Zelenskyy to Meet Trump Monday as Alaska Summit Yields No Ceasefire and Trump Pivots to Peace Deal First

On Saturday, hours after Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin finished their summit in Alaska without any agreement to stop the fighting, Trump posted a message that changed the terms of the diplomacy. The best way to end the war, he wrote, was to go straight to a peace agreement rather than a ceasefire, which he said often does not hold up. He said this had been "determined by all" after calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders.

The reversal matters because it matches Putin's long-stated position. Moscow has said it is not interested in a temporary truce and wants a long-term settlement that accounts for Kremlin interests. Trump and Ukraine's European allies had been pressing for a ceasefire before any negotiations began. Nigel Gould-Davies of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London said the shift suggests Trump's thinking is moving toward Putin, and that the approach would let Moscow keep fighting while it negotiates.

Zelenskyy, who was not invited to Alaska, will now travel to Washington to meet Trump on Monday. It will be his first visit to the U.S. since the Feb. 28 Oval Office meeting, when Trump publicly berated him as disrespectful. Zelenskyy described an early-Saturday conversation with Trump as "long and substantive." He spoke with Trump one-on-one and then joined a call with European leaders, and in total the conversations ran longer than 90 minutes. Trump confirmed the White House meeting and said that if all works out, a meeting with Putin would be scheduled next.

The summit itself offered little concrete detail. Trump had rolled out a red carpet for Putin on Friday, his first time on U.S. soil in a decade and his first since launching the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Afterward Trump said only that it "went very well." Before the summit he had warned of "very severe consequences" for Russia if Putin did not agree to end the war. In Alaska he said "there's no deal until there's a deal," after Putin claimed the two had reached an "understanding" and warned Europe not to "torpedo the nascent progress." In a Fox News interview, Trump suggested the onus might be on Zelenskyy "to get it done," with some European involvement.

European leaders from France, Germany, Italy, Britain, Finland, Poland and the European Union issued a joint statement. It did not say whether a peace deal is preferable to a ceasefire. It welcomed Trump's efforts, said they were ready to work toward a trilateral summit with European support, and insisted that Ukraine must have "ironclad security guarantees." They also said decisions on Ukrainian territory are for Ukraine to make and that borders must not be changed by force. Zelenskyy stressed that Europeans should be involved at every stage and noted positive signals from the American side about helping guarantee Ukraine's security. He did not elaborate, but he has said European partners shelved a plan for a foreign troop presence in Ukraine because it lacked an American backstop.

The trilateral idea is unsettled. Zelenskyy backed it, saying key issues can be discussed at the leaders' level, and he told Trump that sanctions should be strengthened if no such meeting occurs or if Russia tries to evade an honest end to the war. But Putin's foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, told Russian state television that a three-way meeting had not yet been touched upon in U.S.-Russia talks.

The fighting has not paused. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas noted that Russia launched new attacks on Ukraine even as delegations met, and said Putin left Anchorage without commitments to end the killing. Forces are fighting along a 1,000-kilometer front line, and since spring Russian troops have gained the most territory since the war's opening stages. Neil Melvin of the Royal United Services Institute said Putin came to stall pressure and will consider the outcome "mission accomplished." Laurie Bristow, British ambassador to Russia from 2016 to 2020, said Putin has broken out of international isolation, was not challenged by Trump, and that the fighting will not stop unless Putin is convinced he cannot win militarily. Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev praised the talks as calm, without ultimatums or threats.

Before Monday, France, the U.K. and Germany will co-host a Sunday afternoon video call of the "coalition of the willing," nations that could help monitor and uphold any deal, according to Macron's office. What to watch is whether Monday's meeting yields a trilateral summit, and whether sanctions or a Trump-Putin meeting follow.