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Donald Trump has said a postwar security guarantee for Ukraine could involve US air support, as he warned Vladimir Putin that he will face a “rough situation” if he does not co-operate on a peace deal.
Speaking the morning after White House meetings with the Ukrainian president and European leaders, the US president told Fox News that American forces could assist Ukraine’s allies in deterring future Russian attacks.
“When it comes to security, [theEuropeans are] willing to put people on the ground,” Trump said.
“We’re willing to help them with things, especially, probably talk about by air, because there’s nobody [has the] kind of stuff we have,” he added. “But I don’t think it’s going to be a problem.”
The question of security guarantees for Ukraine is one of several that remain unresolved after the high-profileWhite House summit and a meeting between Trump and Putin in Alaska last week.
Russia has consistently said it will not accept any western troop presence in Ukraine, and repeated that stance on Monday.
Trump also said the US is setting up a bilateral meeting between Putin and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to discuss ending the conflict, though the Kremlin has yet to agree publicly to any such summit.
“[Ukraine] is not going to be a part of Nato, but we’ve got the European nations, and they’ll frontload it,” Trump said, mentioning France, Germany and the UK.
“I think Putin is tired of it. I think they’re all tired of it,” he added. “But you never know. We’re going to find out about President Putin in the next couple of weeks. It’s possible he does not want to make a deal.”
Trump added that after an initial Putin-Zelenskyy meeting, he was prepared to attend a trilateral meeting with both leaders to conclude an agreement.
“I hope that president Putin will be good, and if he is not, it is going to be a rough situation and I hope President Zelenskyy is going to show flexibility as well,” he said.
Russia has offered no confirmation that a meeting with Zelenskyy will happen. On Tuesday, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov avoided a question on whether Putin had agreed to meet Zelenskyy, saying that any top-level meeting with Ukraine had to be “prepared extremely carefully”.
Lavrov told state television that Russia “is not rejecting any forms of work, neither bilateral nor trilateral” but insisted that summits required “step-by-step gradual preparation, starting with the expert level and thereafter going through all the required steps”.
European leaders, who have been coaching the Ukrainian president on handling Trump since a disastrousmeeting in the Oval Office in February, are keen that if the meeting does not happen, the blame — in Trump’s eyes — falls solely on Putin.
The European Commission said it welcomed “that President Putin has changed his mind on bilateral talks with President Zelenskyy” and that governments on the continent would help to prepare the summit.
UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said on X that there would “now be a bilateral meeting between President Putin and President Zelenskyy” followed by a trilateral meeting including Trump.
But some officials have doubts Putin will follow through on meeting Zelenskyy soon.
Zelenskyysaid on Monday after leaving the Oval Office that he was open to “any format” of meeting with Putin, a statement that puts the onus on the Russian president.
He posted on Tuesday that governments were “already working on the concrete content of the security guarantees” and that national security advisers were in “constant contact”.
A further meeting of the group of leaders including those from Germany, France, Italy and Finland who were present at the White House will take place once the details of the security guarantees had been fleshed out, officials said.
Despite the European leaders’ push for the guarantees, Trump said there would be no American “boots on the ground”.
Another sticking point in the peace negotiations is Russia’s demand that Ukraine cede territory in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in exchange for freezing the frontline in southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. However, Kyiv has insisted it will not surrender any territory.
According to two people familiar with the matter, at the White House on Monday, Zelenskyy and the Europeans likened giving away the remainder of the Donetsk region to Trump giving away eastern Florida. They added that the US president was struck by the analogy.
Additional reporting by Christopher Miller
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