Three days ago, it looked as if Russian President Vladimir Putin had brought Donald Trump back to his side in the three-year-old war he has fought to illegally seize much of Ukraine’s territory and move the former Soviet republic closer to the West.
Now, after a historic day of White House meetings between Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and a host of world leaders who accompanied him to Washington, the U.S. president appears to have moved far in the opposite direction — towards a historic commitment of American resources and towards the future security of Ukraine.
Speaking in the Oval Office alongside Zelensky, both officials grinned for the cameras as the American president mostly resisted the temptation to lecture Ukraine’s leader and further reiterated his support for an unspecified role in “security guarantees” for Ukraine as part of a peace deal.
For his part, Zelensky said he and Trump were “ready for a trilateral” sit-down with Putin, who Trump had just met with days ago in Alaska and was called Monday afternoon as the meeting wrapped.
As the day began, the mood at the White House was heavy with the memory of Zelensky’s last visit six months ago — and with questions over whether Trump would push for territorial concessions without much in the way of guarantees for Kyiv’s future security.
The last time the Ukrainian president was at the White House, he was asked to leave abruptly after a disastrous Oval Office shouting match between him and Vice President JD Vance over Zelensky’s supposed lack of gratitude for the American military support provided to him by the previous administration.
But he and Trump appear to have patched up their relationship over the intervening months as the president has, for the most part, taken a tougher line on Russia and spoken out on Moscow’s continued attacks on civilian targets. He’s also praised the Ukrainian armed forces for the bravery with which they’ve wielded the American-made weapons that have powered their defense against Russia’s invaders.
Despite Trump’s prior reluctance to get the United States deeper involved into what he’s described as a European conflict, he appeared to cross a rubicon by pledging a degree of American involvement in a to-be-determined security force that would protect Ukrainian territory from further aggression in exchange for Kyiv giving up some of the territory Russia has illegally seized by force.
This sudden about-face appeared to be the result of intense lobbying by some of the European leaders with whom Trump has enjoyed close relationships, including U.K. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, Italy’s Georgia Meloni, Finland’s Alexander Stabb and France’s Emmanuel Macron.
At a group sit-down with the leaders in the East Room, Zelensky said his talks with Trump had been their “best” meeting yet.
“We are very happy … that all the leaders are here, and security in Ukraine depends on the United States and on you and on those leaders who are with us in our hearts,” he said, calling it “very important” that Trump was willing to even discuss committing American resources to protecting Ukraine as part of a final settlement.
Zelensky has had a famously volatile relationship with Trump dating back to their first conversation after he was elected six years ago.
That phone call infamously became a central issue in the first of Trump’s two impeachment trials, and upon returning to office after last year’s election it appeared that Trump was ready to retaliate by completely cutting off American support for Kyiv’s defense.
That never happened. Instead, Trump has appeared to inch closer and closer to Zelensky’s position as Putin has rebuffed the American leader’s attempts to reach a settlement, save for his trip to Anchorage last week.
Trump and his allies characterized that summit — from which no deal was to be had — as historic. But even more notable was the gathering of what Starmer called the “coalition of the willing” in Washington, and Trump’s willingness to commit the United States to work with Europe in guaranteeing that Zelensky and his countrymen won’t be left out in the cold if they accept a raw deal, giving up their own land after years of war.
The meeting came together quickly over the weekend, a result of what appeared to be Trump’s capitulation to Putin in Alaska, after which White House officials said Trump had discussed the possibility of “land swaps” in exchange for Russia ending the war — but without much detail in terms of what Moscow would give up.
Yet as each leader took his or her turn speaking in the East Room, it was clear that Trump hadn’t conceded as much as critics had feared.
Instead, he is on the verge of committing the United States to a historic role in ensuring a lasting settlement to the war, giving him another solved conflict to boast about and perhaps a legitimate argument for the Nobel Peace Prize he has obsessed over for nearly a decade.
