These are the key takeaways from the talks between US President Donald Trump, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders, including Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.
Security guarantees
In an important step towards a deal, Mr Trump has promised that the US would be involved in providing security guarantees for Ukraine.
The US leader said that there would be some form of security guarantees for Ukraine, but did not reveal whether this would involve US troops.
Mr Trump said Mr Putin “agreed that Russia would accept security guarantees for Ukraine”. He added: “I think that the European nations are going to take a lot of the burden. We’re going to help them, and we’re going to make it very secure.”
Donald Trump and the European leaders in a ‘family photo’. Pic: Reuters/Alexander Drago
His comments were welcomed by the European leaders, with Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, saying it was “good to hear” the nations were working on “Article Five-like security guarantees”.
NATO’s Article Five is the principle that an attack on one member is considered an attack on all of them.
“When we speak about security guarantees, we speak about the whole security of the European continent,” French President Emmanuel Macron said.
He added that one guarantee he would want to come out of any deals is that Ukraine should be able to have a “credible” army for “the years and decades to come”.
No ceasefire needed for peace deal
Mr Trump said there did not need to be a ceasefire in Ukraine, because a peace deal could be worked out while Ukraine and Russia are at war.
“I don’t think you need a ceasefire. You know, if you look at the six deals that I settled this year, they were all at war, I didn’t do any ceasefires,” he said.
“I know that it might be good to have, but I can also understand, strategically, why one country or the other wouldn’t want it. You have a ceasefire and they rebuild and rebuild and rebuild and maybe they don’t want that.”
He said he liked the “concept of a ceasefire”, because people would stop being killed, but “we can work a deal where we’re working on a peace deal while they’re fighting”.
But German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said “we would all like to see a ceasefire”.
He told the media in the White House: “I can’t imagine that the next meeting would take place without a ceasefire, so let’s work on that and let’s try to put pressure on Russia.”
Donald Trump speaks at the White House before talks with other European leaders. Pic: Reuters
Mr Trump later pushed back, saying he had not needed a ceasefire in ending any other wars, but he would welcome one if needed.
The US leader said: “So if we can do the ceasefire, great, and, if we don’t do a ceasefire… many other points were given to us, many, many points were given to us, great points.”
Trilateral meeting
The US president said that “if everything works out well today”, there will be a trilateral meeting between himself, Mr Putin and Mr Zelenskyy.
The latter said he was ready for such a meeting and Mr Trump confirmed that Mr Putin was as well.
Mr Trump met Mr Putin in Alaska on Friday. Pic: AP
Mr Macron said that while a trilateral meeting is important, a “quadrilateral” summit would also need to take place after.
It was not clear whether Mr Macron meant a meeting in which just France takes part, or whether he meant NATO, the EU, or the “coalition of the willing” should be the fourth member.
At first, Mr Trump said he would call Mr Putin “right after” the White House meetings, but he ended up interrupting the talk with the European leaders to call his Russian counterpart in the middle of the meeting, according to an EU diplomat.
‘Discuss exchanges of territory’
“We also need to discuss the possible exchanges of territory,” the US president said ahead of the multilateral talks with Mr Zelenskyy and European leaders.
He said such exchanges would need to take “into consideration the current line of contact”.
Mr Trump added: “That means the war zone, the war lines that are now, pretty obvious, very sad, actually, to look at them and negotiating positions.”
This comes after Mr Putin has reportedly made demands to take control of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine during the Alaska summit with Mr Trump as a condition for ending the war.
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In exchange, Russia would give up other Ukrainian territories held by its troops, according to several news reports citing sources close to the matter.
Russian troops currently occupy large parts of the two regions and, in September 2022, Moscow announced it was officially annexing them, alongside the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, in a move rejected and condemned as illegal by the West.
Mr Zelensky previously ruled out handing any territory to Moscow.