The White House’s attempt to end Europe’s most destructive war is turning out to be a lot harder than expected.
Bringing together the leaders of Russia and Ukraine for a one-on-one meeting is proving difficult as President Trump acknowledged that Russia’s Vladimir Putin might not be ready to stop the fighting.
“The president has always said that there are areas of disagreement in this war that will have to be discussed and decided upon by these two countries, and so he wants these two countries to engage in direct diplomacy,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
The push for a face-to-face meeting comes after Trump met with Putin in Alaska last week and then welcomed seven European leaders and Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy to the White House on Monday.
Now they’re looking at places like Geneva, Vienna, Rome, Budapest, and Doha as possible spots for the trilateral meeting between the U.S., Russia, and Ukraine.
But Trump acknowledged late Tuesday that Putin might not be ready to end the fighting, telling radio host Mark Levin, “It’s possible he doesn’t want to make a deal.”
“I don’t think anyone in Ukraine has the illusion that a meeting with Putin could suddenly bring peace,” said Oleh Saakian, a Ukrainian political analyst. “It’s not as if at a meeting with Zelenskyy, Putin will suddenly say: ‘Yes, I was mistaken, I confess, I withdraw the troops, I give back the territories.'”
The Kremlin is also downplaying talk of a meeting between the two leaders anytime soon.
On CBN’s Faith Nation, Peter Doran of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies spoke to Putin’s strategy. “Vladimir Putin is trying to win more victories at the negotiating table than he’s won on the battlefield, and he’s injecting poison pills into these negotiations, and Trump is trying to cut right through that,” said Doran.
For Ukraine, any peace deal must come with strong security guarantees. There are discussions of sending European troops to Ukraine to prevent Russia from taking more land.
“We have European allies that are ready right now to put themselves in the fray, to send their soldiers to Ukraine, and that message is going to be communicated to Russia: if you attack Ukraine again in the future, you pick a fight with us,” Doran said.
As for Trump, he’s ruled out sending U.S. troops, but he’s open to using air power and other support to back up the Europeans and the Ukrainians.
“The president has definitively stated U.S. boots will not be on the ground in Ukraine, but we can certainly help in the coordination and perhaps provide other means of security guarantees to our European allies,” said Leavitt.
In the meantime, Ukraine says last night’s massive drone attack shows Putin has no plans to back down. Russia launched almost 100 drones and missiles at Ukraine’s Odessa region, sparking a large fire at a fuel and energy facility.
“What the Russians do and have done over and over and over is stall and allow their military to continue to bash, batter, bombard the Ukrainians, which they’ve done,” said William Taylor, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.
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