Zelensky and Trump to meet at White House on Monday as US pushes for ‘fast peace deal’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced that he will meet with US President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday to discuss a potential ceasefire in Ukraine following the summit between the American leader and Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday.

Zelensky confirmed Ukraine’s readiness “to work as productively as possible for the sake of peace” in a Saturday post on his Telegram channel, adding that his visit to Washington had been planned following a lengthy telephone conversation with Trump, as well as a subsequent call with several European leaders.

“We support President Trump’s proposal for a trilateral meeting between Ukraine, America and Russia. Ukraine emphasises that key issues can be discussed at the level of leaders, and the trilateral format is suitable for this”, Zelensky said.

“It is important that the Europeans as well as the Americans are involved at all stages for the sake of reliable security guarantees”, he added.

Yury Ushakov, a senior Kremlin aide who attended Friday’s three-on-three meeting between Trump and Putin, said that there had been “no discussion” of a forthcoming three-way summit, Russian news agency TASS reported on Saturday.

Trump and Zelensky were joined on their call by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, AFP reported on Saturday.

According to Axios reporter Barak Ravid, during the conversation Trump told Zelensky and the European leaders that Putin was not interested in a ceasefire but in a comprehensive agreement to end the war, something he said Washington would be amenable to.

“I think a fast peace deal is better than a ceasefire,” Trump told his allied counterparts, according to Ravid, who cited an unidentified source who he said had been on the call.

The telephone conversation between Trump and Zelensky followed a hastily convened summit between Trump and Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday, which both leaders later said had led to progress towards a ceasefire in Ukraine.

Briefing the press after the bilateral meeting on Friday, Putin claimed that an “agreement” had been reached that could be a “starting point” for the “solution of the Ukrainian issue”, while Trump said “great progress” had been made, though he made no mention of any such agreement.

In an interview with Fox News following the summit, Trump played down his previous threats to impose “very severe” sanctions on Russia if it continued fighting in Ukraine, said that he believed Putin wants the war to end, and stressed it was now “up to President Zelensky” to help bring the war to an end.