by Sharon Rondeau
(Aug. 19, 2025) — In a telephone interview on Tuesday’s Fox & Friends, President Donald Trump told the three co-hosts he was able to gather leaders of five European countries, Ukraine and the European Union on short notice Monday as a result of their revived respect for the United States.
The high-profile confab occurred three days after Trump held a summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, AK to begin what he hoped would be a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine, which Putin invaded on February 24, 2022.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyden, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and the presidents or prime ministers of the UK, Finland, Italy, France and Germany met at the White House Monday afternoon following Trump’s one-on-one meeting with Zelenskyy.
When asked how the meeting came together so rapidly, Trump replied, “When I made the call, they came.”
Crimea is an issue between Zelenskyy and Putin, Trump told the co-hosts, having been seized by Russia in 2014, “all because Barack Hussein Obama gave it away in one of the greatest real-estate deals I’ve ever seen,” Trump said.
“We’re going to find out about President Putin in the next couple of weeks,” he continued, acknowledging that doubt still exists as to Putin’s sincerity to “make a deal.”
“What kind of assurances” exist, co-host Charlie Hurt asked, for Ukraine’s security should an agreement be reached, to which Trump said, “Well, you have my assurance…”
He said Monday’s meeting could not be done in “a month,” as one national leader had suggested, due to the number of deaths occurring on both sides of the 3.5-year armed conflict.
“This was a war, and Russia is a powerful military nation…it’s not a war that should have been started. If it wasn’t for the greatest military equipment — we make the greatest military equipment in the world — we gave them a lot of equipment,” he said of Ukraine, although, he countered, Ukrainian forces were “brave as he**.”
The European leaders are more directly affected by the Russia-Ukraine war than the U.S., Trump said. “I think if a deal is made, Russia’s had it; they’ve all had it;…there’ll be some form of security. It can’t be NATO…” he added.
“It was always thought Ukraine was sort-of a buffer between Russia and Europe,” he said.
The U.S. is “now paying nothing” for Ukraine to be armed, Trump said, as a result of an agreement reached in May with NATO members to pay for U.S. armaments and supply them to Ukraine.
He called Putin after the meeting with Zelenskyy, he confirmed, at “like 1:00 in the morning” in Russia. “We had a very good call, and I told him we’re going to set up a meeting with President Zelenskyy…,” he said.
“I just want to end it,” he added, stressing that American soldiers are not involved, but “7,000 a week are being killed.”
“If I get can to heaven, this will be one of the reasons,” he told the co-hosts.