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Trump Participates in a Bilateral Meeting with the President of Ukraine, Jul. 8, 2026

July 8, 2026 · The White House · 0:39:34

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

President Donald Trump met President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine in Ankara, Turkey on July 8, 2026, on the sidelines of the NATO summit. “It’s a great honor to be with President Zelenskyy,” Trump said. “He wants to see a settlement and I think President Putin wants to see a settlement and usually that means a settlement, but who knows? This is a tough one.”

The President described the NATO meeting just concluded as one of unusual unity — “There was a lot of love in that room today. A lot of unity” — and turned to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who joined the meeting: Bessent said the European allies “all attributed you to saving NATO” and were ready to “do what they’re supposed to do.” Trump spoke of a developed relationship with Zelenskyy — “From the Oval Office to now, we’ve developed I think a very good relationship” — and of Ukraine’s assets and its people, including the many Ukrainians in Poland he had met on an earlier stop.

Why it matters

The Ankara bilateral is the summit’s dated Ukraine marker: the President stating, with Zelenskyy beside him and his secretaries of state and treasury in the room, that both belligerents want a settlement. This chronicle files it on the Foreign Policy & Defense hub with the settlement framing attributed to the President.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the President’s statement that both President Zelenskyy and President Putin want a settlement is the administration’s dated position on the war’s trajectory as of the summit. Noted for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Participates in a Bilateral Meeting with the President of Ukraine,” Ankara, Turkey, July 8, 2026 (official upload, embedded above). All characterizations as stated by the participants at the meeting.