LONDON — Ukraine and its allies were scrambling Sunday to respond to President Donald Trump’s apparent shift toward Vladimir Putin’s hardline position after their summit in Alaska.
Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, set to visit Washington on Monday, warned that the Russian leader was complicating efforts to end the war by refusing to halt the brutal fighting before holding further talks.
“Russia rebuffs numerous calls for a ceasefire and has not yet determined when it will stop the killing. This complicates the situation,” Zelenskyy said in a post on X late Saturday. He added that he would have calls with allies in the day ahead as he prepares for his meeting with Trump.
His remarks came as Trump signaled he was reversing his insistence on a ceasefire and instead pursuing a permanent peace deal — aligning the United States with the Kremlin rather than Kyiv and its European backers.
Zelenskyy’s message was accompanied by a joint statement from the leaders of eight Nordic and Baltic countries, stressing that a lasting peace “requires a ceasefire,” while calling for “credible security guarantees for Ukraine.”
That is one area where Trump appears to have taken a step toward a position more aligned with the wishes of Ukraine and Europe.
Trump directly engaged with Zelenskyy and European leaders by phone early Saturday morning about the U.S. taking part in a potential NATO-like security guarantee for Ukraine as part of a deal with Russia, two senior administration officials and three sources familiar with the discussions told NBC News.
“European and American security guarantees were discussed,” one source familiar with the discussions said. “U.S. troops on the ground was not discussed or entertained by [Trump].”
The security guarantees would be made in the scenario that Russia were to invade Ukraine, again, after a would-be peace deal, the sources said. The sources said that those protections, as discussed by the White House, would not include NATO membership — despite European leaders saying in a joint statement Saturday that Ukraine should be given the right to seek NATO membership.
As Ukraine and Europe work out how to navigate these dramatic shifts from Trump, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will Sunday jointly chair a virtual meeting of the so-called “coalition of the willing,” which includes more than 30 countries working together to support Ukraine.
For civilians on the ground, still under Russian attack even as the diplomatic maneuvering played out, it was not just the substance but the optics of the Alaska summit that caused frustration.
“I was hoping that the U.S. wouldn’t roll out the red carpet to the enemy,” Kyiv resident Natalya Lypei said Saturday. “How can you welcome a tyrant like this?”
Vaughn Hillyard, Kristen Welker, Richard Engel and Marc Smith contributed.
