Former President Donald Trump is pursuing a three-step strategy aimed at brokering peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, with his advisers emphasizing that the immediate focus is not on a ceasefire but on getting the two sides face-to-face. The details were first reported by Axios.
According to Trump advisers, the short-term U.S. objective is straightforward: secure direct talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “Everything else is foreplay,” one Trump adviser told Axios, underscoring that Trump views a leader-to-leader meeting as the critical first step toward any eventual settlement.
Trump faced heavy criticism after dropping his initial demand for a ceasefire during his Alaska summit with Putin on Friday. That meeting ended abruptly, with Trump skipping a joint press conference and even leaving behind summit briefing materials, NPR reported. Despite the chaos, his team insists momentum is building.
The White House describes the peace effort as a three-phase process:
- Secure bilateral agreements with Putin on steps toward peace.
- Secure similar commitments from Zelensky during his meeting with Trump in Washington on Monday.
- Convene a trilateral meeting involving Trump, Putin, and Zelensky to hammer out an agreement — though officials admit it’s uncertain this final stage will happen.
Putin has been escalating military pressure, intensifying drone and missile strikes while pushing further into contested Ukrainian regions such as Donetsk. At one point in Alaska, Putin demanded full control of the territory — roughly 75% of which Russia already holds. Trump reportedly threatened to walk away unless Putin softened his position, which sources say he eventually did.
Advisers to Trump, including special envoy Steve Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, appeared across Sunday news shows defending the former president’s approach. They argued that while an immediate ceasefire is unrealistic, progress has been made — including Putin’s reported openness to U.S. and European “security guarantees” to deter future Russian aggression.
“It would be a very big move by the President if he were to offer a U.S. commitment to a security guarantee,” Rubio said on Fox News, while Witkoff called such a step “game-changing.”
What those security guarantees might entail remains unclear. One adviser privately told Axios that U.S. troops in Ukraine could be part of the equation, though others insisted negotiations shouldn’t play out in public.
The stakes are high. U.S. intelligence estimates on Russia’s military prospects diverge, with some assessments warning Putin could seize all of Donetsk by October, while others predict a prolonged stalemate. Rubio stressed the human cost, noting on CBS that “20,000 Russian soldiers were killed last month… It’s a meat grinder, and [the Russians] just have more meat to grind.”
For now, all eyes are on Monday’s Trump-Zelensky meeting in Washington. As one Trump adviser told Axios: “There’s a way to make a deal: get the buyer and the seller in the same room at the same time.”
