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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday described his conversation with U.S. President Donald Trump as “good” on the issue of security guarantees for Ukraine, as the war in the country with Russia enters its fourth year.

Appearing at the White House alongside Trump and leaders from Europe, Zelenskyy repeated his request for security guarantees to the West, describing them as “vital” to Ukraine’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 in remarks at the White House. He added that a signal of strong support from Washington is “very important,” but did not elaborate further on the specifics of the guarantees he had requested from Trump.

Trump also stressed the importance of security, but added that most of the responsibility for Ukraine’s security should come from Europe. He also said that the conflict could not be solved without “negotiations on the territorial thing,” which would be “very difficult.” “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.”

The meeting at the White House has brought to a head some of the deep divisions between Western leaders over the best way to balance continued support for Ukraine while also pursuing a negotiated end to the conflict. Trump has been far more open to the idea of territorial concessions than Zelenskyy, who has repeatedly ruled out ceding any land to Russia.

On sanctions, a ceasefire, and NATO membership

As leaders in Washington were hashing out details on security guarantees, U.S. lawmakers in Congress were ramping up calls for economic pressure on Russia and its trading partners. Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said on Sunday that the Trump administration should target the finances of countries that are still buying Russian oil. He is co-sponsoring legislation that would empower Trump to impose tariffs as high as 500 percent on countries that continue to do business with Moscow.

“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 Sunday. “The second most important person on the planet to end this war is President Xi in China,” Graham said that China has a “big role” in stopping Russia from continuing its assault on Ukraine and that Washington must pressure Beijing to “turn the spigot off.”

Trump has already been moving to use tariffs as a foreign policy tool, having announced in August a tariff of 50 percent on India in part over New Delhi’s Russian oil purchases. Graham said that threatening a similar levy on China could change the dynamic on the battlefield “in 48 hours.”

The European Union is also in the process of approving its 19th round of sanctions against Russia, according to Bloomberg. The new package, which will be decided on later this month, is designed to “restrict Russia’s revenues from energy,” as well as its access to the international financial system and defense industry, while also closing some of the loopholes that have been used to evade sanctions. After four years of sanctions that have been closely coordinated between Washington and Brussels, Russia is now the most sanctioned country in modern history, having been placed on a more severe economic footing than even Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela.

Sanctions are not the only issue, however, where Western leaders have been at loggerheads with Trump. European leaders have also been pressing Trump to support a ceasefire before any negotiations can take place. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said at the White House that a ceasefire would be needed to give talks any credibility. “I can’t imagine that the next meeting would take place without a ceasefire,” he said. Trump pushed back, saying that several of the six peace agreements that he says he has helped to broker in recent months did not include a ceasefire, a claim that Zelenskyy has said is false.

Finland’s President Alexander Stubb was also in attendance at the White House talks, though he has been far more open in his skepticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s willingness to respect any ceasefire. Finland, which shares an 800-mile border with Russia, was invaded by Soviet forces in 1939, an event which Stubb has described as a “catatonic shock.” Stubb, who was sworn in as president in March 2024, said that “President Putin has shown no respect for Ukraine’s territorial integrity, and I have no reason to think that he would show respect for Finland’s.” Stubb is one of Trump’s closest European interlocutors.

The former president has been blunt about what he requires in any peace deal, even posting a message about the matter on Truth Social over the weekend. “President Zelenskyy of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight,” Trump wrote. In an apparent reference to the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, Trump continued: “Ukraine has to give back the part of land taken by Russia (Crimea) years ago.”

Zelenskyy’s push for long-term Western security guarantees stood in sharp contrast to Trump’s continued insistence that Ukraine must make immediate concessions to Russia. With fresh sanctions on the horizon, threats of new tariffs in both directions, and continued fighting on the ground, the path to a negotiated end to the conflict is still far from clear, caught between demands for concessions and appeals for solidarity.