President Donald Trump on Monday refused to rule out sending American soldiers to enforce any peace deal between Russia and Ukraine and said he would be discussing the U.S. commitment to a future settlement with European leaders during a multilateral sit-down between him, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and a group of European heads of state and government who’d travelled to the White House for talks.
Speaking during a brief media availability alongside Zelensky in the Oval Office,Trump told reporters that both Europe and the United States would be involved in securing a post-war peace for Ukraine, but he refused to say outright that American troops would not be put on the ground to maintain that peace.
“We’re going to work with Ukraine. We’re going to work with everybody, and we’re going to make sure that if there’s peace, the peace is going to stay long term. This is very long term. We’re not talking about a two year peace, and then we end up in this mess again. We’re going to make sure that everything’s good. We’ll work with Russia. We’re going to work with Ukraine. We’re going to make sure it works. And I think if we can get to peace, it’s going to work. I have no doubt about it,” he said.
Pressed further on any guarantees for Kyiv by reporters, he said there would be “a lot of help when it comes to security” in any post-war settlement, but he stressed that Europe would “be the first line of defense” albeit with some American assistance.
At the same time, the American leader seemed to rule out a future NATO membership bid for Kyiv, echoing a social media post he’d made earlier in the day, while hedging and telling the press that there hadn’t been any such discussions yet.
“We’re going to be discussing it today, but we will give them very good protection, very good security,” he said.
Trump added that the European leaders who were waiting to meet with him and Zelensky were “very like minded” on the matter.
He also said he’d be speaking with Putin after his meetings with Zelensky and the assembled European leaders.
Trump’s meeting with Zelensky comes nearly six months after the Ukrainian leader’s last visit to Washington — a trip to the Oval Office that ended abruptly when he was asked to leave following a shouting match between him and Vice President JD Vance.
Zelensky has worked to repair his often fraught relationship with the American president since then, and until recently it appeared that Trump was firmly on Kyiv’s side due to Russia’s unceasing attacks against civilian targets.
But in the wake of his summit with Putin in Anchorage, Alaska last week, Trump had appeared to waver by suggesting that Zelensky end his push for a cease-fire and instead embrace what he called a full-on “peace deal” involving Ukraine giving up nearly a fifth of its territory to Russia in exchange for vague security guarantees
It’s unlikely that Moscow would sign on to any agreement that included security guarantees backed by US or European forces on the ground in Ukraine. Ahead of Zelensky’s visit to the White House, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a statement that his country opposed “any scenarios that envisage deployment of NATO forces in Ukraine.”
