US President Donald Trump warned he would impose “very severe consequences” if Vladimir Putin didn’t agree to a ceasefire agreement later this week, following a call with European leaders ahead of his meeting with the Russian president.
Trump also said he hoped to use the Friday meeting to set up a “quick second meeting” with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy after allies pressed him to push for such a summit.
“There’s a very good chance that we’re going to have a second meeting which will be more productive than the first,” Trump told reporters Wednesday at the Kennedy Center, adding that he was “setting the table for the second meeting.”
The president’s remarks signaled both that he was looking to downplay expectations for the delivery of a full peace deal from his Anchorage, Alaska summit with Putin, and responding to concerns from his European partners who urged him to prioritize direct Putin-Zelenskiy talks.
Skeptics of Trump’s effort have expressed concern that the US president — who has said an eventual deal would include territorial exchanges — could agree to peace terms proposed by Putin that would disadvantage Ukraine.
Trump assured leaders on the call he wouldn’t negotiate territories with Putin and would push the Russian leader to meet with Zelenskiy, according to multiple people briefed on the discussions. He reiterated his public claim that he would know quickly if the Russian president was serious about the negotiations, and said the US would be willing to contribute to support some security guarantees short of full NATO membership for Kyiv.
French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking to reporters Wednesday after the call, said that any decision on possible concessions on territory will need to be made by Ukraine and there were no “serious territorial exchange plans on the table today.”
“Trump was very clear on the fact that the US wants to obtain a ceasefire at this meeting in Alaska,” Macron told reporters in Bregancon, France. “We have reiterated that until there is a ceasefire and a lasting peace, we must continue to support Ukraine, and when I say we I mean Europeans and Americans.”
Trump and US Vice President JD Vance joined European leaders including from Germany, France, Poland and Italy as well as Zelenskiy and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the roughly hour-long discussion. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who also took part, said in a post on social media that the leaders had a “very good call” and that it “strengthened the common ground for Ukraine.”
Trump described the call similarly, saying he would “rate it a 10” and said he had promised to brief Zelenskiy and European leaders immediately after concluding his conversation. Trump also said he would be willing to walk away if he judged Putin as insincere.
“Now there may be no second meeting, because if I feel that it’s not appropriate to have it, because I didn’t get the answers that we have to have, then we’re not going to have a second meeting,” Trump said.
Turkey was mentioned on the call as one location for a potential trilateral summit between Trump, Putin and Zelenskiy if the meeting did in fact come together, a person familiar with the matter said.
The talks came after days of intense diplomacy between US, European and Ukrainian officials ahead of Trump’s planned meeting with Putin in Alaska on Friday.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who hosted the call with the US leader, reiterated that Ukraine would need to be involved in any decisions.
“We have made it clear that Ukraine will be at the table as soon as there is a follow-up meeting,” Merz told reporters in Berlin alongside Zelenskiy. “President Trump wants to make a ceasefire a priority.”
Moscow is demanding that Ukraine cede its entire eastern Donbas region as well as Crimea, which Putin’s forces illegally annexed in 2014, as a condition to unlock a ceasefire and enter negotiations over a lasting settlement, Bloomberg previously reported.
Such an outcome would require the government in Kyiv to give up parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces still under its control and hand Russia a victory that its army couldn’t achieve militarily for more than a decade.
Zelenskiy told reporters earlier this week that he won’t cede Donbas, adding that the Kremlin could use it as a launchpad for a future offensive. European nations have made clear to the US that they will not formally recognize territory illegally occupied by Russia.
