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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday that he had a “good” conversation with U.S. President Donald Trump over security guarantees for Ukraine, as the war with Russia entered its fourth year.

Appearing at the White House alongside Trump and European leaders, Zelenskyy said security guarantees for Ukraine are at the heart of the nation’s survival and future independence. “The first one is security guarantees. And we are very happy with President [Trump], that all the leaders are here, and security in Ukraine depends on the United States and European countries,” Zelenskyy said. He added that Washington’s readiness to provide strong signals of support was “very important,” but did not detail what such guarantees might look like.

Trump echoed Zelenskyy’s emphasis on security but said Europe should bear most of the burden. He also appeared to downplay the possibility of territorial concessions, saying that the conflict would not be solved without “very tough talks about territory.” “We’re going to help them, and we’re going to make it very secure,” Trump said. “We also need to discuss the possible exchanges of territory, taking into consideration the current line of contact. That means the war zone, the war line center.”

Meeting at the White House highlighted sharp divisions among Western leaders over how to balance support for Ukraine and the push for a negotiated end to the war. Trump has been more open to territorial concessions than Zelenskyy, who has repeatedly said that Ukraine’s sovereignty and international borders must be preserved at all costs.

Sanctions, Ceasefire Debate, and the NATO Question

As world leaders in Washington hashed out the issue of guarantees, lawmakers in the U.S. Congress sharpened their calls for more economic pressure on Russia and its trading partners. Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., argued that the Trump administration should act more aggressively against Moscow’s finances and called for Congress to impose tariffs of up to 500 percent on nations that continue doing business with Russia.

“My advice to President Trump and [Secretary of State Marco Rubio] is, you’ve got to convince Putin that if this war doesn’t end justly and honorably with Ukraine making concessions also, we’re going to destroy the Russian economy,” Graham said on Fox News. He added that China, in particular, has an outsized influence over Putin. “The second most important person on the planet to end this war is President Xi in China,” Graham said. “We have to convince President Xi that if this war doesn’t end, this war ends with China having no future.”

Trump has already shown he is willing to use tariffs as a bargaining chip against nations that continue to do business with Russia, having announced in August that the U.S. would place a 50 percent tariff on India at least in part over its Russian oil purchases. Graham suggested a similar threat could change the dynamics of the conflict quickly.

Sanctions are not the only issue creating a gap between European leaders and Trump. The Europeans also pressed the U.S. president on the need for a ceasefire before serious negotiations can begin. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Europe wants to see a temporary pause to fighting before engaging in direct talks with Russia. “I can’t imagine that the next meeting would take place without a ceasefire,” Merz said. Trump countered that several of the six peace agreements he claimed to have brokered over the past few months did not include a ceasefire. “You have a ceasefire, and they rebuild and rebuild and rebuild,” Trump said. He conceded that the main benefit of a truce would be an immediate halt to civilian casualties.

Finnish President Alexander Stubb, who took office in March this year, was also in attendance at the White House for the Ukraine discussion. He has been one of the most openly skeptical European leaders of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s good faith in abiding by a ceasefire. Stubb emphasized the historic nature of his country’s relationship with Russia and the ex-Soviet state’s 800-mile border. Stubb has been a close interlocutor of Trump in Europe and echoed his view that Russia has an interest in a rapid peace deal. “If I look at the silver lining of where we stand right now, we found a solution in 1944, and I’m sure that we’ll be able to find a solution in 2025 to end Russia’s war of aggression,” Stubb said, referring to the Finnish surrender in World War II.

Beyond sanctions and a ceasefire, Trump has been blunt about his conditions for a negotiated peace. In a post to Truth Social, the former president urged Ukraine to formally give up the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014, and to drop its ambitions to join NATO. “President Zelenskyy of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight,” Trump said. “Putin wanted the one that NATO wasn’t going to be taking in Ukraine; he would not have been fighting so long. Russia gave me Crimea,” he added, blaming the Obama administration for “giving” the peninsula to Russia without resistance more than a decade ago. He also insisted that “NO GOING INTO NATO BY UKRAINE” must remain a red line.

The contrast between Zelenskyy’s call for long-term Western guarantees and Trump’s demand for concessions from Ukraine highlights the deep divides in Washington and Europe on how to end the war. With new sanctions on the horizon, rising tariff threats, and continued battlefield clashes, the path to peace remains uncertain — caught between demands for compromise and calls for solidarity.