Trump, European Leaders Meet To Discuss Ukraine

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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

I'm Deepa Shibaroff.

I cover the White House.

I'm Greg Myri.

I cover national security.

I'm Tamara Keith.

I also cover the White House.

And today on the show, we're unpacking the White House meetings yesterday between President Trump, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, and other European leaders.

And Tam, I'll start with you here.

This was a meeting between the U.S.

and Ukraine, but there were a lot of other European leaders who showed up here.

What was the point of that?

Right, it was a huge showing from leaders of Europe essentially there to present a united front, to say that they are standing with President Zelensky Zelensky of Ukraine.

And in some ways, because the last time Zelensky visited the White House was so catastrophically bad,

in some ways, it seemed like it was almost an insurance policy to have this united voice there to show Trump how much this matters.

And of course, it matters a lot to Europe.

The fate of Ukraine is in many ways the fate of Europe.

Yeah, and I'll just add, you know, it was quite remarkable in the sense that the Zelensky-Trump meeting wasn't announced till Saturday morning.

So within 48 hours, all of these European leaders dropped everything they had going on, and they scrambled to get to Washington by Monday.

As Tam mentioned, it was a very important show of unity, and they also didn't want Zelensky to be forced into any concessions.

And even more broadly, I think it shows that the Europeans are stepping up, playing a more active role in Ukraine.

And partly because Trump has been pushing the Europeans to do more.

This is really evidence that they're doing it.

Yeah.

And walk me through what that Trump and Zelensky meeting was about.

What did they discuss in their individual meeting?

So we got a view of about a half an hour of it where the press was there.

And in the room, there was a map of Ukraine, a marked-up map of Ukraine.

President Trump has been talking about how Ukraine might have to give up some of the land that

now is occupied by Russia.

And there were these maps.

In fact,

the suggestion that Zelensky could take one of the maps home with him.

That was probably the meat of the discussion.

But the atmospherics here are President Zelensky, who didn't wear a suit last time in the Oval Office and that became an issue, showed up wearing a suit this time and repeatedly expressed gratitude.

for President Trump's work, expressed gratitude for the letter that First Lady Melania Trump had the President deliver to Vladimir Putin raising the concerns of children in Ukraine living in war.

And so it was,

in terms of atmospherics, it was a much more positive meeting.

It was a meeting where Zelensky was thanking Trump for his involvement.

And Trump appeared to enjoy that gratitude.

Trump wants to find a way to, as he says, stop the killing.

And he saw this meeting as the next step.

Tam, I'll just add to that.

You correctly noted that Trump talked about land swaps, which is something he keeps referring to.

Although

I think we should really be clear here because we're talking entirely about Ukrainian land, this 20% or so of Ukrainian land that Russia holds.

And the Russians actually want a little bit more, and there's talk about maybe they'll move.

someplace else.

But we're not talking about any Russian land that would go to Ukraine.

We're just talking about Ukrainian land and how much Russia has and how much they want.

There is a concern that if a country can invade another country and come out of it with more land, that that is a threat to the rules-based world order that could set a precedent for some other big powerful country to go in and take land.

I think that was what was so

almost strange listening to the European, like a larger meeting of European leaders and Zelensky and Trump, is is how complimentary everyone was being of the president's work to stop this war and his personal involvement in it, while not wanting to touch that specific subject, because it really, to Greg's point,

is a massive, you know, disadvantage for Ukraine.

But Greg, I want to bring you in again because you are in Kyiv right now.

And from your perspective, I mean, Europe has stepped up and been providing Ukraine with a lot more support for their ability to fight this war, while the U.S.

appetite for support has kind of waxed waxed and waned over time, right?

And Ukrainians have said that they will take all the help they can get, but I'm curious from you, I mean, how much more are they looking for from European partners and from the U.S.?

Well, they are going to need a lot more from the Europeans, it looks like.

Certainly they want help from wherever they can get it.

But Trump announced when he came into office that he was cutting off military aid, and we're seeing no signs that he's going to change that position.

But they have worked out this arrangement where NATO countries in Europe can buy U.S.

weapons and then give them to Ukraine.

Now that's started to happen, but it would have to happen on a much larger scale to even come close to replacing all the things that the U.S.

was providing.

Now to step back just a bit, if you combine all the military, financial, and humanitarian aid that the Europeans have been providing, that's actually larger than what the U.S.

has been providing for the last three plus years.

But the U.S.

was was the leading weapons supplier, and it has some things that no one else has: the Patriot missile batteries and the missiles that go with them, intelligence capabilities that no one else has.

So, Europe can replace some of this by buying U.S.

weapons, but probably not all of it.

And I mean, just to circle back to the meetings that happened yesterday, Tam, was there anything concrete that actually came out of it?

I would say that we got sort of a broad outline of what President Trump sees as potentially

a path to peace, which would include some sort of land swaps, and we've already talked about the difficulties with that, and then some sort of an agreement from Russia to accept security guarantees for Ukraine, security guarantees provided by Europe and the United States.

Now, what does that actually mean?

President Trump has been pretty unclear on that.

He was asked in an interview on Fox and Friends this morning about what the U.S.

support would look like, and he seemed to imply that it might be more logistical.

At one point, he talked about air support, but again, it's not clear what that means.

He was very clear about one thing, though, which is no U.S.

boots on the ground, which has been, you know, that was also a line that President Biden drew, that this is Ukraine's fight defending itself against Russia, but in a way, defending the whole Western world.

And, you know, I think a really good litmus test with diplomacy is what does it feel like the day after?

This was a very feel-good meeting.

You had a broad range of actors there, all seeming to be more or less on the same page while the meeting is taking place.

So how do we feel about it today?

Well, you see, the hard problems are still there.

They haven't figured out when they're going to have another meeting, when the two sides could actually sit down and start hashing out some of these very difficult questions.

So for as good as it might have felt to see everybody in the same room talking about the same issue with some sort of rough consensus at least, we haven't yet reached the point where we're dealing with hard questions or finding solutions to them.

Yeah.

All right.

We're going to take a quick break and we'll be back in a moment.

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And we're back.

Greg, yesterday's talks came after Trump met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday.

Those talks also ended without any necessarily concrete solutions here.

And there's been continued Russian bombardment of Ukraine over the weekend.

So even with all of these meetings and summits and diplomatic efforts happening in Washington, there hasn't really been a real change in what's happening on the ground.

And I'm curious from Kiev, you know, what do you make of that?

Yeah, I think Ukrainians are watching all these diplomatic developments that you mentioned with high interest and low expectations.

They think Putin wants to keep fighting and is actually just dragging out the war.

And we've seen that in recent days.

In fact, overnight, the Russians fired 270 drones and 10 missiles.

Many were shot down, but a few struck in the east and in the center of the country.

The mayor of one town said literally while these talks were going on in Washington, Putin's military was carrying out another major attack.

And so that's exactly how many Ukrainians are looking at this.

And to be fair, the attacks are going both ways.

Ukraine carried out drone strikes as well.

They say they hit a Russian oil pipeline that sends oil to Hungary.

So it's still going both ways.

There's been no let up.

If you were just watching the fighting, you would not be aware that any diplomatic activity is taking place.

And I'm curious, I mean, one thing that was discussed yesterday was this potential upcoming trilateral meeting, right, between Trump, Zelensky, and Putin.

Trump sort of said that if this meeting can get on the books, then they have a good chance at maybe ending this war.

Is that

likely to happen?

What are you watching for?

That is what Trump said earlier.

Then later, after a call with Russia's President Putin, Trump said actually it should be a bilateral meeting first between Putin and Zelensky.

Trump this morning on Fox and Friends suggested that they're getting along better than he thought they would.

And really, these two parties have to get together and talk.

So now Trump is saying, if they can work something out in a bilateral, then I'll come in for another meeting where it would be a trilateral meeting where we can, you know, get the job done, sign the things.

It really seems implausible at the moment that Putin and Zelensky would meet for a couple reasons.

I think mainly because Putin has always described Zelensky as an illegitimate leader.

He doesn't want to bring Zelensky up to his level by holding a meeting in his own mind.

And it just doesn't seem likely that these two leaders would get together unless we're very far along a peace process and there's either something to sign or they're close to getting something signed and need to work out a few final details, but it's just sort of a sit down and get the negotiations started.

You know, Trump is willing to do that kind of thing and just meet with somebody even when there's not a hard fixed agenda or a necessary deliverable that's going to come out of the meeting.

But it really doesn't seem like a strong possibility right now until there's more progress.

All right, we're going to leave it there for today.

I'm Deepa Shivaram.

I cover the White House.

I'm Greg Myri.

I cover national security.

And I'm Tamar Keith.

I also cover the White House.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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