Good evening. I'm John Yang. Peace efforts in the war between Russia and Ukraine shift to the White House next week when President Trump meets with Ukrainian President Volodomir Zelensky. Their talks come as Mr. Trump has now aligned himself with Russian President Vladimir Putin, dropping his demand for a ceasefire and backing a comprehensive agreement to end the war instead.

Hours after meeting with Putin and Alaska, Mr. Trump announced his sudden reversal on truth social.

It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine

is to go directly to a peace agreement which would the war, and not a mere ceasefire agreement.

Earlier, the president had told Fox News'

Sean Hannity that the responsibility is now on others.

Now it's really up to President Zelensky to get it done.

And I would also say the European nations,

they have to get involved a little bit.

And now for analysis of all of this, Andrea Kendall Taylor, she's a former senior intelligence officer.

She's now a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

Andrea, in addition to sort of flip-flopping, you're changing his position on the ceasefire.

There are now reports that he's told European leaders that he now supports Russia's demand for territory for peace. Where does this

leave the peace effort? Well, I think this was the big concern going into the Alaska meeting that

President Trump would, in fact, come around to Putin's point of view and join on

to his demands and then force that deal on Ukraine and the Europeans. And then if they reject a deal

that's unjust and unfair to Ukraine, we'll turn around and reassign blame to Ukraine.

You know, I think we're perhaps even in a worse position than we were going in, because I'm

exceptionally concerned that now, after months of suggesting he would ramp up pressure on Russia,

that Trump is once again reversing course and is going to apply that pressure now on Ukraine.

After he spoke with President Trump early this morning, President Zelensky had a social media post

that doesn't directly contradict the president, but he does say the fire must cease on both the

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