Washington
\nUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday he was willing to meet directly with his Russian counterpart to end the war.
\nSpeaking to reporters after talks with US President Donald Trump and several European leaders at the White House, Zelensky said he was ready for what would be his first face-to-face with Vladimir Putin since Moscow\u2019s invasion nearly three and a half years ago.
\n\u201cI confirmed \u2014 and all European leaders supported me \u2014 that we are ready for a bilateral meeting with Putin,\u201d Zelensky said following the summit.
\nZelensky has come under increasing pressure to cede territory to end the grinding war, as Russia makes a series of advances.
\nAhead of the White House meeting, Trump had pushed Ukraine to give up Crimea and abandon its goal of joining Nato \u2014 both key demands made by Putin.
\nBut Zelensky stressed he had been able to present a clearer picture of the battlelines to Trump, who he met in a one-on-one in the Oval Office.
\n\u201cThis was the best of our meetings,\u201d Zelensky said, according to a statement put out by his office. \u201cI was able to show many things, even on the map, to all American colleagues regarding the situation on the battlefield.\u201d
\nRather than concessions from Ukraine, the summit focused on arranging security guarantees in the event of a peace deal, French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters afterwards.
\nTrump said the guarantees \u201cwould be provided by the various European Countries (in) coordination with the United States of America.\u201d
\nHe assured that the United States would help guarantee Ukraine\u2019s security in any deal to end Russia\u2019s war there, though the extent of any assistance was not immediately clear.
\n\u201cWhen it comes to security, there\u2019s going to be a lot of help,\u201d Trump told reporters, adding that European countries would be involved. \u201cThey are a first line of defence because they\u2019re there, but we\u2019ll help them out.\u201d
\nZelensky hailed the promise as \u201ca major step forward,\u201d adding that the guarantees would be \u201cformalised on paper within the next week to 10 days\u201d and saying Ukraine offered to buy about $90 billion worth of US weapons.
\nZelensky added that \u201cit is important that the United States of America gives a clear signal that it will be among the countries that will assist, coordinate and also be participants in security guarantees for Ukraine.\u201d
\nThe tone on Monday was much warmer than a disastrous Oval Office meeting that saw Trump and Vice President JD Vance publicly criticise the Ukrainian leader in February.
\nBut a peace deal still appeared far from imminent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday he was willing to meet directly with his Russian counterpart to end the war. Speaking to reporters after talks with US President Donald Trump and several European leaders at the White House, Zelensky said he was ready for what would be his first face-to-face with Vladimir Putin …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":85582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85572"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85585,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85572\/revisions\/85585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}