{"id":8830,"date":"2025-08-19T07:16:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T07:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/8830\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T07:16:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T07:16:08","slug":"donald-trump-says-vladimir-putin-agrees-to-face-to-face-talks-with-volodymyr-zelenskiy-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/8830\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump says Vladimir Putin agrees to face-to-face talks with Volodymyr Zelenskiy \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vladimir Putin<\/a> has agreed to face-to-face talks with Volodymyr Zelenskiy<\/a> to discuss a peace deal in Ukraine,<\/a> according to Donald Trump<\/a> and European leaders, although Moscow has not confirmed the meeting.<\/p>\n

The potential breakthrough came after a day of tense diplomacy at the White House in which Mr Trump ruled out a ceasefire while Mr Zelenskiy and his allies pushed for US-backed security guarantees as part of any long-term agreement. <\/p>\n

The Ukrainian president said that following the talks, security guarantees for Kyiv would be \u201cformalised\u201d within 10 days.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the conclusion of the meetings, I called President Putin, and began the arrangements for a meeting, at a location to be determined, between President Putin and President Zelenskiy,\u201d Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, adding that a trilateral meeting including the US president would follow.<\/p>\n

The Kremlin did not confirm that Russia would arrange for Mr Putin and Mr Zelenskiy to meet.<\/p>\n

Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov has said Mr Putin and Mr Trump only discussed the \u201cidea\u201d of direct Russia-Ukraine talks in Monday\u2019s phone call. Russia\u2019s Tass news agency quoted the aide as saying Mr Putin told the US president that he was open to the \u201cidea\u201d of direct talks with Ukraine.<\/p>\n

\"USUS president Donald Trump greets Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the West Wing of the White House in Washington. Photograph: Doug Mills\/The New York Times<\/p>\n

British prime minister Keir Starmer and German chancellor Friedrich Merz appeared to confirm the meeting. <\/p>\n

Mr Merz told reporters: \u201cThe American president spoke with the Russian president on the phone and agreed that there would be a meeting between the Russian president and the Ukrainian president within the next two weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Trump<\/a> also said the US would help arrange European security guarantees for Ukraine if peace could be agreed with Russia.<\/p>\n

Writing on social media on Monday night after a day of intense diplomacy in Washington,<\/a> Mr Trump said America would provide \u201cco-ordination\u201d for Europe\u2019s security guarantees \u2013 but stopped short of a full commitment of American military support for Kyiv.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Four key takeaways from Trump\u2019s White House summit on UkraineOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The US president had been under pressure from Mr Zelenskiy and European allies to offer robust security guarantees to Ukraine in any peace deal, after he failed to secure a ceasefire from Mr Putin at a summit last week in Alaska.<\/p>\n

Speaking alongside the Ukrainian president in the Oval Office, Mr Trump said the US would be \u201cinvolved\u201d in helping Ukraine defend itself but the burden would mainly be on Europe.<\/p>\n

Later, on Truth Social, he wrote: \u201cDuring the meeting we discussed Security Guarantees for Ukraine, which Guarantees would be provided by the various European Countries, with a co-ordination with the United States of America.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Zelenskiy said on Monday evening that security guarantees were a \u201ckey issue, a starting point\u201d for ending the war.<\/p>\n

\u201cSecurity guarantees will probably be \u2018unpacked\u2019 by our partners, and more and more details will emerge. All of this will somehow be formalised on paper within the next week to 10 days,\u201d Mr Zelenskiy said at broadcast press briefing after his meetings.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is important that the United States is sending a clear signal that it will be among the countries helping to co-ordinate and will also be a participant in the security guarantees for Ukraine,\u201d Mr Zelenskiy said. \u201cI believe this is a major step forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although a peace deal appeared far from imminent after the meetings in Washington, Mr Zelenskiy said his Monday meeting with Mr Trump was his \u201cbest\u201d so far. He also said Ukraine was ready to meet with Russia in \u201cany format\u201d and that territorial issues would be discussed on a bilateral level with Mr Putin \u2013 but no dates for a possible meeting with Moscow have been scheduled yet.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe question of territories is something we will leave between me and Putin,\u201d Mr Zelenskiy said.<\/p>\n

He added that a part of security guarantees for Ukraine is an agreement to buy a package of US weapons \u201cwhich primarily includes aircraft, air defence systems\u201d, among others.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere indeed is a package with our proposals worth $90 billion,\u201d Mr Zelenskiy said. \u201cAnd we have agreements with the US president that when our export opens, they will buy Ukrainian drones. This is important for us.\u201d <\/b><\/p>\n

Nato secretary general Mark Rutte, who attended the talks in Washington with Mr Trump, Mr Zelenskiy and several European leaders, told Fox News that the group would work on the details of security guarantees for Ukraine \u201cover the coming days\u201d and reconvene virtually.<\/p>\n

He added that putting troops on the ground would be part of Nato member talks.<\/p>\n

Mr Trump\u2019s push for a meeting between the Ukrainian and Russian presidents suggests he still sees a path to mediate a resolution to the conflict, which began when Moscow launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022.<\/p>\n

Russia did not confirm that Mr Putin would meet Mr Zelenskiy, or was arranging a bilateral summit, even after the US and Russian presidents spoke on the phone on Monday.<\/p>\n

Yuri Ushakov, Mr Putin\u2019s foreign policy adviser, said only that the Kremlin agreed to \u201csupport direct talks\u201d and \u201cdiscussed the idea of raising the level of Russia\u2019s and Ukraine\u2019s representatives\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mr Merz said the Putin-Zelenskiy meeting could happen within two weeks, to be followed by a trilateral summit involving the US president.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not know whether the Russian president has the courage to come to such a summit or not. That is why we must work to persuade him,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The US president\u2019s comments did not indicate that Monday\u2019s talks had reached agreement on the thorniest details of any possible settlement, including Mr Putin\u2019s proposal that Ukraine cede more land to Russia in exchange for freezing the rest of the current frontline.<\/p>\n

But a European official who was part of the delegation to Washington said territories had not been part of the discussions. The official said Europeans in the room were pleased that Mr Trump said: \u201cThat is not my business, that is a matter for Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Mr Trump made no new threat to hit Russia\u2019s economy with sanctions if Mr Putin continued to balk at ending the war, the European official said they believed that they had got the US president back to where he was before his summit in Alaska.<\/a><\/p>\n

The more-than-six-hour meetings in Washington marked an urgent new diplomatic push by Mr Zelenskiy and European allies to win more support from Mr Trump amid alarm at the outcome of Friday\u2019s Alaska summit.<\/p>\n

The gathering of European leaders, which also included UK prime minister Keir Starmer and French president Emmanuel Macron, at the White House was the largest since last year\u2019s Nato summit, when Joe Biden was president.<\/p>\n

Several European leaders interrupted summer holidays to dash to Washington to present a united front with Mr Zelenskiy, who was berated by Mr Trump and his officials during an angry Oval Office confrontation in February.<\/p>\n

The two leaders\u2019 meeting in the Oval Office on Monday was warm and good-humoured.<\/p>\n

The president has repeatedly stressed his desire to be taken seriously as a global peacemaker and several European leaders lauded him with compliments, in an apparent effort to improve the mood.<\/p>\n

Mr Rutte said Mr Trump\u2019s willingness to discuss security guarantees for Kyiv was a \u201cbreakthrough\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mr Trump had hoped to announce a trilateral summit with the Russian and Ukrainian presidents, but ended up with a proposal to arrange the meeting between the other two leaders, at a location to be determined.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter that meeting takes place, we will have a trilat, which would be the two presidents, plus myself. Again, this was a very good, early step for a war that has been going on for almost four years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

US vice-president JD Vance, who has become more closely involved in talks with Ukraine; secretary of state Marco Rubio; and special envoy Steve Witkoff would take charge of getting Mr Zelenskiy and Mr Putin together, Mr Trump said. \u2013 Financial Times\/Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vladimir Putin has agreed to face-to-face talks with Volodymyr Zelenskiy to discuss a peace deal in Ukraine, according…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,356,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,550,7,8,2264,2263,2267,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-8830","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-latest-news","15":"tag-latestnews","16":"tag-main-news","17":"tag-mainnews","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-russia","20":"tag-top-stories","21":"tag-topstories","22":"tag-ukraine-crisis","23":"tag-vladimir-putin","24":"tag-volodymyr-zelenskiy","25":"tag-world","26":"tag-world-news","27":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}