By Tom Balmforth, Yuliia Dysa and Pavel Polityuk
LONDON/KYIV (Reuters) -Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy flies to Washington on Monday under heavy U.S. pressure to agree a swift end to Russia’s war in Ukraine but determined to defend Kyiv’s interests – without sparking a second Oval Office bust up with Donald Trump.
The U.S. president invited Zelenskiy to Washington after rolling out the red carpet for Vladimir Putin, Kyiv’s arch foe, at a summit in Alaska that shocked many in Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands have died since Russia’s 2022 invasion.
The Alaska talks failed to produce the ceasefire that Trump sought, and the U.S. leader said on Saturday that he now wanted a full-fledged peace deal and that Kyiv should accept because “Russia is a very big power, and they’re not”.
The blunt rhetoric throws the weight of expectation squarely back onto Zelenskiy, putting him in a potentially perilous position as he returns to Washington for the first time since his talks with Trump in the Oval Office spiralled into acrimony in February.
The U.S. president upbraided Zelenskiy in front of world media at the time, saying Ukraine’s leader did not “hold the cards” in negotiations and that what he described as Kyiv’s intransigence risked triggering World War Three.
Trump’s pursuit of a quick deal now comes despite intense diplomacy by the European allies and Ukraine to convince the U.S. president that a ceasefire should come first and not – as sought by the Kremlin – once a settlement is agreed.
The New York Times, citing two senior European officials, reported on Saturday that European leaders were also invited to attend Monday’s meeting between Trump and Zelenskiy. Reuters could not immediately confirm the report.
Trump briefed Zelenskiy on his talks with Putin during a call on Saturday that lasted more than an hour and a half, the Ukrainian leader said. They were joined after an hour by European and NATO officials, he added.
“The impression is he wants a fast deal at any price,” a source familiar with the conversation told Reuters.
The source said Trump sought to convince Zelenskiy to agree to the idea of a deal in which he would withdraw troops from the partially-occupied eastern Donetsk region that Russian troops have been trying to capture for years.
Zelenskiy replied that was not possible, the source added.
Kyiv has publicly dismissed the idea of withdrawing from internationally recognised Ukrainian land they control as part of any deal. Donetsk region, Ukrainian officials say, serves as a fortress holding back Russian advances deeper into Ukraine.
Oleksandr Merezhko, head of the Ukrainian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, told Reuters by phone that Trump’s emphasis on a deal rather than a ceasefire carried great risks for Ukraine.
“In Putin’s view, a peace agreement means several dangerous things – Ukraine not joining NATO, his absurd demands for denazification and demilitarisation, the Russian language and the Russian church,” he said.
Any such deal could be politically explosive inside Ukraine, Merezhko said, adding he was worried that Putin’s international isolation had ended.
SECURITY GUARANTEES
Avoiding a repeat of the Oval Office acrimony is critical for Zelenskiy to preserve the relationship with the U.S., which still provides military assistance and shares intelligence.
For Ukraine, robust security guarantees to prevent any future Russian invasion lie at the foundations of any serious peace settlement.
Two sources familiar with the matter said that Trump and the European leaders discussed potential security guarantees for Ukraine that would be outside NATO but similar to the alliance’s Article 5 during their call on Saturday.
NATO, which Kyiv seeks to join, though Trump has made clear that will not happen soon, regards any attack launched on one of its 32 members as an attack on all under its Article 5 clause.
One of the two sources, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said European leaders were seeking clarity on what kind of U.S. role this guarantee would involve, but that there were no details yet.
Zelenskiy has repeatedly said a trilateral meeting with the Russian and U.S. leaders is crucial to finding a way to end the full-scale war launched by Russia in February 2022.
Trump this week voiced the idea of such a meeting, saying it could happen if his bilateral talks in Alaska with Putin were successful.
“Ukraine emphasizes that key issues can be discussed at the level of leaders, and a trilateral format is suitable for this,” Zelenskiy wrote on social media on Saturday.
(Reporting by Yuliia Dysa and Pavel Polityuk; writing by Tom Balmforth, Raju Gopalakrishnan, Kevin Liffey and Gareth Jones)
