Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday after his Washington meeting with Donald Trump and European leaders that security guarantees for Ukraine will likely be worked out within 10 days. He added that it would include the purchase for Ukraine of a package of US weapons. “There indeed is a package with our proposals worth $90bn,” Zelenskyy said. “And we have agreements with the US president that when our export opens, they will buy Ukrainian drones. This is important for us.”
Reports earlier suggested that Ukraine would promise to buy $100bn of US weapons financed by Europe – lucrative for US suppliers – as part of a deal to get guarantees from the US for its security if there is a peace settlement with Russia, according to reports. The Financial Times added that Ukraine and the US would also strike a $50bn deal to produce drones with Ukrainian companies. The drone news may partly repeat recent similar announcements.
Donald Trump said after talks with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders on Monday that the US would oversee European security guarantees for Ukraine. “During the meeting we discussed security guarantees for Ukraine, which guarantees would be provided by the various European countries, with a coordination with the United States of America,” the US president posted.
Trump said he had begun to arrange an initial bilateral meeting between Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, and the Russian ruler, Vladimir Putin; to be followed by a trilateral meeting involving Trump as well.
Friedrich Merz – the German chancellor and part of Zelenskyy’s European “bodyguard” detail in Washington – said Trump in a call with Putin had “agreed that there will be a meeting between the Russian president and the Ukrainian president within the next two weeks” with the venue still to be agreed upon.
Russia’s initial response to the idea of direct Putin-Zelenskyy talks was elliptical. Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told the Tass news agency that Putin told Trump he was open to the “idea” of it. “The idea was discussed that it would be necessary to study the possibility of raising the level of representatives of the Ukrainian and Russian sides.”
Zelenskyy told Ukrainian media outside the White House: “I confirmed – and all European leaders supported me – that we are ready for a bilateral meeting with Putin.” Putin has at all stages appeared deeply reluctant to face Zelenskyy personally; whereas Zelenskyy has been saying since Trump took office that he is ready for such a meeting.
Merz said Trump “noticed that we Europeans are speaking with one voice”. The Europeans and Americans would need to discuss who participates in the security guarantees and to what extent. “It’s completely clear that the whole of Europe should participate,” Merz said. “This is not just about the territory of Ukraine. It’s about the political order of Europe.”
Merz said Ukraine must not be forced to surrender its Donbas region to Russia, which “corresponds, to put it bluntly, to a proposal for the United States to have to give up Florida”.
France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, said: “President Trump believes we can get an agreement and believes that President Putin also wants a peace accord. But if at the end this process is met by refusal, we are also ready to say that we need to increase sanctions [on Russia].”
Russian attacks on major Ukrainian cities killed at least 10 people as Zelenskyy and the European leaders prepared to meet Trump. An entire family including a toddler and her 16-year-old brother were among the seven killed when drones hit a residential neighbourhood of Kharkiv. Another 23 people were wounded, authorities said. Three people were killed in a ballistic missile strike on the south-eastern city of Zaporizhzhia, with more wounded.
In the Odesa region of Ukraine’s south, a drone strike damaged an oil depot belonging to Azerbaijan’s state-owned Socar for the second time in two weeks, Ukraine’s foreign minister said. In that vein, Ukraine also struck back, hitting an oil pumping station in Russia’s Tambov region that is part of Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine. It led to the suspension of supplies via the Druzhba pipeline, which feeds oil into Slovakia and Hungary, both of whose prime ministers are friendly to Vladimir Putin.
Polish prosecutors have charged a Belarusian citizen with planning to set fire to a warehouse in eastern Poland on behalf of foreign intelligence, a spokesperson said on Monday. The statement did not name the foreign power. Poland says its role as an aid hub for neighbouring Ukraine has made it a target for Russian and Belarusian secret services. Prosecutors suspected the 27-year-old man, Vitalij S, “collected data about a warehouse facility in the Lublin Voivodeship in July 2025, filmed and photographed it, and then passed this material on to representatives of foreign intelligence”, a spokesperson said.
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