Donald Trump intends to leave Russia and Ukraine to organise a meeting between their leaders without directly playing a role for now, according to administration officials familiar with the situation. The US president has told advisers that he will host a trilateral meeting with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy only after they have met first, although whether that initial conference takes place remains unclear.
Trump’s reluctance to push for a meeting comes as he has acknowledged in recent days that ending the war in Ukraine has been more difficult than he had anticipated, after claiming on the campaign trail last year he could achieve it in 24 hours. A senior administration official characterised the situation as Trump taking a “wait-and-see approach” to whether a Putin-Zelenskyy meeting could be scheduled, but there have been few tangible signs of progress and the White House does not have a shortlist of possible locations.
After meetings with Zelenskyy and European leaders at the White House on Monday, Trump spoke to Putin on a call lasting around 40 minutes. Putin’s foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, later said the two leaders agreed to appoint senior negotiators for direct talks between Russia and Ukraine, signalling that a bilateral meeting could remain some way off.
During the White House meetings, Zelenskyy emphasised the need for security guarantees in any peace agreement to prevent Russia from resuming its invasion. Trump offered to contribute but has ruled out deploying US troops; any assistance is expected to come in the form of intelligence sharing or air support. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, said Putin had agreed that the US could offer Ukraine a security guarantee resembling Nato’s Article 5 collective self-defence mandate.
However, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, suggested that Russia should be one of the security guarantors for Ukraine – a proposal the White House has privately ridiculed, one official said. Lavrov noted that Ukraine had previously agreed to involve all permanent UN Security Council members as guarantors.
