President Donald Trump is ratcheting up pressure on Ukraine to agree to terms to end the war with Russia, echoing some of Moscow’s talking points two days after meeting President Vladimir Putin.

Trump will host a summit Monday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and a bodyguard of European leaders in the most important moment yet in a quickening push to end the brutal conflict that followed Russia’s 2022 invasion.

The White House meeting is also one of the most critical days for European security and the Western alliance since the end of the Cold War, and it will test Trump’s sincerity and his capacity to lead Ukraine and Russia toward an exit ramp likely to satisfy neither side.

It follows Trump’s summit with Putin on Friday in Alaska, widely viewed outside the administration and MAGA world with dismay as the US president welcomed his guest, who is accused of war crimes, with applause. Trump offered several major symbolic and process concessions to Putin for few public undertakings in return.

But Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff insisted Sunday on CNN that Russia had softened its opposition to post-war Western security arrangements for Ukraine and was ready to make significant land swaps in any deal to end the fighting.

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