President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance will first hold a meeting alone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday afternoon in the White House and then only later be joined by European officials traveling to Washington for talks on the future of the Russia-Ukraine war, two sources told sources told NewsNation on Sunday.
Pundits had speculated that the European leaders heading to Washington with Zelenskyy — including French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte — are seeking to prevent another situation that occurred in February when the American leaders publicly berated Zelenskyy and accused him of not appreciating their support when they met with him alone at the White House.
These pundits are fearing another such scenario, according to NewsNation, after concerns were revisited in Europe that the U.S. under Trump was sliding away from Kyiv and toward Moscow over the conflict when the U.S. president during his summit on Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin backed away from the idea of an urgent ceasefire before an overall peace agreement is hammered out.
However, Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismissed suggestions that Zelenskyy would be pressured into an unacceptable deal by the Trump administration, telling CBS News’ “Face the Nation” that European leaders are “not coming here tomorrow to keep Zelenskyy from being bullied. They’re coming here tomorrow, because we’ve been working with the Europeans. We talked to them last week. There were meetings in the U.K. over the following, the previous weekend.”
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