After roughly an hour, Trump’s talks with Zelensky concluded with the pair joining European leaders for a ‘family photo’ in the White House.
Zelensky said that his discussions with Trump have been ‘very good’.
The Ukrainian leader said: ‘We are very happy with the president that all the leaders are here and security in Ukraine depends on the United States and on you and on those leaders who are with us in our hearts.’
He also urged the need for ‘all the prisoners’ to be exchanged.
Zelensky said Trump will ‘try’ to organise a trilateral meeting and that Ukraine would be happy if he attended.He added that he showed Trump ‘a lot of details’ on a map of a battlefield.
Attention then shifted to a multilateral session in the East Room, where the US leader opened discussions with the Prime Minister and other assembled leaders.
‘We’ve had a very successful day thus far, and important discussions as we work to end the killing and stop the war in Ukraine, we’re all working toward the same goal, very simple goal, we want to stop the killing, get this settled,’ the president said.
In their private meeting, Trump told the leaders that he and Zelenskyy had ‘covered a lot of territory’.
‘We’re going to try and work out a trilateral after that and see if we can get it finished, put this to sleep, because this is, not since the Second World War has there been anything like this,’ he said.
Expressing confidence in the outcome, Trump said he was ‘optimistic’ the leaders could reach an agreement that would ‘deter any future aggression against Ukraine.’
