Trump meets with top Putin envoy at the White House
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump met at the White House on Thursday with a Russian envoy who was on the premises for an event with first lady Melania Trump and suggested that some kind of grand deal about European security was in the works, but said he did not meet with visiting Ukrainian officials who also were on hand.
Trump, who has long boasted he could quickly broker an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, has lately blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for refusing to make concessions to end the conflict. During the closing weeks of the midterm election campaign, Trump struck a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to remove sanctions from Russian diesel exports.
Trump told reporters he met with Putin envoy Kirill Dmitriev but declined to give details. The meeting took place as Trump’s own envoys held talks with other Ukrainian and European officials at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
“There’s going to be an agreement, it’s going to be a big agreement and it’s going to involve more than Ukraine,” Trump said, adding that it might include all of Europe.
One of the U.S. envoys in Brussels, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, said on social media that Thursday’s talks with Ukraine, NATO and European allies were productive and focused on security guarantees for Ukraine and a broader security structure for Europe. The United States is holding three-way talks next week in Abu Dhabi with Ukraine and Russia, the first trilateral peace discussions since February.
“We are working intensively with all parties to find practical solutions that can bring this war to an end and establish the foundations for lasting peace,” Kushner wrote.
Dmitriev was at the White House for an event recognizing the recent six-day truce between Russia and Ukraine in the besieged Ukrainian city of Oleshky. The local ceasefire in the war-divided region of Kherson in southern Ukraine was in effect from Oct. 27 to Nov. 1 and amounted to the most significant truce since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Dmitriev thanked the first lady for her “distinguished humanitarian role” in securing the temporary ceasefire. Dmitriev said Putin personally gave instructions as part of the operation and sent his thanks to Melania Trump for her work.
The head of the parliamentary faction of Zelenskyy’s party, Davyd Arakhamia, and Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, also spoke at the event.
Trump did not say why he didn’t meet with the Ukrainian officials, and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Arakhamia told the first lady she did an “amazing job” and encouraged her to keep helping the Ukrainian people, who have endured more than four years of war after Putin sent his troops across the border and invaded the country in February 2022.
“Definitely we would like to ask you to keep going and to find new missions and to de-escalate more as much as possible,” Arakhamia said.
The first lady has worked with both countries since last year to reunite families separated by the war. So far, she has helped nearly three dozen children return to their relatives.
She said Thursday that she hoped the Oleshky ceasefire could become more enduring and more widespread.
“Let Oleshky be the modest spark that grows into a lasting flame of peace,” she said.
Zelenskyy, in a speech in Spain last week, said the operation in Oleshky proved “something very simple. When Putin wants the fighting to stop, it stops. And there was real silence, no attacks some days, and we saved hundreds of lives.”