US President Donald Trump will host Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday for their first meeting since the pair’s heated exchange in the White House earlier this year - but this time the Ukrainian president is bringing European allies.

Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte and UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer are among leaders who will join Zelensky in Washington for talks on how to end the war with Russia.

It follows Trump’s summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Alaska that resulted in the US president dropping a demand for a ceasefire and calling instead for a permanent peace deal.

A US envoy said on Sunday that Putin had agreed to a possible Nato-like security pact for Ukraine.

“BIG PROGRESS ON RUSSIA. STAY TUNED!” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, without elaborating.

Also heading to Washington for Monday’s meeting are French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Finnish President Alexander Stubb and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. It is unclear how many of them will go to the White House.

For so many heads of state to travel with such little notice across the Atlantic to what is essentially a wartime crisis meeting appears without precedent in the modern era, underscoring the sky-high stakes.

Diplomatic sources say European officials are concerned that Trump may try to press Zelensky to agree to terms, after the Ukrainian leader was excluded from the Trump-Putin meeting on US soil last Friday.

But US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the BBC’s US partner CBS that any suggestion Zelensky might be bullied by Trump into accepting a peace deal was a “stupid media narrative”.

Nato leaders also appear eager to avoid a repeat of Zelensky’s February trip to the Oval Office that ended abruptly after an argument with Trump and US Vice-President JD Vance.

The altercation - which saw Trump accuse Zelensky of “gambling with World War Three” - left Washington-Kyiv ties in tatters.

But European leaders have been working diligently behind the scenes since then to mend the relationship. The Ukrainian leader has been coached to talk in terms of deal-making - language that resonates with Trump.

In April, Ukraine signed a minerals agreement that gave the US a financial stake in the country, and Trump and Zelensky spoke privately at the Vatican before Pope Francis’s funeral. Ukraine made clear it was willing to pay for US weapons.

By July, the two leaders had a phone call that the Ukrainian president described as “the best conversation we have had”.

Meanwhile, Trump had begun to express exasperation with Russia’s unrelenting onslaught in Ukraine. He called Putin “absolutely crazy”, drastically shortened his deadline for a peace deal, and threatened economic sanctions on Moscow.

As these deliberations grind on, Russian forces continue to advance on the battlefield. They now occupy almost a fifth of Ukraine since Moscow launched its full scale invasion in February 2022.

A virtual summit was held on Sunday between Zelensky and the so-called coalition of the willing - a group of nations including the UK, France and Germany that have pledged to protect peace in Ukraine once it is achieved.

Afterwards, Emmanuel Macron told reporters their plan was to “present a united front” for Monday’s talks with Trump.

Zelensky and the Nato leaders said they were keen to learn more after US envoy Steve Witkoff told US television that Putin had agreed on Friday to “robust security guarantees that I would describe as game-changing”.

Witkoff said such an agreement could see Europe and the US protect Ukraine from further aggression with a Nato-like defence agreement.

“We were able to win the following concession: that the United States could offer Article 5-like protection, which is one of the real reasons why Ukraine wants to be in Nato,” Witkoff told CNN on Sunday.

Putin has long opposed Ukraine joining Nato, and Witkoff said the arrangement could be an alternative if the Ukrainians “can live with it”.

Article 5 is a principle at the heart of the 32-member transatlantic military alliance that says its members will come to the defence of an ally that is under attack.

Witkoff also told CNN that Russia made “some concessions” around five heavily contested regions of Ukraine.

In talks with European allies after the Alaska summit, Trump said Putin had reiterated that he wants the key Donetsk and Luhansk regions that make up Donbas, eastern Ukraine, according to European officials.

But at Sunday’s virtual summit with Nato leaders, Zelensky stressed that the Ukrainian constitution makes it impossible to give up territory - and that this should only be discussed by the leaders of Ukraine and Russia at a trilateral summit with the US.

The US secretary of state, meanwhile, sought to temper hopes that a deal to end Europe’s deadliest conflict for 80 years could be imminent.

“We’re still a long ways off,” Rubio said on Sunday.

Source: BBC
--Agencies