Trump to meet with Zelenskyy Monday after 'shifting towards Putin'

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will meet Monday in Washington with President Donald Trump, whose stance on ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shifted to align with Russian President Vladimir Putin following their meeting Friday. 

Trump, who also held calls with European leaders Saturday, confirmed the White House meeting with Zelenskyy and said that "if all works out, we will then schedule a meeting with President Putin."

What did Trump say after the meeting? 

What they're saying:

Trump is now saying that an overall peace agreement – not a ceasefire -- is the next step in ending the 3 1/2-year-old war. Putin has long said that Moscow is not interested in a temporary truce, and instead is seeking a long-term settlement that takes the Kremlin’s interests into account.

Trump’s abrupt reversal was shared in a social media post on Saturday, hours after the summit in Alaska ended with no deal to stop the fighting. 

After calls with Zelenskyy and European leaders, Trump posted that "it was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up."

Trump and Ukraine’s European allies had been calling for a ceasefire ahead of any negotiations. Trump had warned ahead of the summit of "very severe consequences" for Russia if Putin doesn’t agree to end the war.

‘Shifting towards Putin’

Dig deeper:

Trump’s statement that a peace agreement should be reached before a ceasefire appears to indicate Trump’s thinking is "shifting towards Putin," an approach that would allow Moscow to keep fighting while negotiating, said Nigel Gould-Davies, a senior fellow at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London.

Trump rolled out the red carpet on Friday for Putin, who was in the U.S. for the first time in a decade and since the start of his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But he gave little concrete detail afterward of what was discussed. On Saturday, he posted on social media that it "went very well."

Putin has "broken out of international isolation" and back on the world stage as one of two global leaders, and "wasn’t in the least challenged" by Trump, who also ignored an arrest warrant issued for Putin by the International Criminal Court, said Laurie Bristow, who was British ambassador to Russia from 2016 to 2020.

"Unless Mr. Putin is absolutely convinced that he cannot win militarily, the fighting is not going to stop," Bristow told The Associated Press. "That’s the big takeaway from the Anchorage summit."

What did Zelenskyy say? 

The other side:

Zelenskyy, who was not invited to Alaska for the summit, said he had a "long and substantive" conversation with Trump early Saturday. He said they would "discuss all of the details regarding ending the killing and the war" on Monday.

It will be Zelenskyy’s first visit to the U.S. since Trump berated him publicly for being "disrespectful" during an extraordinary Oval Office meeting on Feb. 28.

Zelenskyy reiterated the importance of involving European leaders, who also were not at the summit.

"It is important that Europeans are involved at every stage to ensure reliable security guarantees together with America," he said. "We also discussed positive signals from the American side regarding participation in guaranteeing Ukraine’s security."

He didn’t elaborate, but Zelenskyy previously has said that European partners put on hold a proposal to establish a foreign troop presence in Ukraine to deter Russian aggression because it lacked an American backstop.