US President Donald Trump has said that a deal between Russia and Ukraine may be imminent, following a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, at the White House.
“I think we’re going to be very close to settling Russia-Ukraine,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, while declining to disclose details of his conversation with Dmitriev.
“There’s going to be an agreement. It’s going to be a big agreement, and it’s going to involve more than Ukraine,” Trump said, adding that the effort could include “all of Europe”.
Trump has frequently predicted that an agreement to end Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II was close. Negotiations have, however, picked up in recent weeks.
Trump said he did not meet the Ukrainian delegation on Thursday.
The meeting between the US president and Dmitriev came after a diplomatic gathering hosted by First Lady Melania Trump, which brought Russian and Ukrainian representatives together to mark and build on the localised six-day truce she helped broker in the southern Ukrainian city of Oleshky in October. The US president did not attend the event.
The temporary ceasefire ran from October 27 to November 1 and allowed for the evacuation of nearly 800 civilians from the besieged, Russian-occupied city of Oleshky in Ukraine’s Kherson region, as well as the delivery of critical food and medical supplies.
Senior officials from both countries attended on Thursday, including Dmitriev; Yana Lantratova, Russia’s human rights commissioner; David Arakhamia, leader of the Servant of the People party in Ukraine’s parliament; and Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s parliamentary human rights commissioner.
Melania Trump also spoke at the event, which the White House described as “the first time in American history that a First Lady has personally brought representatives of two nations at war to the White House for diplomacy”.
“Together, we can create something more enduring than a temporary ceasefire,” she said, urging both sides to see the humanitarian truce in Oleshky “as a spark in a world of darkness”.
The first lady presented Putin’s and Zelenskyy’s representatives with large white envelopes and asked them to deliver her personal letters to each leader. Dmitriev presented her with a painting by an 11-year-old girl, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sent her the Order of Princess Olga, a Ukrainian award recognising her role in the ceasefire.
