US President Donald Trump's bilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will take place at 1:15 p.m. on Monday at the White House, the White House said in a press guidance statement on Sunday.
The leaders of Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Finland, the European Union, and NATO hope to shore up Zelensky at a crucial diplomatic moment in the war and prevent any repetition of the bad-tempered Oval Office encounter between Trump and Ukraine's leader in February.
Trump and US Vice President JD Vance will participate in a multilateral meeting with European leaders visiting Washington at 3 p.m.
After rolling out the red carpet for Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, Trump said an agreement should be struck to end the 42-month-long war which has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions.
"President Zelenskyy of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight," Trump said on his Truth Social platform, using an alternate transliteration of the Ukrainian leader's name.
However, Zelensky has already all but rejected the outline of Putin's proposals at that meeting, including for Ukraine to give up the rest of its eastern Donetsk region, of which it currently controls a quarter.
"We need real negotiations, which means we can start where the front line is now," the Ukrainian leader said in Brussels on Sunday, adding that his country's constitution made it impossible for him to give away territory.
Trump flips the script on Ukraine
More concerning for him is the fact that Trump, who previously favored Kyiv's proposal for an immediate ceasefire to conduct deeper peace talks, reversed course after the summit and indicated support for Russia's favored approach of negotiating a comprehensive deal while fighting rumbles on.
"I am grateful to the President of the United States for the invitation. We all equally want to end this war swiftly and reliably," Zelensky said on the Telegram messaging app after arriving in Washington late on Sunday. "Russia must end this war — the war it started. And I hope that our shared strength with America and with our European friends will compel Russia to real peace."
However, Russian strikes in Ukraine's northern city of Kharkiv killed at least seven people, including a 1-year-old girl. Strikes also hit the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, killing three people, Ukrainian regional officials said.
Zelensky then accused Russia of unleashing "cynical" attacks on Ukrainian civilians that he said were designed to undermine his talks with Trump.
This was a demonstrative and cynical Russian strike," Zelensky wrote on X.
"The Russian war machine continues to destroy lives despite everything," he added. "Putin will commit demonstrative killings to maintain pressure on Ukraine and Europe, as well as to humiliate diplomatic efforts."
Trump said in a Monday Truth Social post that he "only here to stop it [the war in Ukraine], not to prosecute it any further."
"I know exactly what I’m doing, and I don’t need the advice of people who have been working on all of these conflicts for years, and were never able to do a thing to stop them. They are “STUPID” people, with no common sense, intelligence, or understanding, and they only make the current R/U disaster more difficult to FIX."
Putin's proposal for a ceasefire
The outline of Putin's proposals, reported by Reuters earlier, appears impossible for Zelensky to accept. Ukrainian forces are deeply dug into the Donetsk region, whose towns and hills serve as a crucial defensive zone to stymie Russian attacks.
As part of any peace deal, Kyiv wants security guarantees sufficient to deter Russia, which took Ukraine's Crimean peninsula in 2014 and launched a full invasion in 2022, from attacking again.
Fearing that they would be shut out of the conversation after a summit to which they were not invited, European leaders held a call with Zelensky on Sunday to align on a common strategy for the meeting with Trump on Monday.
The presence of key European allies to back Zelensky may alleviate painful memories of his last Oval Office visit. Zelensky is set to meet with the European leaders before his meeting with Trump.
"It's important for the Europeans to be there: (Trump) respects them, he behaves differently in their presence," Oleksandr Merezhko, a Ukrainian lawmaker from Zelensky's ruling party, told Reuters.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking to CBS, dismissed the idea that the European leaders were coming to Washington to protect Zelensky.
"They're not coming here tomorrow to keep Zelensky from being bullied. They're coming here tomorrow because we've been working with the Europeans," he said. "We invited them to come."
Relations between Kyiv and Washington, once extremely close, have been rocky since Trump took office in January.
However, Ukraine's pressing need for US weapons and intelligence sharing, some of which have no viable alternative, has forced Zelensky and his allies on the continent to appease Trump, even when his statements appear contradictory to their objectives.
On the battlefield, Russia has been slowly grinding forward, pressing home its advantages in men and firepower. Putin says he is ready to continue fighting until his military objectives are achieved.
Ukraine hopes that the changing technological nature of the war and its ability to inflict massive casualties on Moscow will allow it to hold out, supported by European financial and military aid, even if relations with Washington collapse.