Melania Trump calls for peace at meeting with Russia, Ukraine officials

What the report says

US First Lady Melania Trump hosted Russian and Ukrainian officials at the White House in Washington, DC, on Thursday, calling on both sides to build on a recent local ceasefire and work toward a more lasting peace. According to Al Jazeera, the meeting included Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian presidential envoy, and Ukrainian parliamentary representatives David Arakhamia and Dmytro Lubinets, along with Russia’s human rights commissioner, Yana Lantratova.

Trump said the humanitarian truce in Oleshky, a Russian-occupied city in Ukraine’s Kherson region, should be treated as a starting point for broader diplomacy. The White House said the event may have been the first time a US first lady personally brought representatives of two countries at war to the White House for direct diplomacy. She also said she served as an intermediary and had been involved in planning tied to the arrangement.

Ukrainian representatives presented Trump with the Order of Princess Olga, first class, which President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had awarded her earlier in the week. Trump also delivered letters to the Russian and Ukrainian sides. The report said the six-day truce enabled aid deliveries and the evacuation of nearly 800 people from the area, where about 2,000 civilians remained.

Al Jazeera noted that the ceasefire ended without extension and that a later Russian strike on an aid distribution point in Ukraine killed at least 40 people, according to Zelenskyy. New US-brokered talks between Russia and Ukraine are expected in Abu Dhabi on November 10 and 11.