President Donald Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and a delegation of European leaders Aug. 18 following his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin a few days prior as he seeks a resolution to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The quickly-scheduled meeting with the European delegation came after Trump hosted Putin at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, marking the first meeting between a U.S. president and the Russian leader since that country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor at Notre Dame Law School who specializes in international law and conflict resolution, said, “Europe understands both the moral importance of upholding law as fundamental as the prohibition on the use of force, and the danger of emboldening someone like Putin.”
“He has visions of re-creating the Soviet Union, which means conquering the Baltic states, Georgia, and other states in the Caucasus and Central Asia,” she said.
After their Aug. 15 meeting, Trump and Putin delivered statements at the conclusion of that meeting that did not shed much light on what they discussed, and neither took questions from the press.
In comments to OSV News, Metropolitan Archbishop Borys A. Gudziak of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia expressed concern that the summit with Putin failed to address the “fundamental moral and geopolitical questions” of Russia’s invasion.
In the wake of that meeting, Zelenskyy, joined by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, gathered at the White House, where Trump signaled openness to security guarantees for Ukraine to prevent future aggression by Russia.
“I believe that in a very significant step, President Putin agreed that Russia would accept security guarantees for Ukraine, and this is one of the key points that we need to consider, and we’re going to be considering that at the table also, like, ‘Who will do what?’” Trump said.
“I’m optimistic that collectively, we can reach an agreement that would deter any future aggression against Ukraine,” he added. “I think that the European nations are going to take a lot of the burden. We’re going to help them, and we’re going to make it very secure.”
But following his meeting with Putin, and again at his meeting with European leaders, Trump also suggested openness to Putin’s demands that Ukraine cede land, and the people dwelling there, to Russian dominion.
“We also need to discuss the possible exchanges of territory, taking into consideration the current line of contact,” Trump said, referring to Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine.
O’Connell said a just peace after the conflict would have to be a lawful one.
“A just peace is a lawful peace – one where Russia withdraws completely from Ukrainian territory and conflict prevention measures, including peacekeeping forces, are organized through a renewed and strengthened Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE),” she said. “It is the OSCE, not NATO, that can lead Europe to lasting peace.”
Trump’s meeting with Putin did not result in a ceasefire agreement, which Trump previously said he would seek. Just hours before the scheduled meeting with the European delegation, Russian continued its assault on Ukraine, attacking the Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia, killing 14 people and injuring dozens more, officials said.
“This was a demonstrative and cynical Russian strike,” Zelenskyy wrote on the X social media platform. “They are aware that a meeting is taking place today in Washington that will address the end of the war.”
Ukraine’s president accused Russia of “deliberately killing people, particularly children,” pointing out the youngest killed in a drone strike on Kharviv was a little girl just 1 1/2 years old.
O’Connell did praise Trump’s new sanctions on India, which has been buying Russian oil throughout the conflict. She indicated this tool could help force Putin into peace negotiations where past U.S. presidents have failed.
“Following Russia’s seizure of Crimea and use of force in Eastern Ukraine in 2014 and eve before its full-scale invasion of the rest of Ukraine in 2022, I called for tough economic sanctions – swift, immediate termination of all fossil fuel purchases,” she said. “I regularly criticized Presidents Obama and Biden for failing to use diplomacy to convince India and China to help pressure Russia to respect Ukraine’s legal right to territorial integrity. So when President Trump let India know that he would impose heavy sanctions for continuing to buy Russian oil, I could foresee Ukraine’s success for the first time in 12 years in pushing Russia out of all of its territory.”
Trump also said at the White House that he would pursue a trilateral meeting with Zelenskyy and Putin.
