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European leaders are set to accompany Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Washington for discussions with Donald Trump, aiming to bolster Zelenskyy’s standing as the US president advocates for Ukraine to settle on a rapid peace accord to bring an end to Europe’s most lethal conflict in decades.
President Trump is exerting pressure on Zelenskyy to negotiate a settlement following his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, resulting in a shift towards alignment with Moscow on negotiating a peace accord rather than initiating a ceasefire first. Trump and Zelenskyy are scheduled to meet on Tuesday AEST.
“If peace is unachievable and the conflict is destined to persist as warfare, resulting in countless fatalities … we might regrettably end up there, although that’s not the outcome we wish for,” US secretary of state Marco Rubio stated in an interview with CBS.
On Sunday, Trump declared “BIG PROGRESS ON RUSSIA” in a social media update but did not detail what this entailed.
Putin agreed to Ukraine security protections at summit, US envoy says
Sources briefed on Moscow’s thinking told Reuters news agency the US and Russian leaders have discussed proposals for Russia to relinquish small pockets of occupied Ukraine in exchange for Kyiv ceding a swathe of fortified land in the east and freezing the front lines elsewhere.
Senior Trump administration officials have alluded that the status of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas area — encompassing Donetsk and Luhansk, largely under Russian occupation — is under discussion, along with considerations for a type of defensive alliance.
“We were able to win the following concession, that the United States could offer Article 5-like protection,” Trump envoy Steve Witkoff told CNN on Sunday, suggesting this would be in lieu of Ukraine seeking NATO membership. He said it was “the first time we had ever heard the Russians agree to that.”
Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty enshrines the principle of collective defence, the notion that an attack on a single member is considered an attack on them all.
That pledge may not be enough to sway leaders in Kyiv to sign over Donbas. Ukraine’s borders were already meant to have been guaranteed when Ukraine surrendered a Soviet-era nuclear arsenal in 1994, and it proved to be little deterrent when Russia absorbed Crimea in 2014 and then launched its full-scale invasion in 2022. The war has now dragged on for three-and-a-half years and killed or wounded more than 1 million people.
Witkoff told Fox News that Russia had also agreed to passing a law against taking any more of Ukraine by force.
“The Russians have consented to formally legislate assurances that they will refrain from — or commit to not attempting to annex more Ukrainian territory post-peace deal, pledging also not to breach any European boundaries,” a top official explained.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer hosted a meeting of allies on Sunday to bolster Zelenskyy’s hand, hoping in particular to lock down robust security guarantees for Ukraine that would include a US role.
The Europeans are keen to help Zelenskyy avoid a repeat of his last Oval Office meeting in February. That went disastrously, with Trump and his vice president JD Vance giving the Ukrainian leader a public dressing-down, accusing him of being ungrateful and disrespectful.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will also travel to Washington, as will Finland’s President Alexander Stubb, whose access to Trump included rounds of golf in Florida earlier this year, and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is an admirer of many of Trump’s policies.
