Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he has arrived in Washington, where he is due to meet US President Donald Trump on 18 August, supported by the presence of key European allies.
“I am grateful to the US President for the invitation. We all equally want a quick and secure end to this war. And the peace must be lasting. Not like it was years ago, when Ukraine was forced to give up Crimea and part of our east – part of Donbass – and Putin used it just as a springboard for a new attack. Or when Ukraine was given sort of ‘security guarantees’ in 1994, but it didn’t work,” Zelensky wrote in a telegram.
“Russia must end this war, which it itself started. And I hope that our common strength with America, with our European friends will force Russia to real peace,” he emphasised.
Meanwhile, Trump said on his Truth Social network, Truth Social, that “Ukrainian President Zelensky could almost immediately end the war with Russia if he wanted to, or he could keep fighting.”
In a series of posts late on the evening of 17 August, hours before a scheduled meeting at the White House, Trump also repeated his belief that Ukraine would have to cede its sovereign territory to Russia in any peace agreement. That idea is regularly rejected by Kiev and its European allies.
“Remember how it started. No return of Crimea given by Obama (12 years ago, without firing a shot!) and no Ukraine joining NATO,” Trump wrote, referring to previous US President Barack Obama and the fact that Russia seized and illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014.
Zelensky, who arrived in the United States at around 22: 30 local time, referred to Ukraine’s “forced” loss of Crimea but did not respond directly to Trump’s remarks. “Of course, we should not have given Crimea back then just like after 2022 Ukrainians did not give Kiev, Odessa, Kharkiv. Ukrainians are fighting for their land, for their independence. Now our soldiers have successes in Donetsk and Sumy regions,” – said the President of Ukraine.
Earlier, Zelensky said that one of the key items on his agenda was to secure reliable security guarantees from the US leader against further Russian aggression.
US presidential envoy for talks with Russia Steve Witkoff said that Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to provide Ukraine with “reliable security guarantees”.
“We were able to get this concession [from Putin]: that the United States can offer Article 5-like protection (stipulates that if a new war breaks out, the guarantor countries must give an armed response to the aggressor – ed.), which is one of the real reasons why Ukraine wants to be in NATO,” Witkoff told CNN.
Zelensky, who has long expressed a desire for Ukraine to join NATO or receive substantial security guarantees from Washington and the so-called European “coalition of the willing,” said he would seek more details on the issue at the meeting, which is scheduled to begin at 13: 15 in Washington (local time).
U.S. officials have long rejected Kiev’s NATO membership and have been reticent in the past to talk about direct security guarantees for Ukraine. Administration officials have said any guarantees would be outside NATO’s borders.
European leaders, many of whom held a videoconference on 17 August to discuss Russia’s war in Ukraine, said they would travel to Washington to support Zelensky during his meeting with Trump.
Specifically, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Maloney and Finnish President Alexander Stubb will join the talks