantees will be formalized in writing within 7-10 days.
At the end of the negotiations, the American president called Putin. After the conversation, he wrote in Truth Social that he had begun preparing for a trilateral meeting with Zelenskyy and Putin. He instructed Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Special Representative Steve Witkoff to coordinate.
Zelenskyy said at the briefing that Russia had proposed holding a bilateral Ukraine-Russia meeting first, and then a trilateral one.
Ukraine continues to insist on holding the meeting without preconditions.
German Chancellor Merz said that Trump had agreed to a meeting between Zelenskyy and Putin within the next two weeks. He added that he did not know “whether Putin would have the courage” to attend such a summit.
At a briefing after the talks, Zelenskyy said: “We will leave the issue of territories between me and Putin.”
