Europe's Leaders Gather at Trump's Desk as He Sets the Terms for Ukraine Peace

Three days after meeting Vladimir Putin alone in Alaska, Donald Trump hosted Volodymyr Zelensky and seven European leaders at the White House, including Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Merz and NATO's Mark Rutte. They had rushed to Washington to back Ukraine and press for a ceasefire. Trump said an immediate ceasefire was "not happening", paused the talks to phone Putin, then announced the next steps himself: a Putin-Zelensky meeting, then a three-way summit. Security guarantees, he wrote, "would be provided by the various European Countries, with a coordination with the United States of America." Image: The White House (Daniel Torok), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.