Trump-Zelenskyy meeting updates: US to arrange Russia-Ukraine summit

Thank you for joining our coverage.

For a wrap of the day’s events, read our story here.

You can watch Zelenskyy’s comments on the details of his meeting with Trump here, as well as our video report on the US president’s changing stance on the Ukraine war here.

And there’s plenty more here.

We’ll be closing this live page soon. Before we go, here’s a recap of the key developments:

• Trump said he had a “good meeting” with Zelenskyy and European leaders and that they discussed security guarantees, which will be provided to Ukraine by Europe, “with coordination from” the US.
• The US president also said he spoke with Putin during the meeting and has begun making arrangements for a bilateral summit between the Russian leader and Zelenskyy, after which trilateral talks that would include him would follow.
• Zelenskyy said security guarantees were a “starting point towards ending the war” and that a meeting with Putin was “necessary to resolve sensitive issues”.
• A Kremlin aide said Trump and Putin discussed the possibility of increasing the level of Russian and Ukrainian representatives during talks.
• European leaders welcomed the outcomes, with NATO’s Rutte hailing the US’s promise to contribute to Ukraine’s security as a “breakthrough”, Finland’s Stubb saying the guarantees would be ironed out within the next week, and Germany’s Merz saying the Putin-Zelenskyy summit could take place within two weeks.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was in the room during Trump and Zelenskyy’s talks with European leaders, has called the meeting “a big moment”, saying it marked the first time that there has been movement in a “stalemated war of death and destruction”.

Speaking to Fox News, Rubio said the US is working with European and non-European countries to build security guarantees for Ukraine.

“That will be something that will have to be in place after a peace deal, so that Ukraine can feel safe moving forward. And we’re coordinating that as we speak. We’re involved in the coordination of it,” he said.

The diplomat also said that the US is working on a meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy, something he described as “unprecedented”.

“And then if that goes well, hopefully the next meeting will be a meeting between Presidents Putin, Trump, and Zelenskyy, where we hope to finalise a deal. We’re not there yet, but that’s what we’re aiming towards, and that’s one of the things that was discussed today, is how to get to that point,” he said.

The president of the European Commission, who earlier called for prioritising the return of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia, has thanked Trump for his attention to the issue.

“The human cost of this war must end,” she wrote on X. “And that means every single Ukrainian child abducted by Russia must be returned to their families.”

The tweet was in reference to a post by Trump on his Truth Social platform, in which he said the subject of missing children worldwide was one “at the top of all lists” and that the world would work together to solve it.

According to Kyiv, Russia has forcibly taken 19,546 Ukrainian children from Russian-occupied regions in Ukraine since 2022. As of June this year, only 1,345 of them had been returned home.

The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Putin to face trial on charges of “unlawful deportation and transfer of children”.

The human cost of this war must end.

And that means every single Ukrainian child abducted by Russia must be returned to their families.

I thank @POTUS for his clear commitment today to ensuring these children are reunited with their loved ones. pic.twitter.com/bRyS83Sdxr

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) August 18, 2025

Watch the full video below of Trump, Zelenskyy and the European leaders’ comments to the media before their meeting at the White House.

The UK prime minister has spoken to the BBC about the outcome of the meeting with Trump.

“The two-hour talks were a real significant breakthrough when it comes to security guarantees, because we are now going to be working with the US on those security guarantees,” Starmer said.

“And secondly, moving on with the bilateral meeting and then trilateral meeting between the presidents, and the second one, including President Trump – that is, in order to try to get to an outcome of peace that is lasting and that is just,” he said.

Starmer added that the meeting showed a “real sense of unity” among the European leaders, Trump and Zelenskyy.

He also hailed the progress on bilateral talks.

“In that is the recognition that in the questions of territory, that is a question for Ukraine, that no decision should be made about Ukraine, without Ukraine,” he said.

The Ukrainian president has issued a statement on his talks with Trump, as well as on the discussions between them and the European leaders.

“Today, important negotiations took place in Washington. We discussed many issues with President Trump. It was a long and detailed conversation, including discussions about the situation on the battlefield and our steps to bring peace closer,” he wrote on X.

“There were also several meetings in a format with European leaders and the President of the United States. We discussed security guarantees,” he continued.

“This is a key issue, a starting point towards ending the war. We appreciate the important signal from the United States regarding its readiness to support and be part of these guarantees. A lot of attention today was given to the return of our children, to the release of prisoners of war and civilians held by Russia. We agreed to work on this. The U.S. President also supported a meeting at the level of leaders. Such a meeting is necessary to resolve sensitive issues.”

Zelenskyy went on to thank Trump for his invitation to the White House and thanked all the European leaders who accompanied him.

“The leaders personally came to support Ukraine and to discuss everything that will bring us closer to real peace, to a reliable security architecture that will protect Ukraine and all of Europe,” he said.

Before Trump’s meeting with Zelenskyy and the European leaders, the US and Ukrainian presidents spoke to the media at the White House.

During his comments, Zelenskyy expressed gratitude for Trump’s “personal efforts to stop the killings and end the wars” and stated his willingness to participate in trilateral talks with Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate an end to the conflict.

Watch the full video below:

The governor of Russia’s Volgograd region says falling debris from a Ukrainian drone has set off fires in a hospital building and on the grounds of an oil refinery, south of the city of Volgograd.

Andrei Bocharov, in a post on Telegram, said firefighters were working to extinguish the fires, and preliminary reports suggested that no one was hurt. He added that hospital patients were still receiving care in other parts of the hospital.

The fires occurred as Russian forces worked to repel a “massive” Ukrainian drone attack on the region, Bocharov said.

According to Trump, it is possible to end the war in Ukraine – Zelenskyy just has to agree.

But for Zelenskyy, agreeing to anything that means losing territory to Russia is not only difficult, but may be impossible under Ukraine’s constitution.

So, is it possible for Zelenskyy to agree to a deal without ceding any land to Russia? And what does it all say about Europe’s position in the world?

Watch the discussion below:

Here’s more from the French president’s comments to reporters in Washington, DC.

Macron said that “President Trump believes we can get an agreement and believes that President Putin also wants a peace accord”.

“But,” he added, “if at the end, this process is met by refusal, we are also ready to say that we need to increase sanctions [on Russia]”.

Macron went on to say that Trump and European leaders agreed on the need for a “robust Ukrainian army that can resist any attempted attack” and that there should not be “any limitation in number or capacity of arms” placed on Ukrainian forces, as part of a peace agreement.

Macron also said that he hoped Russia and Ukraine would resume contact “in the coming days” with a potential three-way summit involving Trump, Putin and Zelenskyy “in two to three weeks”.

The NATO secretary-general says that Trump agreed that the US would contribute to Ukraine’s security if there is a peace deal with Russia, a development he called “a breakthrough”.

Speaking to Fox News, Rutte said that membership in NATO is not on the table, but the US and European leaders are discussing “Article 5 kind of security guarantees for Ukraine”.

Article 5 of the NATO treaty says that an attack on one member nation is an attack on all members, the heart of the transatlantic defence compact.

Rutte said details around US involvement in Ukraine “will be discussed over the coming day”, which will give Zelenskyy the clarity he needs to decide whether Ukrainians can remain safe following a peace deal.

“It is important to also know what the situation will be with the security guarantees to prevent Vladimir Putin from ever, ever, trying again to invade parts of Ukraine,” Rutte said.

The possibility of US troops in Ukraine was not discussed in Monday’s meeting, he said.

It was clear that the European leaders came along to support Zelenskyy because of what happened in February.

There was also concern that Trump had moved his position from, “We need a ceasefire and we need it within the next 10 days” to, ‘Hold on, we don’t need a ceasefire. What we need is a full peace agreement”.

The European leaders are certainly talking in terms of there being a ceasefire before there are further discussions, whether they be bilateral between the Ukrainians and Russians or trilateral, with Trump getting involved.

And there’s also the discussion of security guarantees. The Europeans have said that they are willing to do that, they are willing to provide that, and, certainly, Zelenskyy, speaking outside the White House, said he expected something to be sorted out within the next 10 days to two weeks.

We’ve seen a shift in the American position.

Trump is now talking about the possibility of American involvement. Quite what that means, well, that will be sorted out in those discussions over the next two weeks.

He didn’t rule out the fact that it could mean troops on the ground. That seems unlikely, given that he campaigned against that very idea, but the fact that the Americans are now talking about some level of security guarantee would be seen as a shift.

Trump had talked about getting a peace deal very quickly after he was elected. He’s realising that to talk about it and to deliver it are two different things.

There’s momentum.

Things have moved, but if Trump thinks he’s going to get an end to this three-year-plus war anytime soon, there’s still a lot of work and a lot of detail to be worked out.

Kirill Dmitriev, the Russian president’s special envoy on trade, has described the meetings at the White House as “an important day of diplomacy”.

He claimed in a post on X that the focus of the talks between Trump, Zelenskyy and European leaders was on “Lasting Peace not a Temporary Ceasefire”.

An important day of diplomacy today with the focus on Lasting Peace not a Temporary Ceasefire. 🕊️

— Kirill A. Dmitriev (@kadmitriev) August 18, 2025

Zelenskyy was not told to leave the White House this time around.

In fact, he was invited to dinner with Trump.

That has just ended within the last hour, and Zelenskyy then went outside the White House grounds to talk to Ukrainian reporters.

He said that the meeting had been good and normal, two words that he was probably quite happy to use, given what happened back in February.

He said that there had been a lot of discussions with Trump about Russia’s territorial claims, and he spent some time going over that.

Then he talked about this idea of a trilateral summit.

He told reporters:

“We are ready for trilateral meeting, and if Russia proposed to president of the United States, bilateral. And then we will see the result of bilateral and then it can be trilateral. So I said all this show, Ukraine will never stop on the way to peace, and we are ready for any kind of formats but on the level of leaders.”

The French president, speaking to reporters in Washington, DC, says the discussions at the White House did not cover Ukraine making any territorial concessions to Russia.

We’ll bring you more from his comments shortly.

Alexander Stubb has also been speaking with reporters at the White House.

He described the talks as constructive and said that details of security guarantees for Ukraine will still need to be ironed out over the next week or so.

The Finnish president said there is “nothing concrete” about the US’s participation in the guarantees, but that Trump will inform them of the details in the future.

Stubb said that what was discussed was an arrangement similar to the Article 5-type guarantees offered to NATO members, and that the measures were something that Ukraine’s allies in the coalition of the willing had already discussed.

He also cast doubt over Putin’s willingness to take part in bilateral talks with Zelenskyy, as Trump had proposed, saying that European leaders are waiting to see if the Russian leader has the courage to come to such a meeting.

Stubb added that he remained sceptical about Putin’s commitment to the peace process.