Well-mannered White House welcome for Ukraine leaves many questions, World News
Here are takeaways from the talks: Warm tone, little substance
Seven European leaders, the Ukrainian president, their motorcades, dozens of Trump administration staff and more than 100 journalists swarmed the White House campus on Monday in anticipation of the unusual meeting.
Would Trump and Zelenskiy agree on a path to peace? Or would their latest Oval Office session devolve into a bitter squabble as in February?
Neither scenario occurred. Zelenskiy, chided for his appearance and manner in February, adjusted both. Wearing more formal clothing and repeatedly expressing his gratitude to Trump, he was greeted by a far more complimentary US president than in the past.
But, despite Trump's vow to assist in Ukraine's security after a hypothetical peace deal, there was no immediate sign that any party had substantially changed position on land swaps, security guarantees or sanctions.
Instead, Trump ended with promises to host a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin to address the many remaining issues. Heaping praise
"Have you said 'thank you' once?" US Vice President JD Vance asked Zelenskiy in February, accusing him of failing to show sufficient gratitude for US support.
On Monday, Zelenskiy made sure that was not an issue. His opening remarks in the Oval Office included eight thank-yous, mostly for Trump.
"Thank you so much, Mr. President ... thank you for your attention. Thank you very much for your efforts, personal efforts to stop killings and stop this war. Thank you," Zelenskiy said.
He included the US first lady, who sent a letter to Putin about abducted children in Ukraine.
"Using this opportunity, my thanks to your wife," the Ukrainian president said.
"And thanks to all our partners and that you supported this format. And after our meeting, we're going to have leaders who are around us, the UK and France, Germany... all partners around Ukraine supporting us. Thanks (to) them. Thank you very much for your invitation."
Unlike in February, Vance this time sat largely silent. Combat formal
The stakes of the meeting could not have been higher. But one of the most-asked questions among diplomats in DC could not have been more frivolous: Would the Ukrainian president wear a suit?
The answer: kind of.
Zelenskiy showed up to the White House in what one European diplomat described as "almost a suit." His black jacket had tiny lapels and jetted chest pockets. He did not wear a tie. His attire, which split the difference between the battlefield and the boardroom, could be described as combat formal.
Those sartorial details matter when it comes to dealing with the US president, who was upset that Zelenskiy did not wear a suit for their February meeting.
Zelenskiy passed the fashion test this time, however.
When one journalist in the Oval Office said Zelenskiy looked "fabulous," Trump chimed in to agree.
"I said the same thing," Trump told reporters. Divide over ceasefire
The assembled European leaders, Zelenskiy included, were careful to paper over policy disagreements with Trump, keeping their comments vague and showering the US president with compliments.
But one point of disagreement did bubble to the surface.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told the assembled leaders and media that he wanted to see Putin agree to a ceasefire.
Trump had long pushed for a ceasefire in Ukraine. But he largely jettisoned that goal after meeting with Putin last week in Alaska, a shift that was widely seen as a diplomatic defeat for Ukraine. The US president now says he is fine trying to move directly to a peace deal.
"To be honest, we all would like to see a ceasefire," Merz said. "I can't imagine that the next meeting would take place without a ceasefire, so let's work on that."
Trump pushed back, arguing he has solved many conflicts without first reaching a ceasefire.
[[nid:721540]] Whose boots on the ground?
One of the great mysteries that hung over the summit was what support the US would give to secure any Russia-Ukraine deal long term.
Trump hasn't offered US troops' "boots on the ground" to guarantee Ukraine's security from Russia, reflecting American reticence to commit to military entanglements or a head-to-head confrontation with a nuclear power.
Instead, he has offered weapons sales and promised that Americans will do business in Ukraine, assurances that Ukrainians see as far less than a security guarantee. Europeans are preparing for a peacekeeping mission backed by their forces.
Yet, asked explicitly whether US security guarantees for Ukraine could include US troops in the country, Trump did not rule it out. Instead, he teased an announcement as soon as Monday on the topic.
"We'll let you know that, maybe, later today," Trump said. He said Europe was the "first line of defence" but that "we'll be involved." What's next
Trump said he would call Putin and set up a trilateral meeting with Ukraine at a time and place to be determined.
Despite some private misgivings, the assembled leaders agreed that such a meeting was a logical next step.
Still, the path forward is more complex than Trump and his allies are letting on.
For one, Russia has delayed and obstructed high-level meetings with Ukraine in the past, and it was not immediately clear that Putin would actually sit down with Zelenskiy, who he frequently describes as an illegitimate leader.
Additionally, it is unclear how much a principal-level meeting would actually advance the cause of peace.
The gulf between the Russian and Ukrainian positions is vast. The Kremlin said on Monday the presence of Nato troops in Ukraine is a non-starter, a stance that would be hard for Ukraine to swallow. Russia is also calling for Ukraine to fork over significant chunks of territory that Kyiv controls, another proposal that Ukraine's leaders are not entertaining.
[[nid:721555]]
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Straits Times
2 hours ago
- Straits Times
UK sanctions Iranian oil magnate and four companies
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox LONDON - Britain sanctioned an Iranian oil magnate and four companies on Thursday, saying they are part of a network that supports Tehran's overseas activities, including "destabilisation" in Ukraine and Israel. The sanctions include an asset freeze and travel ban on Mohammad Hossein Shamkhani, and an asset freeze on companies in the shipping, petrochemical and financial sectors, the Foreign Office said. "Iran's reliance on revenues from trading networks and connected organisations enables it to carry out its destabilising activities, including supporting proxies and partners across the region and facilitating state threats on UK soil," Britain's Minister for the Middle East Hamish Falconer said. The Iranian embassy in London said it condemned what it called Britain's "unilateral and illegal measures" and "baseless allegations". Shamkhani, the son of an adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, could not be reached for comment. The United States, which sanctioned Shamkhani last month, said he controls a vast network of container ships and tankers through a complex web of intermediaries that sell Iranian and Russian oil and other goods throughout the world. Some of the companies sanctioned by Britain on Wednesday were cited for acting on behalf of or at the direction of Shamkhani, who is accused of aiding Iran's overseas operations. Shamkhani was also sanctioned by the European Union in July. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. Singapore Courier tip-off leads to HSA seizure of Kpods, drugs in Tampines and Grange Road raids Singapore Large flocks of parakeets a spectacle in Choa Chu Kang, but they may affect native species Singapore Singapore students shine in Paris with record medal haul at history Olympiad Singapore Teacher charged over allegedly making student undress in video call, sending her his nude photo Singapore Painting by police NSF presented to Shanmugam to commemorate 50 years of Police National Service Business 8 more active ETFs by JPMorgan Asset Management available to Singapore investors Business Changi Travel Services cuts 30 staff amid market shifts Asia HK water scandal: How distrust over China bottled water sparked a probe into govt contract British lawmakers warned last month that Iran posed a growing and multifaceted threat to Britain, and while it does not yet rival the scale of challenges posed by Russia or China, they said the government was ill prepared to confront it. They said the Iranian threat spanned physical attacks and potential assassinations targeting dissidents and Jewish communities, as well as espionage, offensive cyber operations, and efforts to develop nuclear weapons. Iran has rejected these claims, calling them "unfounded, politically motivated and hostile allegations". REUTERS
Straits Times
2 hours ago
- Straits Times
Trump's huge civil fraud penalty thrown out by New York appeals court
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox US President Donald Trump had been ordered to pay about half a billion dollars after a judge found that he fraudulently overstated the value of his properties and other assets to bolster his family business. NEW YORK - A New York state appeals court on Aug 21 threw out an approximately half-billion-dollar penalty that Mr Donald Trump had been ordered to pay after a judge found the US president fraudulently overstated the value of his properties and other assets to bolster his family business. The decision by a five-judge panel of the Appellate Division in Manhattan represented a defeat for New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose office brought the civil fraud lawsuit against Mr Trump in 2022. Ms James' case had been among Mr Trump's biggest legal losses in a slew of lawsuits against him in recent years. Lawyers for Mr Trump did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Ms James' office did not immediately respond to similar requests. The appeals court was splintered. Two judges found Mr Trump was properly held liable, and Ms James 'vindicated a public interest' by pursuing her fraud case, but the penalty was an excessive fine that violated the US Constitution. Two other judges also found Ms James had authority to sue, but a new trial was necessary because the trial judge should not have held Mr Trump liable for fraud at the outset. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. Singapore Courier tip-off leads to HSA seizure of Kpods, drugs in Tampines and Grange Road raids Singapore Large flocks of parakeets a spectacle in Choa Chu Kang, but they may affect native species Singapore Singapore students shine in Paris with record medal haul at history Olympiad Singapore Teacher charged over allegedly making student undress in video call, sending her his nude photo Singapore Painting by police NSF presented to Shanmugam to commemorate 50 years of Police National Service Business 8 more active ETFs by JPMorgan Asset Management available to Singapore investors Business Changi Travel Services cuts 30 staff amid market shifts Asia HK water scandal: How distrust over China bottled water sparked a probe into govt contract The fifth judge said the case against Mr Trump should have been dismissed. Mr Trump was appealing a judgment entered by Justice Arthur Engoron in a state court in Manhattan, following a three-month nonjury trial. Justice Engoron found Mr Trump had inflated his wealth over several years before first becoming president in 2017, to dupe lenders and insurers into providing better terms to the Trump Organization. Mr Trump has denied wrongdoing. His lawyers argued that the penalty was too high and that James had overreached. In February 2024, the judge ordered Trump to pay US$454.2 million (S$585 million) in penalties plus interest, which has continued to accrue. Mr Trump was personally liable for nearly 98 per cent of the judgment, with his eldest sons, Mr Donald Trump Jr and Mr Eric Trump, and former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg responsible for the remainder. Referring to Mr Trump and other Trump Organization figures, Justice Engoron said their 'complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological'. Justice Engoron also banned Mr Trump and the Trump Organization from applying for loans from banks registered in the state for three years, and effectively barred Mr Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump from running the business for two years. The appeals court put these restrictions on hold during the appeals process, while letting a court-appointed monitor for the Trump Organization continue her work. REUTERS
Straits Times
2 hours ago
- Straits Times
Putin's demand to Ukraine: Give up Donbas, no Nato and no Western troops
A plume of smoke rises from a missile strike at sunset, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in the eastern Donbas region of Bakhmut, Ukraine, November 1, 2022. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne/File Photo MOSCOW - Vladimir Putin is demanding that Ukraine give up all of the eastern Donbas region, renounce ambitions to join Nato, remain neutral and keep Western troops out of the country, three sources familiar with top-level Kremlin thinking told Reuters. The Russian president met Donald Trump in Alaska on Aug 15 for the first Russia-US summit in more than four years and spent almost all of their three-hour closed meeting discussing what a compromise on Ukraine might look like, according to the sources who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Speaking afterwards beside Mr Trump, Mr Putin said the meeting would hopefully open up the road to peace in Ukraine - but neither leader gave specifics about what they discussed. In the most detailed Russian-based reporting to date on Mr Putin's offer at the summit, Reuters was able to outline the contours of what the Kremlin would like to see in a possible peace deal to end a war that has killed and injured hundreds of thousands of people. In essence, the Russian sources said, Mr Putin has compromised on territorial demands he laid out in June 2024, which required Kyiv to cede the entirety of the four provinces Moscow claims as part of Russia: Dontesk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine - which make up the Donbas - plus Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south. Kyiv rejected those terms as tantamount to surrender. In his new proposal, the Russian president has stuck to his demand that Ukraine completely withdraw from the parts of the Donbas it still controls, according to the three sources. In return, though, Moscow would halt the current front lines in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, they added. Russia controls about 88 per cent of the Donbas and 73 per cent of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, according to US estimates and open-source data. Moscow is also willing to hand over the small parts of the Kharkiv, Sumy, and Dnipropetrovsk regions of Ukraine it controls as part of a possible deal, the sources said. Mr Putin is sticking, too, to his previous demands that Ukraine give up its Nato ambitions and for a legally binding pledge from the US-led military alliance that it will not expand further eastwards, as well as for limits on the Ukrainian army and an agreement that no Western troops will be deployed on the ground in Ukraine as part of a peacekeeping force, the sources said. Yet the two sides remain far apart, more than three years after Mr Putin ordered thousands of Russian troops into Ukraine in a full-scale invasion that followed the annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and prolonged fighting in the country's east between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops. Ukraine's foreign ministry had no immediate comment on the proposals. President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly dismissed the idea of withdrawing from internationally recognised Ukrainian land as part of a deal, and has said the industrial Donbas region serves as a fortress holding back Russian advances deeper into Ukraine. 'If we're talking about simply withdrawing from the east, we cannot do that,' he told reporters in comments released by Kyiv on Aug 21. 'It is a matter of our country's survival, involving the strongest defensive lines.' Joining Nato, meanwhile, is a strategic objective enshrined in the country's constitution and one which Kyiv sees as its most reliable security guarantee. Mr Zelensky said it was not up to Russia to decide on the alliance's membership. The White House and Nato didn't immediately respond to requests for comment on the Russian proposals. Political scientist Samuel Charap, chair in Russia and Eurasia Policy at RAND, a US-based global policy think-tank, said any requirement for Ukraine to withdraw from the Donbas remained a non-starter for Kyiv, both politically and strategically. 'Openness to 'peace' on terms categorically unacceptable to the other side could be more of a performance for Trump than a sign of a true willingness to compromise,' he added. 'The only way to test that proposition is to begin a serious process at the working level to hash out those details.' Trump says Putin wants to end war Russian forces currently control a fifth of Ukraine, an area about the size of the American state of Ohio, according to US estimates and open-source maps. The three sources close to the Kremlin said the summit in the Alaskan city of Anchorage had ushered in the best chance for peace since the war began because there had been specific discussions about Russia's terms and Mr Putin had shown a willingness to give ground. 'Putin is ready for peace - for compromise. That is the message that was conveyed to Trump,' one of the people said. The sources cautioned that it was unclear to Moscow whether Ukraine would be prepared to cede the remains of the Donbas, and that if it did not then the war would continue. Also unclear was whether or not the United States would give any recognition to Russian-held Ukrainian territory, they added. A fourth source said that though economic issues were secondary for Mr Putin, he understood the economic vulnerability of Russia and the scale of the effort needed to go far further into Ukraine. Mr Trump has said he wants to end the 'bloodbath' of the war and be remembered as a 'peacemaker president'. He said on Aug 18 he had begun arranging a meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders, to be followed by a trilateral summit with the US president. 'I believe Vladimir Putin wants to see it ended,' Mr Trump said beside Mr Zelensky in the Oval office. 'I feel confident we are going to get it solved.' Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Aug 21 that Mr Putin was prepared to meet Mr Zelensky but that all issues had to be worked through first and there was a question about Mr Zelensky's authority to sign a peace deal. Mr Putin has repeatedly raised doubts about Mr Zelensky's legitimacy as his term in office was due to expire in May 2024 but the war means no new presidential election has yet been held. Kyiv says Mr Zelensky remains the legitimate president. The leaders of Britain, France and Germany have said they are sceptical that Mr Putin wants to end the war. Security guarantees for Ukraine Mr Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff was instrumental in paving the way for the summit, and the latest drive for peace, according to two of the Russian sources. Mr Witkoff met Mr Putin in the Kremlin on Aug 6 with Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov. At the meeting, Mr Putin conveyed clearly to Mr Witkoff that he was ready to compromise and set out the contours of what he could accept for peace, according to two Russian sources. If Russia and Ukraine could reach an agreement, then there are various options for a formal deal - including a possible three-way Russia-Ukraine-US deal that is recognised by the UN Security Council, one of the sources said. Another option is to go back to the failed 2022 Istanbul agreements, where Russia and Ukraine discussed Ukraine's permanent neutrality in return for security guarantees from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, the sources added. 'There are two choices: war or peace, and if there is no peace, then there is more war,' one of the people said. REUTERS
