Leaders to discuss security guarantees

US President Donald Trump meets his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, at the White House along with European leaders for a summit on the Russia-Ukraine war.
Donald Trump has said meetings with European leaders could pave the way for three-way talks between the leaders of Ukraine, Russia and the US amid his drive to end the fighting in eastern Europe.Trump says he expects Putin to release Ukrainian prisoners
Trump says he expected Putin to release over 1,000 Ukrainian prisoners soon after a trilateral meeting was set up with Ukrainian leader Zelenskyy.

“I think you’ll see that President Putin really would like to do something also,” Trump said at the start of a meeting with Zelenskiy and seven European leaders, forecasting some “really positive moves” after a trilateral meeting was agreed.

“I know there’s over 1,000 prisoners, and I know they’re going to release them. Maybe they’re going to release them very soon, like immediately, which I think is great,” Trump said.Trump wraps up press statements
Trump has sent reporters out of the room saying the group of European leaders will stay and continue discussions in order to do their “best to get it ended”.

He said he believes that in a week or two “we’ll know whether we’re going to solve this or is this horrible fighting going to continue”.

Throughout his comments, however, Trump hedged, stressing the possibility of an unfavorable outcome despite best efforts.

After the meeting, Trump said, there will be another set of public comments in the Oval Office.Starmer says there can be ‘real progress’ on security guarantees
Starmer and other European leaders have continued to push for more robust security agreements for Ukraine as part of a deal to end the war.

“I think we could take a really important step forward today, a historic step actually, to come out of this meeting in terms of security for Ukraine and security in Europe,” he said.

The form that such guarantees would take, however, remains a subject of discussion.

France’s Macron similarly stressed that meetings would have to continue as discussions of security guarantees involve “the security of the whole European continent”.Russian advances on the battlefield create incentives for Ukraine to reach a deal
While Ukraine has continued to warn against rushing to an agreement that ends the war without addressing long-term issues of Ukrainian security, Russia’s advantages on the battlefield have also become a source of pressure for Ukraine to secure an agreement before its position could deteriorate further.

“At the moment, Russia is advancing on the ground. Slowly, but faster than it has been for some time. It is Ukraine that is being pushed back,” said Anatol Lieven, an analyst at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a US-based think-tank that supports restraint in US foreign policy.

He added that Russia’s prospects for greater success on the battlefield would decrease incentives for Putin to agree to a ceasefire outside of a larger agreement to end the war.

“When Ukraine appeared to be winning the war, Ukraine categorically ruled out peace talks with Russia, because it was winning. Russia, from the very first, told the Trump administration and indeed the world that they were not going to agree to a ceasefire without an actual peace agreement, because of course, if they do that, they lose their only point of leverage,” said Lieven.Giorgia Meloni says the group will ‘build together’ guarantees of peace
The Italian premier stresses that they are “on the side of Ukraine” and – like others who have spoken today – lists security guarantees as a chief condition.

“We will talk about many important topics. The first one is security guarantees, how to be sure that it won’t happen again, which is the precondition of every kind of peace,” she said.