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Trump withdraws from peace talks? US President: Putin and Zelensky should meet first

2025-08-21 12:40:04Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Trump withdraws from peace talks? US President: Putin and Zelensky should meet
Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky

Donald Trump intends to leave it to Russia and Ukraine to organize a meeting between their leaders without playing a direct role himself for now, according to administration officials familiar with the situation, taking a step back from negotiations to end Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The next step, according to Trump, to end the war in Ukraine remains a bilateral meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, officials said.

Trump has told advisers in recent days that he intends to arrange a three-way meeting with the two leaders only after they have first held a meeting between themselves, although it remains unclear whether this initial meeting will happen and Trump has no intention of getting involved in that effort.

In a phone interview with WABC talk show host Mark Levin on Tuesday, Trump also said he thought it would be better for Putin and Zelenskyy to meet without him first. “I just want to see what happens at the meeting. So, they’re in the process of setting it up and we’ll see what happens.”

Trump's reluctance to push Putin and Zelensky toward a meeting comes as he has acknowledged in recent days that ending the war in Ukraine has been more difficult than he had anticipated, after campaigning last year saying he could achieve it in 24 hours.

He has since called for a quick peace deal after his deadline for Russia to end the war expired this month and said after meetings with Zelenskyy and European leaders at the White House on Monday that he had taken steps toward a bilateral meeting.

A senior administration official described the situation as a “wait and see” approach by Trump, as to whether a Putin-Zelenskyy meeting could be arranged. But there have been few concrete signs of progress in recent days, and the White House does not have a list of possible locations where the meeting could be held.

The White House said in a statement that “Trump and his national security team continue to engage with Russian and Ukrainian officials toward a bilateral meeting to stop the killings and end the war… It is not in the national interest for these issues to be further negotiated publicly.”

After the White House meetings, Trump spoke with Putin in a phone call that lasted about 40 minutes. Putin's foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said afterward that the two leaders agreed to appoint high-ranking negotiators for direct talks between Russia and Ukraine.

That statement signaled that a bilateral meeting may still be a long way off, even though NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte expressed optimism that it could happen within two weeks, and Putin has rejected Zelensky's previous attempts to meet face-to-face since the start of the war.

At a press conference on Monday evening after meetings at the White House, Zelenskyy said the European leaders' meeting with Trump focused on security guarantees for Ukraine in any peace deal, to ensure that Russia does not resume the invasion.

Trump offered to contribute security guarantees but has since ruled out deploying US troops as part of a military force on the ground in Ukraine. Any US assistance is expected to come in the form of intelligence sharing or perhaps US air support.

Earlier, Steve Witkoff, Trump's special envoy, said on CNN's "State of the Union" program after the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska that Putin had agreed that the US would provide a security guarantee for Ukraine that resembled NATO's Article 5 for collective defense.

“We managed to win this concession: that the United States could provide Article 5-like protection, which is one of the main reasons why Ukraine wants to be in NATO,” Witkoff said.
But Putin’s acceptance of NATO-like security guarantees may not be that simple. Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, has also suggested that Russia should be one of the guarantors of Ukraine’s security — a proposal that the White House, according to one official, has privately scoffed at.

“The Ukrainian side proposed, and our delegation at the time agreed, to draft security guarantees that would include all permanent members of the UN Security Council – that is, Russia, the People's Republic of China, the United States, France and the United Kingdom,” Lavrov said.

After the White House meetings, Zelenskyy also outlined a plan to buy $90 billion worth of American weapons through Europe, to gain security guarantees, as well as for the US to buy drones from Ukraine. It was not immediately clear whether this was part of the arms deal for Ukraine that Trump announced last month.


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