Doing so would require the Russian leader to “accept the failure of sitting down with a president he considers a joke from a country that doesn’t exist”

President Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and key European leaders met at the White House on Monday afternoon to discuss Russia's war in Ukraine.

Moscow has resisted a Putin-Zelensky summit and security guarantees for Ukraine. Trump’s claims that the Kremlin’s position has changed has left analysts puzzled.

D: Broadcast and cable networks went to special reports on Monday as Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky met in the Oval Office and later with European leaders in hopes of reaching a peace agreement with Russia to end the war in Ukraine.

The Kremlin hasn't ruled out summits but has said they could only meet in the very final stages of clinching a peace agreement.

President Donald Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky met Monday in the White House. Trump said the United States will give "very good protection."

A summit in Paris six years ago was the first and only time the two presidents ever met, flanked by French president Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s then-chancellor Angela Merkel. At the time, Putin and Zelensky were looking to hash out a ceasefire deal for war in Donbas in Ukraine’s east, where Russia-backed forces were fighting Ukrainian troops.

President Trump seeks to broker a meeting of the two leaders to end Europe’s most destructive war in generations.