White House presses idea of potential Putin-Zelenskyy meeting

Ruins left after a Russian strike in the town of Druzhkivka, roughly 12 miles from the frontline town of Kostyantynivka, in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, on June 19, 2025. President Donald Trump is expected to press Ukraine to make concessions to end the war. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will likely ask what, if anything, Russia is offering in return. (David Guttenfelder/The New York Times)

By Maggie Haberman, David E. Sanger, Neil MacFarquhar, Francesca Regalado and Jeanna Smialek

The contours of security guarantees that would shape a postwar Ukraine dominated talks among world leaders Tuesday, the day after meetings in Washington demonstrated solidarity with Kyiv but yielded few details on how to stop the conflict or prevent future attacks.

Among the possibilities discussed was deploying European troops in Ukraine as peacekeepers, which the United States could potentially back with air support but not, President Donald Trump insisted, American ground troops. Russia has flatly rejected the idea of an international force on its borders on multiple occasions.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Tuesday that President Vladimir Putin of Russia had agreed to a sought-after meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy — but Moscow has not confirmed, and the Kremlin downplayed the prospect of face-to-face peace talks.

Trump had highlighted the potential bilateral meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy as an achievement of Monday’s day of diplomacy and a critical step in ending the war, writing that he had already begun making arrangements for their summit as well as a subsequent trilateral meeting involving Putin, Zelenskyy and himself.

But Russian state news media barely mentioned the possible meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy in coverage of Monday’s talks. And Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, scoffed at the prospect Tuesday, saying in a television interview that while Russia was not against such a meeting in principle, “any contacts involving top officials should be prepared very carefully.”

On several crucial issues, a wide gulf remains between Zelenskyy and Putin after 3 1/2 years of war.

Trump and his envoy, Steve Witkoff, have suggested that Putin would agree to European troop deployments in Ukraine as part of a postwar security arrangement to dissuade future Russian attacks, so long as Ukraine does not join NATO and the ground forces aren’t organized by the Western military alliance. Through its foreign ministry, Russia on Monday again denounced the idea of international troops patrolling Ukraine.

Russia has insisted on territorial concessions that Ukraine has refused. Ukraine has insisted on a ceasefire that Russia has refused, as recently as Friday when Putin met with Trump in Alaska.

And while Zelenskyy said Ukraine would purchase $90 billion in American weapons through Europe as part of the security guarantees, he left the White House without a formal agreement toward peace.

Here’s what else to know:

— Attacks: Overnight, Russia launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Ukraine, causing injuries and damage to infrastructure and energy facilities, Ukrainian officials said, a day after at least 14 people were killed in Russian strikes.

— Ceasefire push: At the meeting Monday, some European officials pressed Trump on the need to secure an urgent ceasefire, which they argued would help stop the growing civilian death toll in Ukraine and create stability for genuine peace negotiations. But aware that Trump dislikes the term “ceasefire,” they are calling it a “truce” instead.

— U.S. military aid: The $90 billion in American weapons that Zelenskyy said would be part of the security agreements could include sophisticated weapons that are in short supply in Ukraine: air-defense systems and war planes. How Ukraine would pay for them remained unclear.