President Donald Trump told President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Monday that the United States would join Europe in providing security guarantees to Kyiv as part of a broader peace deal with Russia,

"How can we meet with a person who is pretending to be a leader?" Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told NBC News on Aug. 22.

The Kremlin has played down talk of an imminent summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky, as Donald Trump renewed his call for the two leaders to meet to discuss ending the war in Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he will meet President Trump in Washington on Monday after Trump's summit with Russia's Vladimir Putin concluded without an agreement to stop the fighting in Ukraine.

It was not the first time that the vice president had addressed Ukraine’s leader with words more commonly spoken to toddlers than heads of state.

President Donald Trump made some false claims to the press while meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House on Monday – including a long-debunked claim that the US has given Ukraine more than $300 billion in wartime aid.

The president is showing us yet again how a sober realism — not liberal internationalist fantasy — can yield results.

Ukrainian analysts watching their president’s return to the White House were braced for a “nightmare.” They took cautious encouragement from what they saw instead.