Trump Places Responsibility on Zelenskyy to End Ukraine War Before Washington Meeting

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy holds the key to ending the conflict with Russia. Trump added that Zelenskyy has the option to “bring the war with Russia to a halt almost instantly if he chooses, or he can keep fighting.”

Trump made the comments in a post on Truth Social ahead of his scheduled August 18 meeting in Washington with Zelenskyy and several European leaders. In the same post, Trump referenced Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and stated “NO GOING INTO NATO BY UKRAINE,” echoing longstanding Kremlin demands for recognition of its territorial claims and Ukraine’s exclusion from the NATO alliance.

The Washington meeting follows Trump’s August 15 talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, which lasted three hours but produced no ceasefire agreement. Trump described those discussions as “productive.”

According to reports, Trump informed Zelenskyy after the Putin meeting that Moscow had proposed freezing most front lines in Ukraine in exchange for Kyiv’s withdrawal from the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. Zelenskyy rejected this proposal before the summit, arguing it would strip Ukraine of key defensive positions and enable further Russian offensives. Ukraine currently controls approximately one quarter of Donetsk, including fortified defensive cities that have served as its main defensive line since 2014.

In an August 12 report, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War examined Putin’s alleged proposal, noting that it “requires Ukraine to give up this vital defensive position—one that Russian forces currently cannot quickly encircle or breach—seemingly without receiving anything in return.”

In a Fox News interview following his meeting with Putin, Trump urged Zelenskyy to negotiate an end to the conflict, stating: “Look, Russia is a very big power, and [Ukraine is] not. They’re great soldiers.”

Russia first took control of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and backed separatist movements in eastern Ukraine, before escalating to a full-scale invasion in February 2022. The global community broadly criticized Russia’s 2014 moves.

Moscow has indicated that any peace agreement must address what it terms the “root causes” of the war, including NATO’s eastward expansion and alleged discrimination against Russian speakers in Ukraine. The Institute for the Study of War noted in an August 17 report that Russia’s demands for addressing these “root causes” would require massive NATO concessions that could compromise the alliance’s integrity and European and U.S. security.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the United Nations in 2024: “If Russia stops fighting, the war ends. If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends.”