Russia-Ukraine- Putin agreed to Zelenskyy meeting, WH says - LiveNOW from FOX - video Dailymotion

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The White House announced Tuesday that a bilateral meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy could be coming soon.  "President Trump spoke with President Putin by phone, and he agreed to begin the next phase of the peace process, a meeting between President Putin and President Zelenskyy, which would be followed, if necessary, by a trilateral meeting between President Putin, President Zelensky and President Trump," White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said.   It comes after Trump met with both leaders in recent days as he pushes toward ending the years-long war in Ukraine. Politico reports the White House is eyeing Budapest as a potential site for the peace talks.

Transcript

00:00And welcome back here to Live Now from Fox. I'm Andrew Kraft as we approach the top of a new hour,

00:058 o'clock here on the West Coast. 11 there in Washington, the rain coming down over the White

00:10House. Well, earlier today, President Trump offering his assurances that U.S. troops would

00:16not be sent to Ukraine to defend against Russia after seeming to leave open the possibility the

00:21day before. Trump also said in a morning TV interview on Fox & Friends that Ukraine's hopes

00:27of joining NATO and regaining the Crimean Peninsula are impossible. Fox News correspondent Caroline

00:34Shively with more. After historic summits at the White House and Alaska, President Trump is already

00:42working on the next one, hoping to bring two warring presidents face to face. In order to learn, in order

00:48to move the ball forward with diplomacy and towards peace, you have to have open dialogue. Trump,

00:53playing diplomat-in-chief, hosted Ukrainian President Zelensky and seven other European

00:58leaders at the White House Monday and spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone.

01:03We're setting up a meeting, I sort of set it up, with Putin and Zelensky and, you know,

01:08they're the ones that have to call the shots. European leaders are also anxious to see an end

01:13to the fighting, but want to make sure Russia does not invade again and are embracing NATO-like

01:18protections for Ukraine. If you make any peace deal without security guarantee, Russia will never

01:25respect its words, will never comply with its own commitments. But President Trump stresses any

01:32peacekeeping operations will be led by Europeans with no American boots on the ground in Ukraine.

01:37We're willing to help them with things, especially probably if you could talk about by air, because

01:43there's nobody has the kind of stuff we have. For us, it's important to have these security

01:49guarantees, not only from European leaders, but also from the U.S. President Trump may have to

01:54persuade Putin because Moscow has repeatedly rejected the idea of a European peacekeeping

01:59force in Ukraine. In Washington, Caroline Shigley, Fox News.

02:05Caroline, thanks so much. Bringing into the conversation a familiar face to all of you. That's

02:09Hal Kemper, national security analyst and expert and retired Marine intelligence officer. Hal,

02:15good to see you here. There's a lot to get to. Let's focus first, and you and I were discussing

02:20this yesterday. You had alluded to and highlighted even that Trump was leaving the door open, or at

02:27least not shutting it, to some type of security guarantee in the form of U.S. military presence

02:35in Ukraine. He shut that door today. It's been shut for most of this war. We know that. But he did leave

02:42the door open for this, that it could involve air assets. Could you see U.S. planes in the sky over

02:50Ukraine anytime soon? You know, Andrew, it's interesting. He did kind of tantalizingly leave

02:56that wide open about U.S. forces on the ground. I'm not going to personally, I'm not ruling out that he

03:02might change his mind again as this thing grows and grows or changes and morphs. But he's talking

03:07about air power. And the question about air power is, was he talking about U.S. aircraft maybe providing

03:14some sort of, you know, combat air patrol capability, you know, guarding the skies of Ukraine? That's one

03:22option. I don't know if they've really, you know, formulated this that much. Usually when you talk about

03:27air power, if it's proximate to where the, you know, where the delineation lines are, the, you know,

03:34I could say borders, but I'll say line of control, wherever it is, where they are, then you don't want

03:39them that far back. And depending on what type of air we're talking about, you know, he's saying no

03:44boots on the ground. But if you have U.S. planes at an airfield in Ukraine, you implicitly have to have

03:51some U.S. boots on the ground, just maintaining the planes and doing all the things that are required.

03:56So there's a lot that's packed into that term air. It's not, it's not as simple as it sounds. I don't

04:03know, maybe the president thought it was kind of basic because he's maybe thinking like what we did

04:07in Iran or something like that. But, but actually there's a lot packed into that concept.

04:12Okay. Yeah. I was, I was kind of curious too. I mean, we have given them F-16s, not many of them,

04:17but they're being flown by Ukrainian pilots after we trained them. And so I was wondering whether or not,

04:24you know, if there were to be U.S. planes in the sky, whether or not they'll be flown by U.S.

04:29pilots, it doesn't seem like that's the case here. Let's get into the diplomacy of all this. How

04:34has Putin responded to any of this? Heard from Sergey Lavrov today, didn't we? What did he say?

04:40Well, basically they're keeping it kind of open, if you will. What they have said is they're going to

04:45raise it up several levels of diplomacy in terms of whatever discussions are going on. Lavrov,

04:51I think has made it pretty clear that it's not, you shouldn't have any European forces on the

04:56ground. And that's kind of what they've, they've kind of been saying all along is there should be

05:00nothing there. I won't get into the exact language because some of the language I heard was a little

05:04bit stronger than that. But they do not, they see that as in some cases there were some of them almost

05:11felt that that was tantamount to, you know, almost like a NATO presence or something like that.

05:16So they're very much opposed to this. It's very confusing as to what the Russian position is right

05:23now, because you have a lot of different voices saying stuff. And a lot of people reading in what

05:27some of the talking heads are saying on television as representing Putin's decisions or policy or

05:35whatever he's trying to say. Putin has been rather publicly quiet on this whole thing. And I find that

05:42rather interesting that he hasn't, he hasn't certainly not agreed to a bilateral trilateral

05:46agreement by any means yet. And so he's keeping that wide open and, and whatever they are agreeing

05:52to isn't really quite clear at all at this point. It's, you know, we hear from the White House talking

05:58about what they have agreed to with Putin, but we don't hear Putin or the Kremlin explaining what

06:04they've agreed to. And, and I, and I have found it a little bit difficult to follow where ground truth is

06:10today. Okay. So the Kremlin has not yet said whether Putin is committed to a face-to-face

06:16meeting with the Ukrainian leader. I mean, the White House and European leaders are operating

06:21on the assumption that we're on the road to that. And we're going to get into this later. A possible

06:28location is being talked about on that meeting itself between Zelensky and Putin. I want to put this

06:36up though from the Kremlin side, Jackie Heinrich quoting Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister of

06:41Russia. Lavrov says planning for next Russia-Ukraine meeting will happen, quote unquote, step by step

06:48gradually so that it is not for the sake of someone writing in the newspapers or showing on TV.

06:55Lavrov says, we're not declining any form of work, either bilateral or trilateral. The president has

07:02repeatedly said this. The main thing is that any formats like one plus one, one plus two and multilateral

07:07formats of which there are also many, including by the way, within the framework of the United

07:12Nations, so that all these formats are included, not for the sake of someone writing in the newspapers

07:17in the morning or showing on TV in the evening or chattering on social network, trying to disrupt,

07:23you know, such a propaganda foam to skim and step by step, gradually starting from the expert level

07:30and then going through all the necessary steps in order to prepare the summits. This is the kind of

07:35serious approach we will always support. Okay, what was that, Hal? A lot of word salad there.

07:41What are you saying? Yeah, that is authentic Russian gibberish. That is stuff that they put out

07:48all the time. If you can find a real, any part of real meaning into any of that, good luck. That is a

07:58sort of, you know, covering it with a lot of different language and stuff that sounds, on the one hand,

08:03a little positive, a little bit negative and condemnatory, a lot of different things. You heard

08:08him allude to some of that TV stuff. I was alluding personally to some of the Russian talking heads that

08:14have been out there saying stuff. Of course, he's aiming at the U.S. talking heads, I guess maybe

08:20indirectly aiming at me, that have been saying a variety of things about this. But as you can see,

08:27there is nothing in there where they have agreed to a meeting. They're talking about a very gradual

08:33process. You can drive a back truck to the gap of what they mean by gradual process, which means

08:39now President Trump is saying this has to happen by the end of the month. I don't read that from what

08:45Lavrov's saying. It looks like a very gradual thing. And I don't know that Putin will be showing up in a

08:51foreign capital before the end of the month. I'm not ruling it out. But based on what I'm seeing there and

08:56everything else I've heard, they aren't pushing Putin to leave the Kremlin and head off to some foreign

09:02capital for some meeting just yet. Okay. So Hal, what was so interesting, and this kind of got lost in all the

09:08coverage of the European leaders visiting Washington yesterday. Now, Friedrich Mertz, he's the new German

09:14chancellor. He turned to Trump at the table and basically proffered the idea that shouldn't we get

09:21a ceasefire on the table first, then you can have a Putin-Zelensky bilateral summit. Trump kind of

09:29waved him off. What was Mertz trying to do there? Well, Mertz was saying basically, and Macron alluded

09:35to it as well, but what Mertz was very, very clearly saying, and he kept saying it over and over again,

09:40and actually got a little reaction from Italian Prime Minister Maloney, which was kind of indicating

09:46she thought maybe he'd said it too much, was that they need a ceasefire. Now, there is a very big

09:51reason why a ceasefire is so important. First off, under the UN Charter, it's written in there,

09:58you know, you can't, you know, relegate or have an agreement to give away your sovereign territory to

10:04a foreign country based on force of arms or military force, which is exactly what's going on here.

10:10So they, so Ukraine is put in a position where it's being asked to make this violation of the UN

10:17Charter just by this agreement. And then of course, the treaty, if there was a treaty or an agreement,

10:23it would doubly be, be basically void under the UN Charter because the agreement was reached under

10:29force of arms and military force. So there is a basic international law thing. Now, what we have

10:35seen since the Cold War and since the start of the UN is we have had truces. And there is a truth

10:44that a lot of times these demarcation lines, these lines of control, wherever the borders or the lines

10:52end at the truce tend to get fixed into de facto borders. That is the truth. But to have a ceasefire,

11:01that is legal under international law. They can't do that. And I think that's why he said, look, we can't

11:07go down this route until we have a ceasefire in place. He said it very clearly. Macron said it a little

11:14more softly, but it wasn't just Mert saying it. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of these words and they mean

11:21slightly ever different things. Truce, ceasefire, peace proposal. I want to just pose this to you also,

11:29Hal, from Jackie Heinrich, that a White House official confirming chairman of the Joint Chiefs,

11:34General Dan Cain, will host his military counterparts from Germany, the UK, France,

11:39Finland, and Italy in Washington this week to discuss security guarantees and how to implement

11:45them. I mean, do you get the sense we were talking yesterday, Hal, about the momentum

11:49that's on the side of Ukraine and Washington and Europe here. But do you get the sense right now,

11:55since we haven't heard much from Moscow, that we may be putting the car before the horse on a lot

12:01of this? Well, I think we're getting everything and everything kind of organized, coordinated,

12:06getting all of our plans in place. Okay. I think we're also recognizing, you know, as you know,

12:11I teach planning process to international military officers and stuff like that. Now's the time you

12:18start doing that. Now's the time you start building those courses of action. What type of forces would

12:23you put in there? How would you get those forces in there? How would you support those forces in

12:28there? Where would you locate those forces? That's a lot of detailed planning, not something

12:32you want to wait till the very end and then start that planning process. What I was seeing today is

12:37that these meetings could begin as early as tomorrow. That tells you how fast Dan Cain's working

12:43on this, getting these foreign senior military chiefs in there to start working on this. This is where

12:50you start building the broad outline of what the security guarantee is going to look like.

12:56You start looking, you start developing different courses of action. You start vetting those,

13:01reviewing them, assessing them, and then you start picking the ones that seem to work best.

13:06And so he's getting that planning process underway. At some point, he'll step back and they're going

13:11to turn it over to basically joint planning groups or combined planning groups in this case,

13:17which is a multinational planning group, which will work together on this stuff. But they want

13:21to give them some direction. And that's what they're working on right now. And you're right.

13:25It is moving extremely fast.

13:29I only say it's moving fast because I want to highlight an exclusive in Politico today.

13:34And it goes as follows, Hal, that the White House is planning for a possible trilateral meeting

13:39between U.S., Russian and Ukrainian presidents in the Hungarian capital of Budapest as the next steps

13:46in negotiating the end to the war here. Their reporting house suggests this. The U.S. Secret

13:51Service is preparing for the summit already in the Central European nation led by Prime Minister

13:57Viktor Orban. What do you make of the reporting on the possible choice of location? Hungary,

14:04Orban. What do we know about them? Well, Orban, as you know, is unique. I think in the annals of the

14:11European Union, I think many, many chiefs there would say he's kind of a pain, but he maintains

14:17cordial relations with Russia. At the same time, he's very close to President Trump. So there's a

14:23certain logic that goes into that. Now, Budapest is an interesting choice. If you may recall,

14:28back in 94, Budapest was also the city where Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear weapons

14:35in exchange for security guarantees from the United States and the United Kingdom. Security

14:41guarantees that never really quite came about when they really needed them, as you may recall. So

14:45there's a little bit of a legacy with Budapest as a city itself for making an agreement that basically

14:53is not forgotten in Kiev, I'll tell you that much. Now, they've also talked about Geneva.

14:57My understanding is that the Swiss have actually said that they will extend immunity

15:02to Putin. Remember, he's got an international criminal court warrant for his arrest. They will

15:08extend immunity to him if he comes to Geneva for meeting. So that's very interesting. And then

15:14kind of on the outside, I don't rule it out, Doha keeps coming up down in Qatar. It keeps coming up

15:20over and over as well. So Trump and Putin are really close to Orban. You know, sometimes for similar

15:27reasons, other times for different reasons here. If you had your way, Hal, would you have this in

15:32Budapest? Some critics of this report today were sarcastically saying, why not St. Petersburg?

15:41You know, that's another thing. You know, and you and I have talked about this. There is a physical

15:47threat to Zelensky. Putin has tried to assassinate him multiple times. Going to a foreign capital,

15:55albeit NATO, albeit in the European Union, but going to a foreign capital where the chief of state,

16:02you know, Viktor Orban, is basically friendly with Putin, the guy who's been trying to kill you.

16:07Just from a basic security standpoint, that should make everyone nervous. I thought it was interesting

16:13that the U.S. sent the Secret Service over there to start checking out these venues right away,

16:18which makes me wonder if the Secret Service is going to take some sort of special responsibility

16:23to make sure that Zelensky is protected if it turns out to be Budapest. Now, Budapest does make sense

16:29another way. They do share a small common border with Ukraine. So it does. There are some reasons why

16:36Budapest would pop up. I kind of would like to see Geneva. I think that would be an interesting one.

16:41That's very neutral. Of course, I remember when it first came up, someone said, well,

16:46you can go to Geneva. I said, well, yeah. And then they put handcuffs on them and sent them off to

16:50the Hague. But then the Swiss came out and kind of made that rather extraordinary offer of immunity.

16:56So we'll see which way it ends. All right. Hal Kemper, as always,

17:00can't thank you enough for helping us make sense of this conflict and the diplomacy

17:04that's coming out of it. Hal, we'll talk soon.

Russia-Ukraine- Putin agreed to Zelenskyy meeting, WH says - LiveNOW from FOX

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