Zelenskyy, European leaders head to US for talks on peace deal terms
Zelensky, who has repeatedly rejected territorial concessions, will meet Trump in Washington on Monday, accompanied by European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and other leaders.
The meeting comes on the heels of a summit between Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, which failed to yield a ceasefire breakthrough but produced promises from both leaders to provide "robust security guarantees" to Ukraine.
Zelenskyy was not invited to the Alaska meeting, after which Trump pivoted to the long-held Russian position that a ceasefire was not needed before a final peace deal.
"President Zelenskyy of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight," Trump posted on his social media platform. "Remember how it started. No getting back Obama given Crimea (12 years ago, without a shot being fired!), and NO GOING INTO NATO BY UKRAINE. Some things never change!!!"
Trump and Zelenskyy are expected to meet one-on-one before being joined by a cohort of European leaders on Monday, according to the White House schedule.
Along with von der Leyen, NATO chief Mark Rutte and the leaders of Britain, Finland, France, Germany and Italy will be present.
It will be the first time Zelensky visits Washington since a bust-up with Trump and Vice President JD Vance in February when the two men berated the Ukrainian leader for being "ungrateful."
On Sunday night, after arriving in Washington, Zelenskyy said: "We all share a strong desire to end this war quickly and reliably."
- Security guarantees -
Since the Oval Office row in February, Trump has grown more critical of Putin and shown some signs of frustration as Russia repeatedly stalled on peace talks.
But Washington has not placed extra sanctions on Moscow and the lavish welcome offered to Putin in Alaska on his first visit to the West since he invaded Ukraine in 2022 was seen as a diplomatic coup for Russia.
Speaking in Brussels on the eve of his visit to the United States, Zelenskyy said he was keen to hear more about what Putin and Trump discussed in Alaska.
He also hailed Washington's offer of security guarantees to Ukraine as "historic."
Trump said he spoke to Putin about the possibility of a NATO-style collective defense guarantee for Ukraine.
The promise would be outside of the framework of the Western military alliance that Ukraine wants to join and which is seen as an existential threat by Russia.
French President Emmanuel Macron said European leaders would ask Trump "to what extent" Washington is ready to contribute to security guarantees for Ukraine.
- Discussion on land -
Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff said Moscow had made "some concessions" regarding five Ukrainian regions that Russia fully or partially controls, and said that "there is an important discussion with regard to Donetsk and what would happen there.
"That discussion is going to specifically be detailed on Monday," he said, without giving details.
AFP | Simon Wohlfahrt
Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 following a sham referendum and did the same in 2022 for four Ukrainian regions - Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia - even though its forces have not fully captured them.
A source briefed on a phone call between Trump and European leaders on Saturday told AFP that the US leader was "inclined to support" a Russian demand to be given territory it has not yet captured in the Donbas, an area that includes the Donetsk and Lugansk regions and which has seen the deadliest battles of the war.
In exchange, the source cited Trump as saying, Moscow would agree to "freeze" the front line in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, where Russian forces hold swathes of territory but not the regional capitals.
Russia has until now insisted that Ukraine pull its forces out of all four regions as a precondition to any deal.
- 'Capitulation' -
There is concern in Europe that Washington could pressure Ukraine to accept Russia's terms.
"For peace to prevail, pressure must be applied to the aggressor, not the victim of aggression," Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Sunday.
Macron said: "There is only one state proposing a peace that would be a capitulation: Russia."
Zelensky has repeatedly pushed back against ceding territory, but said he is ready to discuss the issue in the context of a trilateral summit with Trump and Putin.
Trump has raised the possibility of such a meeting, but Russia has played down the prospect.
Moscow's forces have been advancing gradually but steadily in Ukraine, particularly in the Donetsk region.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
IOL News
36 minutes ago
- IOL News
Trump says semiconductor tariffs coming soon
US President Donald Trump said Friday he plans to announce tariffs on steel and semiconductors in the coming weeks. US President Donald Trump said Friday he plans to announce tariffs on steel and semiconductors in the coming weeks. "I'll be setting tariffs next week and the week after, on steel and, I would say, chips. Chips and semiconductors, we'll be setting sometime next week, the week after," Trump said onboard Air Force One as he headed to Alaska for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump said the levy rate would be "lower at the beginning" but "very high after a certain period of time," as a way to encourage businesses to relocate operations to the United States.
Eyewitness News
3 hours ago
- Eyewitness News
Trump's performance politics and the cost to South Africa
Charles Matseke 15 August 2025 | 11:31 Donald Trump Racism Foreign policy FILE: US President Donald Trump Donald Trump's political fabric has always been woven with threads of populist theatrics, racial grievance politics, and an impulse-driven approach to governance. Nowhere is this more evident than in his treatment or lack thereof of South Africa. From the start of his presidency, Trump displayed neither a coherent foreign policy for Africa nor an appreciation of South Africa's strategic role on the his engagement was dominated by misinformation and disinformation, most notably his amplification of the so-called 'white genocide' narrative raising the question: was this ignorance, calculated malice, or simply a lack of diplomatic interest?For Trump, foreign policy toward Africa has never been a matter of strategic planning but rather a stage for identity politics and symbolic gestures aimed at his domestic base. His failure to engage meaningfully with President Cyril Ramaphosa particularly during the controversy over farm killings was not just a scheduling oversight. It was a symptom of a deeper perception problem: Trump does not see African leaders as equal political counterparts deserving of diplomatic caution or respect. This mindset reflects his white nationalist worldview, where Black-majority nations are viewed not as strategic partners but as geopolitical traditional U.S. foreign policy, South Africa occupies a vital position as the gateway to African markets, a regional security partner, and a voice within multilateral forums such as BRICS, the African Union, and the G20. Under Trump, however, this relationship shifted from engagement to neglect. His administration largely abandoned Africa-focused policy frameworks in favor of ad-hoc interventions, driven more by ideological posturing than geopolitical calculus. The 'Prosper Africa' initiative ostensibly aimed at boosting U.S. trade and investment barely touched South Africa meaningfully, while Trump's transactional worldview reduced diplomacy to short-term deals, ignoring long-term strategic vacuum allowed domestic and foreign actors to weaponize disinformation. Afrikaner nationalist groups such as AfriForum, with strong networks in the U.S. conservative ecosystem, saw Trump's impulsiveness as a strategic opportunity. Drawing from Melissa Steyn's analysis in Whiteness Just Isn't What It Used to Be, these groups have long grappled with the erosion of white political dominance in post-apartheid South Africa. The 'white genocide' narrative provided them with an emotional hook appealing to Trump's base and bypassing nuanced diplomatic understand why such narratives find resonance, one must examine the historical architecture of Afrikaner nationalism. As T. Dunbar Moodie argues in The Rise of Afrikanerdom, Afrikaner nationalism was more than a political movement it was a quasi-religious civil religion, sanctifying racial separation as divine mandate and framing political dominance as a sacred duty. This belief system provided the moral and ideological scaffolding for apartheid and still echoes today in pockets of Afrikaner society, where victimhood narratives are deployed as political capital. Similarly, Dan O'Meara in Forty Lost Years shows how the National Party meticulously engineered a political order that consolidated Afrikaner economic and cultural power from 1948 to 1994. While apartheid's political edifice collapsed, the psychological and institutional residues of this power-seeking ideology survived. The mobilization of the 'white genocide' discourse in U.S. conservative circles is not a spontaneous phenomenon, it is a strategic continuation of this long tradition of using fear, identity, and international lobbying to protect white minority while Trump amplified the plight of white farmers, he never once addressed the existence of Orania, a whites-only enclave in South Africa, a relic of apartheid's ideology of 'separate development.' Orania is the physical embodiment of white privilege and autonomy in a Black-majority democracy, yet it escapes both U.S. diplomatic scrutiny and international condemnation. That such a place exists without sustained challenge from Washington underscores the selective outrage in U.S. foreign policy where white victimhood narratives are amplified, while systemic racial privilege is 'white genocide' discourse is not merely rhetorical it aligns with potential economic objectives. By casting South Africa as a country hostile to white farmers and foreign investors, it creates diplomatic pressure to dilute Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) policies, opening the door for U.S. linked tech and infrastructure projects tied to white economic networks. One cannot ignore that projects like Starlink championed in conservative U.S. circles could benefit from a South African policy environment stripped of its transformation South Africa, the Trump era offers sobering lessons. First, the U.S. even as a self-styled global moral leader is not immune to racialized foreign policy. Second, populist leaders will readily sacrifice diplomatic consistency for domestic political theater, especially when racial narratives resonate with their base. Third, foreign disinformation campaigns, particularly from well-organized minority interest groups, can gain traction when amplified by a superpower's head of response must be more assertive. It should challenge the weaponization of racial narratives by foreign actors and call out selective U.S. outrage. Domestically, it must engage Afrikaner nationalist organizations both at home and abroad on the reality that South Africa is a constitutional democracy belonging 'to all who live in it,' and those seeking preferential treatment on the basis of race have no legitimate diplomatic disregard for South Africa is not simply an extension of domestic U.S. polarization, it is a demonstration of how identity politics now shapes global diplomacy. In this paradigm, facts are subordinate to ideology, and policy is subordinate to populist performance. For South Africa, engaging with such a superpower requires both strategic communication and an unflinching commitment to safeguarding its sovereignty against racialized policy interference. Trump's South Africa 'policy' was never about policy at all it was about politics. And in that theatre, the truth was not a casualty of war; it was an afterthought in a performance aimed not at Pretoria, but at Pennsylvania, Texas, and Florida. Charles Matseke (MPhil in Politics and International Relations) is a researcher and writer with a keen interest in contemporary political dynamics. His research focuses on electoral politics, foreign policy analysis, and international relations, with a particular emphasis on the Global South and Africa's role in global affairs.
TimesLIVE
3 hours ago
- TimesLIVE
'Great honour' to host European leaders, says Trump ahead of Ukraine meeting
US President Donald Trump on Monday foreshadowed his meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and top European officials at the White House over Russia's war in Ukraine, posting online: 'Let's see what the results will be.' 'A big day at the White House. We have never had so many European leaders here at one time. A great honour for America!!' he wrote.
