Monday was a big day not only for Donald Trump but also for Ukrainian President Zelensky.
Trump was fresh off his weekend summit meeting with Russian President Putin.
Now, if Trump could get them both on the same page, there is a chance we could have peace in this war.
The meeting in Alaska between Trump and Putin appeared to go very well.
The media has already pounced on this because no peace deal came from it, but the administration clarified that is not what was expected from that meeting.
Trump was feeling out Putin to see what he wanted to have a peace deal.
Trump left the meeting very upbeat, so it seemed that whatever Putin told him was doable.
Zelensky was offended when he was not invited to the Alaska meeting, and he lashed out a bit publicly over this.
When this initially happened, I understood why he was upset, as the White House did not initially make it clear that that was just a feeling-out meeting.
Zelensky stated that he would never accept any deal that was not made with his input, and I agreed with that stance.
As I noted in other reports, I could never imagine the United States reaching a peace deal with another country where it had no input.
When Zelensky was invited to the White House for a meeting with Trump, it was immediately announced that EU leaders would be coming with him.
The leaders were clearly there to protect Zelensky, as they believed that Trump could try to steamroll him into making a deal, as well as protecting Zelensky from repeating his previous appearance, which blew up on TV.
One of the EU officials stated, "Things have moved very significantly and quite quickly to a timetable that no one was expecting. The US sees this as a moment to strike while the iron is hot. Our question is what are we trying to achieve here?"
When I initially heard that the EU leaders were going to be there, I thought it might backfire, but I was very much wrong about that. After the meeting, Trump was more upbeat than ever about getting a peace deal done, and he is now pushing for a trilateral meeting to get that deal in place. The only thing I can see stopping this now is a Russian drone strike that took place just prior to Zelensky's White House meetings.
