President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine arrived at the White House on Monday in a very different place than he was six months ago.
Instead of meeting a U.S. counterpart averse to the idea of helping Ukraine, he encountered one on the brink of agreeing to major security guarantees. Instead of going at it in the Oval Office alone, the wartime president was backed up by a delegation of European leaders all intent on ending the country’s war with Russia. And instead of wearing his normal military button up, he came armed with an accessory meant to please an audience of one: a black suit.
“I love it,” President Donald Trump said, gesturing to Zelenskyy’s all-black outfit when he arrived at the north entrance of the West Wing.
“It’s the best I have,” Zelenskyy replied.
That exchange kicked off a whirlwind day at the White House, where seven of Europe’s most powerful leaders spent nearly seven hours acting as both protectors and amplifiers in crucial talks about how to end Russia’s war with Ukraine. Each leader took turns thanking Trump for his effort to secure peace, a round of flattery that credited him for breaking the logjam and bringing Putin back into the fold.
Outside, dozens of reporters crowded around the White House North Lawn, and Ukrainian activists lined the streets; both stood in a drizzle for hours while the next steps in negotiations were charted indoors.
“I think, if we play this well, we could end this. And we have to end this,” Mark Rutte, secretary general of NATO, said. “It is a terrible war, so I’m really excited, and let’s make the best out of today.”
The day ended with the powerful group chatting informally in the Oval Office, according to White House aides, in a departure from the original schedule.
European leaders, including President Emmanuel Macron of France, Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy, left the show of force optimistic that the talks brought them the closest they’ve been to a resolution to the conflict that has taken hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides.
“I think this was one of these meetings where we kind of took, you know, three steps forward rather than any backwards,” President Alexander Stubb of Finland said on CNN.
Ukraine and Europe are racing against time to end the war. Russia has made key battleground advancements in Ukraine, emboldening their position in the conflict. By some estimates, Russia occupies nearly one-fifth of Ukrainian territory. The Center for Strategic and International Studies in June estimated that 950,000 Russian soldiers and 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or wounded since the invasion in February 2022. And Europe, also at risk of Russian aggression, is fighting its own battle with waning public support for the war.
Substantively, the biggest development of the day was Trump agreeing to involve the U.S. in security guarantees in Ukraine, a key commitment sought by both European nations and Ukraine.
“Today was really about security guarantees,” Rutte told reporters after the meetings concluded Monday night. “You must get more involved there, and all the details to be hammered out over the coming days.”
Trump said he’d know in as little as two weeks whether the war can be brought to a peaceful conclusion. He acknowledged the possibility of failing to bring the conflict to a peaceful resolution.
“Not very far from now, a week or two weeks, we’re going to know whether or not we solve this,” the president said.
Though Putin wasn’t there in person Monday, his presence was felt.
“I think he wants to make a deal,” Trump, caught on a hot mic, whispered to Macron about Putin. “I think he wants to make a deal for me, you understand that? As crazy as it sounds.”
Trump at one point even announced that he had spoken with Russia’s president, as European leaders waited at the White House. A Putin adviser confirmed that call, saying it lasted 40 minutes. And Trump said the next step to ending the conflict would be a bilateral meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy that would precede a larger trilateral meeting with Trump.
Utilizing flattery and unity, European allies worked to pull Trump back to their side after Putin succeeded in getting Trump last week to at least appear more aligned with his point of view.
“It’s team Europe and team United States helping Ukraine,” Stubb said during the larger bilateral meeting in the East Room.
Trump, seemingly in a great mood at the history-making summit, smiled and joked with his European counterparts.
“He’s been consistent,” said one White House official of Trump’s aim for a conclusion to the war. “The mission for [Trump] has not changed.”
At one point, he put his arm around Zelenskyy. Pictures from the Oval Office showed the pair looking at a map of Ukraine that highlights the areas where Russia has advanced.
Trump met with Putin in Alaska last week, without Ukraine, to the chagrin of many U.S. allies. The White House billed the meeting as a “listening experience” for the president; a way to gauge progress and pave the way for a meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy directly.
“There were many, many points that we agreed on, most of them, I would say,” Trump told reporters Friday. “A couple of big ones that we haven’t quite gotten there, but we’ve made some headway.”
Details about the Friday meeting — including those about agreements alluded to by Putin — remain somewhat unclear. According to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, this was by design. Trump’s special envoy for peace missions, Steve Witkoff, said on CNN that the U.S. and Russia had agreed to “game-changing” security guarantees.
But while it was clear on Monday that although the vibe was jovial, disagreements still remained. Chief among them was the issue of a ceasefire. While Trump went into the Friday summit gunning for an immediate cessation of hostilities, he left with a change of heart, focused on a larger peace agreement that would could after serious negotiations — and no immediate halt to fighting.
Merz pushed back in the larger meeting, telling the president in front of reporters, “To be honest, we all would like to see a ceasefire, at the latest from the next meeting on.”
“I can’t imagine that the next meeting would take place without a ceasefire. So let’s work on that. And let’s try to put pressure on Russia, because the credibility of this effort, these efforts we are undertaking today, are depending on at least a ceasefire from the beginning of the serious negotiations from next step on,” Merz continued, prompting a pained face from Meloni.
All leaders agreed that the next steps would be the most perilous, as the conversations Monday represented the most progress on the conflict to date but were still in the early stages of peace talks.
“Now the path is open. You opened it last Friday, but now the way is open for complicated negotiations,” Merz said.
Experts, reacting to the day’s meeting, told NOTUS that while the day was a success, too much was unknown to predict the outcome of a potential meeting between Zelenskyy and Putin.
“It is still too soon to discern if Putin is negotiating in faith — or just buying more time to continue the war,” said Charles A. Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, in a note. “It is still too soon to discern if Putin, even if he keeps hold of some 20 percent of Ukraine, is ready to let the rest of the country go and integrate into the West.”
Tina Dolbaia, an associate fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, agreed that Putin is the wild card in whatever lies ahead.
“Putin will seek to negotiate on his own terms,” she told NOTUS in a statement. “It is critical for the allies to have a common understanding on what they can and cannot accept as an outcome of the potential peace deal prior to entering the talks with Putin.” she told NOTUS.
The president acknowledged that a date and time for Putin and Zelenskyy to meet had yet to be set, but said earlier that if he was needed, he would be there.
“If you want me there, I’ll be there,” Trump said in the East Room. “We will set that up today, at least after this meeting.”