Melania Trump to bring Russian and Ukrainian representatives to White House this week
By Kit Maher, CNN
(CNN) — First lady Melania Trump will bring representatives from Russia and Ukraine to the White House on Thursday, after announcing a ceasefire in the city of Oleshky last month.
“First Lady Melania Trump will personally bring representatives of Russia and Ukraine, two nations actively at war, together at the White House,” the first lady’s office said on Tuesday, touting the limited ceasefire as an “unprecedented diplomatic initiative by an American First Lady.”
Trump will host Ukraine’s ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets and his Russian counterpart Yana Lantratova, according to Ukrainian and Russian authorities.
Lubinets and Lantratova have met before, most recently during the Oleshky ceasefire last week. Neither has been involved in top-level negotiations with the US delegations before, but they are expected to be accompanied by officials who have.
The Kremlin announced on Wednesday that Lantratova would be accompanied by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy Kirill Dmitriev, who is an experienced negotiator. Ukrainian media reported that the lawmaker and negotiator David Arakhamia would be joining Lubinets for the meeting.
Trump, who will also deliver remarks on the limited ceasefire, has kept a much lower profile during her husband’s second term. But while she’s eschewed some of the more traditional roles of the job, she’s engaged behind the scenes in more substantive policy work.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Wednesday that he’d awarded the first lady the Order of Princess Olga, a Ukrainian civil decoration. It celebrates her “significant personal contributions” to humanitarian support for Ukraine, and her “active human rights and charitable work aimed at rescuing Ukrainian children and citizens.”
Trump announced on October 23 that she had secured a localized ceasefire to facilitate the humane evacuation of elderly residents from Oleshky. The limited ceasefire began on October 27 and concluded on Sunday. Hundreds of people were evacuated from Oleshky and returned to Ukraine, including one man who hadn’t seen his wife for 1,711 days.
The humanitarian situation had become so dire in Oleshky that some residents were forced to eat grass and weeds without access to medicine, clean water or electricity, Andrii Sybiha, Ukraine’s foreign minister, said last month.
Trump’s office said that she worked directly with Ukrainian and Russian leadership as the “exclusive intermediary” through channels she previously established while working to reunite children separated from their families during the war.
“The mission was a success, delivering critical aid to the region and enabling the evacuation of nearly 800 people,” Trump posted on X, adding that she hoped Oleshky “serves as a foundation for lasting peace between both nations.”
The first lady’s office said last month that the circumstances of Oleshky came to her attention during a private discussion at the 81st United Nations General Assembly in New York.
CNN previously reported that Pope Leo discussed the humanitarian crisis in Oleshky on a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier in October while in the hospital recovering from lung cancer surgery, according to the Vatican. The Kremlin said that Putin “supported” the Vatican’s intention to help alleviate the conditions.
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CNN’s Victoria Butenko and Anna Chernova contributed reporting.
