Zelensky Not Invited to Trump-Putin Talks

"The president is agreeing to this meeting, at the request of President Putin," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday. "And the goal of this meeting for the president is to walk away with a better understanding of how we can end this war."

"I think the president of the United States getting in the room with the president of Russia ,sitting face-to-face rather than speaking over the telephone will give this president the best indication of how to end this war and where this is headed," Leavitt said.

"Any decisions made against us, any decisions made without Ukraine — they are simultaneously decisions against peace," Zelenskyy said in a Saturday statement. "These are dead decisions; they will never work. And what we all need is a real, living peace, one that people will respect."

Other European allies have Ukraine's back. A group of European leaders issued a statement Saturday claiming that the "path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine."

When asked if the meeting would pave the way for a peace deal, or whether the meeting would simply serve as an opportunity for Trump to feel out if a deal was even possible, Leavitt said the administration wasn’t ruling out either option.

"I think both can be true, right?" Leavitt said. "The president has always said he wants a peace deal. He wants to see this war come to an end. But this bilateral meeting is a bilateral meeting between one party in this two party war. Right. You need both countries to agree to a deal. The president is accepting this bilateral meeting with Putin on Friday, and I will let him speak further to it after it concludes about how he felt it went."