Ukraine’s Zelensky, With European Leaders in Tow, Heads to Washington for Talks With President Trump

President Volodymyr Zelensky will arrive at Washington Monday morning with an entourage of European leaders who are expected to be prepared to protect the Ukrainian president and protest concessions they fear President Trump may have given to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in one-on-one talks last week. Among those attending Monday’s meeting at the White House are the United Kingdom’s prime minister, Keir Starmer; Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni; Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany; the president of Finland, Alexander Stubb; France’s Emmanuel Macron; NATO’s Secretary-General Mark Rutte; and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The group and other members of the so-called Coalition of the Willing met with Mr. Zelensky in Brussels on Sunday, ahead of the White House meeting.Concern is rampant about what, if any, concessions Mr. Trump made in his meeting with Mr. Putin in Alaska. Several reports suggest that the president is planning to demand Mr. Zelensky give up key swaths of land in exchange for peace, some of which Russia does not even control at the moment.“The level of dep (sic) concern in Europe over the consequences of the Trump collapse in Alaska is expressed by the numbers of leaders rushing to Washington to support Zelensky. We have never seen anything even resembling this,” said the former Prime Minister of Sweden and co-chairman of the European Council on Foreign Relations, Carl Bildt.Speaking Sunday on CBS’ Face the Nation, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said negotiations with Mr. Putin “identified potential areas of agreement, but there remain some big areas of disagreement.” He said “both sides are going to have to give up something” to get to peace. “It may not be pleasant, it may be distasteful, but in order for there to be an end to war there are things Russia wants that it cannot get and there are things Ukraine wants that it is not going to get,” Mr. Rubio said, trying to temper expectations that a peace deal would be reached in Monday’s talks.Mr. Rubio also rejected the claim that Europe’s leaders were attending in order to prevent Mr. Zelensky from being bullied, as it appeared in February when the Ukrainian president got into a terse exchange in the Oval Office with Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance. “This is such a stupid media narrative that they’re coming here tomorrow because Trump is going to bully Zelensky into a bad deal. We’ve been working with these people for weeks,” he said.According to Reuters, Russia’s president is proposing to return bits of land it controls in Ukraine in exchange for large swaths of territory that Russia has been trying to seize since the war’s February 2022 start. Those areas include Donetsk and Luhansk, two vital regions in Ukraine’s industrial heartland that Russia has invaded, but has been unable to fully contain. With the Kremlin’s roadmap, Russia would also keep the current front lines in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions to the south as well as Crimea, which Russia seized in 2014.Mr. Zelensky has previously rejected giving up any territory, calling it a violation of the country’s constitution. On Sunday, however, he suggested that any land swap be discussed solely among America, Russia, and Ukraine. He added that the killing must stop while negotiations are ongoing. “Putin has many demands but we do not know all of them. If there are really as many as we heard, then it will take time to go through them all. It is impossible to do this under the pressure of weapons,” Mr. Zelensky said, adding that he would start negotiations “where the front line is now.”If Russia refuses to discuss borders, “new sanctions must follow,” said Mr. Zelensky, noting that America and Europe must refine the details of a pledged security agreement for Ukraine that Mr. Putin reportedly has accepted in theory.Ukraine has lost somewhere between 73,580 and 113,580 military forces and civilians while another 1.6 million have been displaced within the country. Foreign estimates put Russian losses in the conflict so far at 1 million casualties and as many as 250,000 dead.On Sunday, the president issued a brief statement about the coming negotiations. “BIG PROGRESS ON RUSSIA. STAY TUNED! President DJT.” The proclamation followed a post Saturday in which Mr. Trump criticized reports that he had failed to make headway with Mr. Putin while in Alaska. Citing a New York Times report on the land swap, one of the president’s biggest detractors, Senator Adam Schiff of California, said if the president won’t stand up to Mr. Putin, Congress must pass new and more powerful sanctions.“Just as we feared, Trump has abandoned Ukraine’s position and that of our European allies in favor of an immediate ceasefire, and instead adopted Russia’s position in favor of Ukrainian land for peace,” he wrote on X.

Ukraine’s Zelensky, With European Leaders in Tow, Heads to Washington for Talks With President Trump

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