Trump begins planning for Putin-Zelenskyy meeting while affirming US help with security guarantees

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Monday he's begun arrangements for a face-to-face meeting between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy to discuss a pathway to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while affirming that the U.S. would back European security guarantees aimed at preventing Moscow from reinvading its neighbor once the current conflict ends.

Details of the security guarantees and Trump’s efforts to arrange peace talks were still evolving as an extended meeting among Trump, Zelenskyy and other European leaders wrapped up at the White House.

But as they emerged from their talks, the leaders expressed guarded optimism that Trump could be finding momentum in his quest to fulfill his campaign promise of ending the grinding war.

The “most important” outcome of the meeting was the “U.S. commitment to work with us on providing security guarantees,” French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters.

Trump said he would forge ahead with arrangements for a meeting between Zelenskyy and Putin. He spoke by phone with Putin during Monday's talks with Zelenskyy and the leaders of Britain, Finland, France, Germany and Italy as well as the president of the European Commission and head of NATO.

The developments come amid a significant measure of trepidation on the continent that Trump is pressing Ukraine to make concessions that will only further embolden Putin after the U.S. leader hosted the Russian president for an Alaska summit last week.

“I called President Putin, and began the arrangements for a meeting, at a location to be determined, between President Putin and President Zelenskyy,” Trump said in a social media post. “After that meeting takes place, we will have a Trilat, which would be the two Presidents, plus myself. Again, this was a very good, early step for a War that has been going on for almost four years.”

It was not clear if Putin has fully signed on to such talks.

Russia state news agency Tass cited Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov saying Putin and Trump “spoke in favor” of continuing direct talks between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations. Ushakov said they also discussed “the idea of raising the level of the direct Russian-Ukrainian negotiations.”

Zelenskyy told reporters following the White House meeting that if Russia does “not demonstrate a will to meet, then we will ask the United States to act accordingly.”

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said in an appearance on Fox News that “if Russia is not playing ball” on direct talks with Ukraine, “the United States plus Europe will do more when it comes to tariffs and sanctions” on Moscow.

Zelenskyy previously had said he wanted Russia to agree to a ceasefire before any meeting between himself and Putin, but he said Monday that if the Ukrainians started setting conditions, the Russians would do the same.

“That’s why I believe that we must meet without any conditions, and think about what development there can be of this path to the end of war,” Zelenskyy said.

Earlier, Trump said during talks with Zelenskyy and the European leaders that a potential ceasefire and who gets Ukrainian territory seized by Russia should be hashed out during a face-to-face meeting between the warring countries' two leaders.

“We’re going to let the president go over and talk to the president and we’ll see how that works out,” Trump said.

That was a shift from comments Trump made soon after meeting Putin last week in which he appeared to tilt toward Putin’s demands that Ukraine make concessions over land seized by Russia, which now controls roughly one-fifth of Ukrainian territory.

Trump stopped short of committing U.S. troops to a collective effort to bolster Ukraine's security. He said instead that there would be a “NATO-like” security presence and that all those details would be hashed out with EU leaders.

Zelenskyy said deep U.S. involvement in the emerging security guarantees is crucial.

“It is important that the United States make a clear signal, namely that they will be among the countries that will help to coordinate and also will participate in security guarantees for Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said.

Speaking Monday before the White House meetings took place, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova rejected the idea of a possible NATO peacekeeping force in Ukraine. She said such a scenario could lead to further escalation and “unpredictable consequences."

Trump's engagement with Zelenskyy had a strikingly different feel to their last Oval Office meeting in February. It was a disastrous moment that led to Trump abruptly ending talks with the Ukrainian delegation, and temporarily pausing some aid for Kyiv, after he and Vice President JD Vance complained that Zelenskyy had shown insufficient gratitude for U.S. military assistance.

At the start of Monday's meeting, Zelenskyy presented a letter from his wife, Olena Zelenska, for Trump's wife, Melania.

Zelenskyy faced criticism during his February meeting from a conservative journalist for appearing in the Oval Office in a long-sleeve T-shirt. This time he appeared in a dark jacket and buttoned shirt. Zelenskyy has said his typically less formal attire since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022 is to show solidarity with Ukrainian soldiers.

European leaders arrived in Washington looking to safeguard Ukraine and the continent from any widening aggression from Moscow.

Ahead of Monday's meeting, Trump suggested that Ukraine could not regain Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, setting off an armed conflict that led to its broader 2022 invasion.

Zelenskyy in his own post late Sunday, responded, “We all share a strong desire to end this war quickly and reliably.” He said “peace must be lasting,” not as it was after Russia seized Crimea and part of the Donbas in eastern Ukraine eight years ago and “Putin simply used it as a springboard for a new attack.”

European leaders suggested forging a temporary ceasefire is not off the table. Following his meeting with Putin on Friday, Trump dropped his demand for an immediate ceasefire and said he would look to secure a final peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine — a sudden shift to a position favored by Putin.

German and French leaders on Monday praised Trump for opening a path to peace, but they urged the U.S. president to push Russia for an immediate ceasefire.

“I would like to see a ceasefire from the next meeting, which should be a trilateral meeting," said German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

Trump, for his part, reiterated that a broader, war-ending peace agreement between the two countries is “very attainable," but “all of us would obviously prefer the immediate ceasefire while we work on a lasting peace.”

Kullab reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. Associated Press writers Chris Megerian and Darlene Superville in Washington, Farnoush Amiri in New York, Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England, John Leicester in Le Pecq, France, Illia Novikov in Kyiv, Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, and Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks in Lafayette Park, across from the White House, after meeting with President Donald Trump and European leaders Monday, Aug. 18, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

President Donald Trump listens to a question from a reporter as he meets with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office at the White House, Monday, Aug. 18, 2025, in Washington, from right Steve Witkoff, special envoy to the Middle East,, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance listen. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, from left, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Finland's President Alexander Stubb, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President Donald Trump, France's President Emmanuel Macron, Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte stand before a group photo in the Grand Foyer of the White House, Monday, Aug. 18, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

President Donald Trump meets with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office at the White House, Monday, Aug. 18, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

President Donald Trump meet with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office at the White House, Monday, Aug. 18, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

President Donald Trump, left, greets Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as he arrives at the White House, Monday, Aug. 18, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

President Donald Trump, left, greets Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as he arrives at the White House, Monday, Aug. 18, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Monica Crowley, White House chief of protocol, from left, greets NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte upon arriving to meet with President Donald Trump and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Monday, Aug. 18, 2025, at the South Portico of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

People hold works of David Chichkan, a Ukrainian serviceman and artist during his farewell ceremony at Independence square in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Monday, Aug. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

A man holds color smoke during the farewell ceremony of David Chichkan, a Ukrainian serviceman and artist at Independence square in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Monday, Aug. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

A woman mourns during the farewell ceremony of David Chichkan, a Ukrainian serviceman and artist at Independence square in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Monday, Aug. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, right, and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy participate in a media conference at EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025. (AP Photo)

FILE - President Donald Trump welcomes Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House in Washington, Friday, Feb. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)

French President Emmanuel Macron arrives to speak after attending a video conference with members of the so-called "coalition of the willing", Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025 at the Fort de Bregancon in Bormes-les-Mimosas, southern France. (AP Photo/Philippe Magoni, Pool)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, is welcomed by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz upon arrival in the garden of the chancellery in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025 to join a video conference of European leaders with the US President on the Ukraine war. (John MacDougall/Pool Photo via AP)

Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer, left, welcomes Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Downing Street in London, Thursday, Aug. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks during a media conference at EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025. (AP Photo)

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Myanmar insisted Friday that its deadly military campaign against the Rohingya ethnic minority was a legitimate counter-terrorism operation and did not amount to genocide, as it defended itself at the top United Nations court against an allegation of breaching the genocide convention.

Myanmar launched the campaign in Rakhine state in 2017 after an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group. Security forces were accused of mass rapes, killings and torching thousands of homes as more than 700,000 Rohingya fled into neighboring Bangladesh.

“Myanmar was not obliged to remain idle and allow terrorists to have free reign of northern Rakhine state,” the country’s representative Ko Ko Hlaing told black-robed judges at the International Court of Justice.

African nation Gambia brought a case at the court in 2019 alleging that Myanmar's military actions amount to a breach of the Genocide Convention that was drawn up in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust.

Some 1.2 million members of the Rohingya minority are still languishing in chaotic, overcrowded camps in Bangladesh, where armed groups recruit children and girls as young as 12 are forced into prostitution. The sudden and severe foreign aid cuts imposed last year by U.S. President Donald Trump shuttered thousands of the camps’ schools and have caused children to starve to death.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar has long considered the Rohingya Muslim minority to be “Bengalis” from Bangladesh even though their families have lived in the country for generations. Nearly all have been denied citizenship since 1982.

As hearings opened Monday, Gambian Justice Minister Dawda Jallow said his nation filed the case after the Rohingya “endured decades of appalling persecution, and years of dehumanizing propaganda. This culminated in the savage, genocidal ‘clearance operations’ of 2016 and 2017, which were followed by continued genocidal policies meant to erase their existence in Myanmar.”

Hlaing disputed the evidence Gambia cited in its case, including the findings of an international fact-finding mission set up by the U.N.'s Human Rights Council.

“Myanmar’s position is that the Gambia has failed to meet its burden of proof," he said. "This case will be decided on the basis of proven facts, not unsubstantiated allegations. Emotional anguish and blurry factual pictures are not a substitute for rigorous presentation of facts.”

Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi represented her country at jurisdiction hearings in the case in 2019, denying that Myanmar armed forces committed genocide and instead casting the mass exodus of Rohingya people from the country she led as an unfortunate result of a battle with insurgents.

The pro-democracy icon is now in prison after being convicted of what her supporters call trumped-up charges after a military takeover of power.

Myanmar contested the court’s jurisdiction, saying Gambia was not directly involved in the conflict and therefore could not initiate a case. Both countries are signatories to the genocide convention, and in 2022, judges rejected the argument, allowing the case to move forward.

Gambia rejects Myanmar's claims that it was combating terrorism, with Jallow telling judges on Monday that “genocidal intent is the only reasonable inference that can be drawn from Myanmar’s pattern of conduct.”

In late 2024, prosecutors at another Hague-based tribunal, the International Criminal Court, requested an arrest warrant for the head of Myanmar’s military regime for crimes committed against the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority. Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, who seized power from Suu Kyi in 2021, is accused of crimes against humanity for the persecution of the Rohingya. The request is still pending.

FILE - In this Sept. 7, 2017, file photo, smoke rises from a burned house in Gawdu Zara village, northern Rakhine state, where the vast majority of the country's 1.1 million Rohingya lived, Myanmar. (AP Photo, File)