Donald Trump urged Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy to show some “flexibility” as the U.S. president accelerates his efforts to end the war in Ukraine and encourages the two leaders to hold a bilateral summit.

“I hope President Putin is going to be good, and if he’s not, it’s going to be a rough situation,” Trump said Tuesday in an interview on Fox News. “I hope that Zelenskyy, President Zelenskyy, will do what he has to do. He has to show some flexibility also.”

Trump’s comments follow a whirlwind stretch as the U.S. president pushes to bring Russia’s war against Ukraine — now in its fourth year — to an end. Trump held a summit in Alaska with Putin last week and talks at the White House with Zelenskyy and European allies on Monday.

Trump spoke with Putin again on Monday and urged him to begin making plans for a bilateral summit with Zelenskyy — a sitdown that would mark the first time those leaders meet face-to-face since Russia invaded its neighbor in Feb. 2022. Trump said that if that meeting goes well, he’ll look to follow up with a trilateral summit with Putin and Zelenskyy.

“I wouldn’t say they are ever going to be best friends, but they’re doing OK, and we’re just going to see,” Trump said. “You know, they’re the ones that have to call the shots.”

The details of the plan, however, appear to still be in flux — with Trump acknowledging a time and location for a gathering had not yet been set, and Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov saying only that Trump and Putin had discussed the idea of direct talks with Zelenskyy.

A meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy could take place within two weeks, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told reporters Monday. French President Emmanuel Macron signaled the trilateral summit could happen within three weeks.

In Tuesday’s interview, Trump by turns cast blame for the war on former President Barack Obama, his immediate predecessor President Joe Biden and Ukrainian efforts to join NATO. He said that he has a strong relationship with Putin, but emphasized that relationship means little if it doesn’t translate into an agreement to end the war.

“We’re going to find out about President Putin in the next couple of weeks — that I can tell you — and we’re going to see where it all goes. It’s possible that he doesn’t want to make a deal,” Trump said.

Security guarantees

The tone of Monday’s White House meetings was much improved from a February visit in which Zelenskyy bitterly clashed with Trump. Zelenskyy said Trump agreed to participate in security guarantees as part of any peace deal and reserve discussion of territorial exchanges for direct talks between Zelenskyy and Putin.

Trump on Tuesday indicated there would be some form of security assurances, perhaps in the form of air support from the U.S., even as he reiterated that he would not allow Ukraine to join NATO. European countries would supply ground troops, Trump said.

“We’re willing to help them with things, especially, probably you could talk about by air, because there’s nobody that has the kind of stuff we have,” the president said.

Trump also said Zelenskyy would have to forfeit his ambitions of retaking Crimea, which Russia illegally seized by force in 2014.

“Both of those things are impossible,” the president said, referring to the Crimean Peninsula and NATO membership for Ukraine.

A package of security guarantees could build on the work of the so-called coalition of the willing, a European group led by the U.K. and France, potentially including a multinational force. European Union leaders are due to be briefed remotely on Tuesday on the outcome of the talks in Washington.

Trump, when asked if European leaders pushed him on the reliability of U.S. security guarantees under a future president, said “they did. We talked about it.”

“You know, it is what it is. I could say the same thing about them. I say, suppose you get a terrible leader in U.K. or France or, you know, we had Ursula there, who runs the whole gamut,” he added referring to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Asked if he called the Russian president on Monday in front of European officials he was meeting with at the White House, Trump said he did not, saying he thought it would be “disrespectful” to the Russian leader.

“President Putin wouldn’t talk to people from Europe. I mean, that was part of the problem. He, they had no communication,” Trump said.

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