WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump said he hoped to secure an agreement for a trilateral meeting with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy as he welcomed the Ukrainian leader to the White House for high-stakes talks on bringing an end to Russia’s war on Ukraine.

“If everything works out well today we’ll have a trilat and I think there will be a reasonable chance of ending the war when we do that,” Trump told reporters Monday during an Oval Office meeting with Zelenskyy. “We’re going to work with everybody, and we’re going to make sure that if there’s peace the peace is going to stay long term.”

Trump has accelerated his push to stop a conflict that has persisted despite months of U.S. diplomatic efforts and his campaign-trail vow to end it on his first day in office. The tone between the two leaders was notably improved from Zelenskyy’s last visit to the Oval Office in February, which erupted into a bitter public clash with Trump and briefly led to the United States halting military support.

“We are ready for a trilateral,” Zelenskyy said, adding that his country still needs support from both the U.S. and European allies. And the Ukrainian leader repeatedly offered his thanks to Trump, following criticism from U.S. Vice President JD Vance in February that he was insufficently grateful for U.S. military and financial aid to Kyiv.

Despite the friendly tone, the risks for Ukraine are even more intense this time around. Trump dropped his demands for a ceasefire as a condition for further talks last Friday after meeting with Putin and backed off his threat of imposing punitive measures on Moscow, aligning himself with the Kremlin’s position that negotiations with Ukraine should focus on a long-term settlement.

Trump said he would speak with Putin after Monday’s meetings, adding that the Russian leader was expecting his call. The U.S. president said he would encourage Zelenskyy to strike a deal, raising the prospect of Kyiv being forced into making unpalatable territorial concessions.

In the meeting, Trump reiterated his claim that he believed Zelenskyy could end the war.

The U.S. president sidestepped a question about what kind of security guarantees the U.S. could provide Ukraine — a key ask from Kyiv — but said any deal would provide a lasting peace. And he downplayed the need for Putin to agree to a ceasefire to allow meaningful peace talks to make progress.

“I don’t think you need a ceasefire,” Trump said Monday, in response to a question. “We can work a deal where we’ll working on a peace deal while they’re fighting.”

Zelenskyy said Ukraine would need “everything” from the U.S. and its allies — including weapons and security guarantees — to be able to strike a deal. He cited a program to provide Patriot air defense batteries — paid for by European allies — to the country as Russia ramps up missile and drone attacks, offering his thanks to Trump.

“We are thankful for this program and this opportunity,” he said.

Following their bilateral meeting, Trump and Zelenskyy will be joined for talks with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Among the visitors are individuals Trump has struck a personal rapport with, including NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and Finnish President Alexander Stubb.

“We love them,” Trump said when asked by a reporter earlier, while shaking hands with Zelenskyy and welcoming him to the White House, for his message to the Ukrainian people.

Zelenskyy this time arrived for the talks wearing a jacket, but without a tie, a change from the war fatigues he has donned since Russia invaded his country in 2022, attire that Trump allies called a mark of disrespect during his last meeting with the U.S. president.

“It’s the best I have,” Zelenskyy said, referring to his outfit.

“I love it,” Trump said.

Tense Negotiations

The mood going into the meeting has been tense following Trump’s summit with Putin, whose full-scale invasion of Ukraine has left Europe facing its deadliest conflict in decades.

The U.S. president has shifted his focus from Putin to Zelenskyy, saying in a social media post before the talks that the Ukrainian leader “can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight.” He suggested that the Crimean peninsula would not be returned and said Ukraine wouldn’t be allowed to join NATO, without providing further details.

The Ukrainian president responded in a post on X that Putin used Crimea and the part of the eastern Donbas region he had seized in 2014 “as a springboard for a new attack” in February 2022. “Russia must end this war, which it itself started,” he wrote.

Zelenskyy and his European allies will try to steer Trump away from forcing overly costly territorial concessions on Kyiv, which the White House seems to be focusing on in its drive to achieve a quick peace deal. They will also seek to pin down possible security guarantees resembling NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense clause that the U.S. may be open to providing to ensure Ukraine’s protection from future aggression.

In his calls with European leaders after the Alaska summit, Trump said Putin wants Ukraine to cede control of its entire Donbas region of the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, renewing earlier demands. That would hand Russia a victory it has been unable to achieve militarily since fighting first erupted in 2014, and in an area where Ukraine retains heavily fortified defenses.

Russia would also halt advancing its claims over the parts of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions that it doesn’t now control, effectively freezing the battle lines at current positions. The Kremlin could also potentially withdraw troops from areas of northeastern Ukraine near the Russian border where its forces control only small pockets of land.

That raises the prospect that the “land-swapping” Trump has teased as part of any deal will be lopsided in Putin’s favor by giving him control of areas beyond what he’s seized, offset by modest concessions of land that had been Ukraine’s anyhow.

Trump also told allies he would urge Ukraine to agree to a deal, with the goal of holding a Putin-Zelenskyy meeting within a week. That’s a timeline that many of the Europeans regard as too aggressive, given how many issues remain unresolved.

Russia, meanwhile, has continued to make slow but steady advances in eastern Ukraine. Hours after Zelenskyy arrived in Washington, Russian attacks on the Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia killed at least 10 civilians, including two children, and injured dozens, according to local authorities.

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(With assistance from Piotr Skolimowski.)

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