Have the article read by OpenAI (Beta). Please note that AI translations may take some time to process.Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy are edging closer to a first meeting since Russia’s full scale invasion began three and a half years ago following a flurry of diplomacy in the last week.
The US has also agreed to help European allies provide security guarantees for Ukraine in the event a peace deal to end Russia’s war is signed following a meeting of a group of European leaders, US President Donald Trump and Zelenskyy at the White House on Monday.
The developments have been welcomed by European leaders who have heavily backed Ukraine since the outbreak of the war.
“After three and a half years of war diplomatic activity is accelerating and there is growing momentum around providing Ukraine with security guarantees, including the agreement of the United States President Trump to participate in this effort,” President of the European Council António Costa said on Tuesday following an online European Council summit.
Trump said he spoke on the phone with Putin on Monday and started setting up a meeting between him and Zelenskyy. It would be the first since 2019.
“After that meeting takes place, we will have a Trilat, which would be the two Presidents, plus myself,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social after the meeting in the White House with Zelenskyy and European leaders. He added that this was “a very good, early step for a war that has been going on for almost four years.”
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Monday said discussions are under way on security guarantees for Ukraine similar to those provided to NATO member states. On Tuesday Trump ruled out deploying US troops on the ground.
How did we get here?
Trump and Putin held a high-stakes summit in Alaska on Friday, with both leaders describing the talks as productive, but offering few details on how to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.
European leaders and Ukraine were shut out of the talks and the summit was criticised by some for literally rolling out the red carpet for Putin.
Former head of the Munich Security Conference Wolfgang Ischinger wrote on X: “No real progress – clearly 1:0 for Putin – no new sanctions. For the Ukrainians: nothing. For Europe: deeply disappointing.”
Political analyst and former Slovenian MEP Klemen Grošelj noted that Trump said that the US would only be a mediator in negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv and explained in an interview with Fox News after the meeting that Ukraine must realise that it is small and Russia is big. “By doing so, he sent a very clear message that the US will not be the one to advocate and defend Ukrainian positions,” Grošelj said.
According to an official briefed on a call Trump held with Zelensky and European leaders as he flew back from Alaska, the US leader supported a Putin proposal that Russia take full control of two eastern Ukrainian regions in exchange for freezing the frontline in two others.
Putin “de facto demands that Ukraine leave Donbas”, an area consisting of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine, which Russia currently only partly controls, the source said. In exchange, Russian forces would halt their offensive in the Black Sea port region of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine, where the main cities are still under Ukrainian control.
Several months into its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in September 2022, Russia claimed to have annexed all four Ukrainian regions even though its troops still do not fully control any of them.
Zelenskyy had a meeting with Trump in the White House on Monday and they were later joined by French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Finnish President Alexander Stubb and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
Notable by his absence was Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. This has triggered criticism from the opposition, accusing Sánchez of relegating Spain to a lesser position in the EU after refusing to increase the country’s defence spending to 5 percent of its GDP at the last NATO summit.
Sánchez is aligned with the EU consensus on Ukraine and has insisted that Kyiv must be involved in any decision about its future. He has also underlined the urgency of an immediate ceasefire to facilitate a just and long-lasting peace.
Europe’s response and what role did it play?
European capitals, wary of being sidelined, have been pushing to ensure their views — and Kyiv’s — are not excluded from the US-Russia dialogue that could shape Europe’s long-term security.
European leaders have urged an immediate ceasefire as a first step toward peace, demanded binding security guarantees for Ukraine, and warned Trump against trusting Putin’s assurances.
The issue of a ceasefire is one where the US and Europe may disagree. Trump is no longer insisting on one and believes a full peace agreement can be reached without it, whereas Merz underlined its importance on Monday.
Macron was also cautious on the likelihood of an end to violence as the outcome from a potential Zelensky and Putin meeting.
“We have the American president and Ukraine who want peace… I am not convinced about Putin,” he said. “His ultimate goal is to take as much territory as possible, weaken Ukraine and have a Ukraine that is not viable on its own or within Russia’s sphere of influence. This is pretty obvious to everyone.”
David Salvo, Managing Director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund said: “While it is a positive that there were no discordant notes between Trump and Zelenskyy when they spoke to the press together from the White House three days after the Alaska summit, Trump did little to dispel the notion that the United States would support a comprehensive peace agreement largely on Russia’s terms. Putin is still calling the shots.”
Other experts noted the return of European leaders to the fore.
“In [February] there was a [question] about whether Europe “would have a seat at the table”. Yesterday’s [meetings] show that Europe actually has many seats at the table. That fundamentally changes the nature of this negotiation. A credit to European leaders for cracking the code that works with Trump,” Mujtaba Rahman, Managing Director for Europe at the Eurasia Group, a political risk firm, said in a post on X.
Europe united on focusing on peace but some countries diverge
Following Sunday’s video conference of the so-called Coalition of the Willing (a group of countries coordinating military and economic support for Ukraine), Bulgarian Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov said in a post on X that security guarantees for Ukraine must include sustainable support from both Europe and the US. In his words, the online meeting has underscored the fundamental task of stopping the killings and supporting a lasting and just peace in Ukraine based on the principles of international law.
Аsked about the Friday meeting between Trump and Putin and the future of the war in Ukraine, Bulgarian President Rumen Radev told reporters that the meeting in Alaska restores dialogue and hope for peace for everyone.
EU membership candidate Albania’s stance on Ukraine is also in line with the positions of the European Union and NATO, of which Albania is a member state.
But within Europe, not all leaders are on the same page on how they view the conflict.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who is a critic of the EU’s support for Ukraine, said the meeting between Trump and Putin officially launched the normalisation of relations between the US and Russia. According to him, the path forward does not lie in “accusing” the Russian political leadership or imposing sanctions, but in constructive dialogue.
He was criticised by the opposition for echoing Russian talking points. “Have you seen the reactions of our government, the prime minister, and Defense Minister Robert Kaliňák to the as yet unconfirmed agreement and Russian demands from Alaska?” said Michal Šimečka, leader of the opposition group PS. “Both immediately sided publicly with Russia, saying that Russia must be given security guarantees and that it is necessary to discuss what Putin called the elimination of the root causes of the conflict.”
Hungary is another notable critical voice.
Before the Alaska summit, all EU member states except for Hungary signed a letter voicing their support for the peace initiative of Trump and warned that it is the Ukrainians who have “the right to choose their own destiny” and advocate for sanctions against Russia.
What next?
The coming weeks will be crucial in determining whether Trump’s push for direct talks between Zelenskyy and Putin leads to real progress or entrenches existing divisions.
The format, location, and agenda remain unresolved. Any talks would likely face immediate hurdles, not least Ukraine’s insistence that it will not concede sovereign territory, and Putin’s determination to secure recognition of Russia’s gains.
For Europe, the challenge is to stay relevant in a process increasingly shaped by Washington and Moscow. EU officials are pushing for security guarantees that go beyond words. NATO allies remain wary that Trump could push Kyiv into a deal favourable to Moscow in order to claim a foreign policy victory.
Meanwhile, the fighting rages on as Russia launched a major overnight attack on Ukraine on Monday with drones and missiles and Ukraine hit a Russian oil refinery in a drone attack.
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FACT CHECK: The history leading up to the war in Ukraine
While Ukraine and Russia are inching closer to peace talks, Russia’s war of aggression rages on – and so do pro-Russian disinformation narratives online. In a most recent example, the history behind the war itself has been twisted.
A so-called “chronicle of the war in Ukraine” shared on X and Facebook claims that in 2014 there was a violent coup against the then Ukrainian government, led by former president Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych, “by the US and Ukrainian fascists”. However, what is described in the “chronicle” refers to the events known as Euromaidan at Independence Square in Kyiv, a series of large-scale protests against Yanukovych and civil unrest.
The bone of contention at the time was a failed association agreement with the EU. In November 2013, Yanukovych had surprisingly put a laboriously negotiated agreement on hold just a few days before it was due to be signed. Russia had previously threatened its neighbour with economic sanctions if it signed an agreement with the EU.
Read the fact check by German press agency dpa in full here.
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