Trump announces three -way conversations about the Ukraine War in Munich

President Donald Trump has announced that American, Russian and Ukrainian officials will meet at a security conference in Munich on Friday to talk about how to end the war in Ukraine.

“Russia will be there with our people,” said the president of the United States. “Ukraine is also invited, by the way, I am not sure who will be there from any country, but people of high level of Russia, Ukraine and the United States.”

However, Russia, who will not officially attend the annual forum in Germany, did not comment and a senior Ukrainian official said that “the conversations with the Russians in Munich” were not expected. “

The United States NATO allies are still reacting to Trump’s surprise announcement this week that he and Russian president Vladimir Putin had agreed in a phone call to begin conversations to end the war.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, will meet with Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, in Munich.

Zelensky is also expected to meet with the United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.

Rubio’s plane had to return to an American air base in Maryland on Thursday night, after experiencing a “mechanical problem” on his way to the German city. Then I had to take a different plane.

The president of the United States announced the three -way meeting in Munich during a press conference on Thursday, without giving more details.

However, Zelensky’s advisor, Dmytro Lytvyn, told journalists that the Ukrainian delegation had no plans to attend that meeting.

Russia did not immediately respond to a request for comments from the BBC on the subject.

Trump’s announcement occurred one day after he celebrated separately separated phone calls with Putin, then with Zelensky.

When describing the conversations as “great,” Trump said there was a “good possibility of finishing that horrible and very bloody war.”

But he said it was not “practical” for kyiv to join the NATO military alliance and also “unlikely” that Ukraine could return to its borders prior to the invasion in 2014.

Zelensky, who admitted that “it was not very pleasant” that Trump had spoken with Putin before him, warned that Ukraine would not agree with any peace agreement proposed by the United States and Russia without kyiv’s participation.

“We cannot accept it, as an independent country,” he said, emphasizing that his priority was “security guarantees”, something that he did not see without the support of us.

Zelensky said that European allies “also needed to be at the negotiating table”, amid the growing fears throughout the continent that Trump’s overture to Putin could lead to a separate agreement of Russia from the United States in the future in the future of Ukraine and Europe.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, told The Financial Times that only Zelensky could negotiate on behalf of his country with Russia, warning that a “peace that is a capitulation” would be “bad news for all.”

The EU Foreign Policy Chief Kaja Kallas said: “Any quick solution is a dirty treatment.”

In Munich, Zelensky’s objectives in his meeting with Vance seem clear: to encourage the United States to continue with Ukraine and take into account the best interests of the besieged nation, since he tries to negotiate the end of the war.

What Americans want from this meeting is more uncertain. Vance can try to ensure Zelensky that Ukrainians will be involved in the next peace negotiations, even if they will lately seem to be a junior partner.

Vance, in fact, can be delivering a overwhelming message, one that defense secretary Pete Hegseth said publicly on Monday, even if he later gave him a little. The United States does not imagine an NATO that includes Ukraine. And to end war, Ukraine will have to give up a territory that is currently under Russian control

It can be a bitter pill so that Zelensky swallows, but the type of additional American military aid to Ukraine that would eventually need to keep the fight seems unlikely at this time.

Neither Trump nor the Trump Republican Party in Congress have a lot of interest in maintaining support.

Almost three years have passed since Russia began its full invasion.

After the overthrow of the Ukrainian President of Ukraine in 2014, Moscow attached the Peninsula of the Black Sea of ​​Crimea and supported the pro-ruse separatists in bloody struggles in eastern Ukraine.

The conflict broke out in the total war when Russia invaded Ukraine almost three years ago.

Moscow’s attempts to take control of the Kyiv capital were frustrated, but the Russian forces have taken around a fifth of the territory of Ukraine in the east and south, and have carried out air attacks throughout the country.

Ukraine has taken artillery and drone strikes, as well as a land offensive against the western region of Kursk in Russia.

The accounts of precise victims are difficult to obtain due to the secret of the Russian and Ukrainian governments, but it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people, most of them soldiers, have been killed or injured, and millions of Ukrainian civilians have fled as refugees as refugees.