ISTANBUL

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced Sunday that she will be joining the upcoming meeting between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Washington, DC on Monday.

“At the request of President Zelenskyy, I will join the meeting with President Trump and other European leaders in the White House tomorrow,” von der Leyen said in a statement on the US social media company X.

Key European leaders, including German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, as well as NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte will also attend the talks in the White House.

The European Commission president further announced that she would welcome the Ukrainian president in Brussels “this afternoon,” adding they will both participate in a meeting of the “Coalition of the Willing” via videoconference.

Trump and Zelenskyy will meet in the Oval Office on Monday afternoon just days after a key summit on the Ukraine war between the US president and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Alaska.

It was the first sitting between the Russian and US presidents since the start of the ongoing war nearly three-and-a-half years ago.

Following the summit, Putin said at a press conference that he and the US president had come to reach an "understanding." Trump, for his part, said they made "some headway" but acknowledged they did not reach an agreement to end the Ukraine war, which began in February 2022.

European leaders expressed readiness to support Trump's efforts to advance peace talks on Ukraine in a joint statement released Saturday, which stressed the need for "ironclad security guarantees" for Kyiv.

The last meeting between the two presidents took place on the sidelines of Pope Francis’ funeral in the Vatican in April.