THE APEX TIMES
The White House said President Donald Trump will hold separate meetings with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Syria’s Ahmad al-Sharaa during the NATO summit in Turkey, as U.S. officials weigh messaging and security priorities across Europe and the Middle East.
President Donald Trump will meet with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Syria’s Ahmad al-Sharaa on Wednesday during the NATO summit in Ankara, the White House said, setting up high-level talks amid an ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and shifting diplomatic focus in the Middle East. The meetings were confirmed by a White House spokesperson, Anna Kelly, as Trump prepares for the summit following meetings with other allies and partners in Turkey.
Kelly said Trump is also scheduled to meet with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday, with the NATO summit serving as the venue for the U.S. president’s diplomacy in the country. Before returning to the United States on Wednesday, Kelly said Trump is scheduled to have a news conference in Turkey.
The White House said Trump’s meeting with Zelenskyy comes as Kyiv seeks to re-center Washington’s attention on the conflict with Moscow. The discussions are expected to occur during the summit, which gathers NATO leaders to coordinate alliance strategy and address security concerns affecting member states and partners.
Separately, U.S. officials did not provide detailed public information about the agenda for Trump’s meeting with Syria’s al-Sharaa. The announcement places Syria’s top leader into the same NATO setting as Ukraine’s president, an unusual pairing that underscores the breadth of issues U.S. officials are addressing through the alliance framework and bilateral channels while leaders are abroad.
According to ABC News, Zelenskyy and Putin recently spoke by phone with Trump, ahead of the July 4 commemoration of America’s 250th independence anniversary. After one of those calls, Zelenskyy said he and Trump discussed conditions on the front lines and that there is “a real prospect of ending this war,” adding that the conversation would continue at the NATO summit in Ankara. Analysts cited by ABC News described Russian advances as having “sputtered” and noted Ukraine’s stepped-up ability to strike deeper into Russia.
The Kremlin’s adviser Yuri Ushakov also said Trump reaffirmed his position to Putin during their call, according to ABC News. The U.S. side did not lay out a negotiating timeline or specific deliverables for either the Ukraine meeting or the Syria meeting, beyond confirming the planned calendar of encounters tied to the NATO summit.
A White House preview of the trip characterized the meetings as part of the president’s broader engagement with allied and regional leadership during the summit week, while U.S. officials prepare for media appearances and the routine diplomacy that comes with convening NATO leaders in Turkey. With the meetings set for Wednesday, officials will likely face renewed questions from allies and international partners about how U.S. priorities will be coordinated across the two theaters discussed during the summit.
Because public details of the talks are limited, the practical next step for each meeting will be what each president requests or offers in private: for Kyiv, continued discussion of cease-fire, security guarantees, and battlefield dynamics; for Damascus, the broader direction of U.S. engagement with the Syrian leadership and the degree to which Washington is indicating changes to regional security assumptions. For NATO, the meetings also test how alliance leaders manage U.S. bilateral outreach when crises outside Europe compete for summit attention.
