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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday described his conversation with U.S. President Donald Trump on the issue of security guarantees for Ukraine as “good” as the conflict with Russia marks four years.

Zelenskyy made the remarks while standing alongside Trump and European leaders at the White House. The Ukrainian president said security guarantees were at the heart of both his country’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. He also added that signals of support coming from Washington were “very important,” although he did not elaborate on the nature of such guarantees.

Trump, for his part, stressed the importance of security while also warning that Europe must do most of the heavy lifting. “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 leaders meeting in the White House highlighted deep divisions among Western leaders on how best to balance ongoing support for Ukraine against efforts to end the conflict through a negotiated settlement. Trump has been more open to the idea of territorial concessions than Zelenskyy, who has long maintained that Ukraine must be allowed to preserve its sovereignty and international borders.

Calls for Sanctions, Ceasefire, NATO

Leaders in Washington continued to focus on the issue of guarantees, as U.S. lawmakers ramped up their calls for new economic pressure on Russia and its trading partners. Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said the Trump administration should act more decisively against Moscow’s financial sector by targeting countries that continue to buy Russian oil. He is co-sponsoring a bill that would allow Trump to impose tariffs of up to 500 percent on those countries.

“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. He later said that Chinese leader Xi Jinping was the most important person on the planet after Putin when it came to ending the war. “The second most important person on the planet to end this war is President Xi in China,” Graham said. He added that U.S. leaders must do more to pressure Beijing into withdrawing its support.

Trump has already shown a willingness to turn to tariffs as a cudgel against Moscow’s adversaries. In August, Trump announced he would slap a 50 percent tariff on India, in part because of its purchase of Russian oil. Graham said a similar threat against China would be enough to change the calculus of the conflict.

In Europe, the EU is expected to approve its 19th round of sanctions against Russia later this month. Those sanctions will be designed to further clamp down on Russia’s energy revenue streams, banking system, and military-industrial complex, while closing known loopholes in the existing regime. After nearly four years of broad Western coordination on Russia, the country now ranks as the most sanctioned in modern history, more isolated than Iran, North Korea, or Venezuela.

Sanctions are not the only point of contention, however. European leaders also pressed Trump on the need for a ceasefire before meaningful negotiations could even begin. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said a temporary suspension of hostilities was needed to give peace talks any credibility. “I can’t imagine that the next meeting would take place without a ceasefire,” Merz said. Trump took issue with that, noting that several of the six peace agreements he says to have brokered in recent months were negotiated without a ceasefire. “You have a ceasefire, and they rebuild and rebuild and rebuild,” Trump said. He later admitted that the main selling point for a truce would be an immediate reduction in civilian deaths.

Also in attendance for the White House talks was Finnish President Alexander Stubb, who assumed office in March 2024. Stubb had been openly skeptical of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ability to live up to a ceasefire, and he emphasized that history weighed on Finland’s side of the border, given that it shares an 800-mile frontier with Russia. Stubb, who is seen as one of Trump’s closest European interlocutors, said, “If I look at the silver lining of where we stand right now, we found a solution in 1944, and I’m sure that we’ll be able to find a solution in 2025 to end Russia’s war of aggression.”

In addition to the sanctions and ceasefire debate, Trump has also been unequivocal on what he would and would not accept as the conflict’s end state. In a post on Truth Social, he reiterated his previous call for Ukraine to formally renounce its claim to Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, and to drop its plans for NATO membership. “President Zelenskyy of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight,” Trump wrote. He further blamed the Obama administration for “giving” Crimea to Russia without a fight more than a decade ago, before calling Ukraine a “country with no defense” that must not be allowed into NATO. “NO GOING INTO NATO BY UKRAINE” must be a red line, Trump said.

Zelenskyy’s call for long-term Western guarantees stood in sharp contrast to Trump’s insistence that Ukraine accept immediate concessions. The contrast highlighted the wide gulfs in Washington and Europe over how best to end the war. New sanctions on the way, rising tariff threats, and more fighting on the battlefield suggest the path to peace is unlikely to become any clearer soon.