THE RIGHT Melania Trump to Host Russian, Ukrainian Envoys at White House Thursday
The meeting follows a five-day ceasefire around Oleshky that evacuated hundreds of civilians — an operation the White House says the first lady personally brokered.
First Lady Melania Trump will host Russian and Ukrainian representatives at the White House on Thursday, delivering remarks on a ceasefire her office says she personally brokered, the White House announced Tuesday. The 11 a.m. ET session on Nov. 5 follows a five-day humanitarian ceasefire around Oleshky, in Russian-occupied Kherson, that let several hundred civilians evacuate before it ended Sunday evening.
The White House statement calls Thursday's meeting “an extraordinary moment in American history” and describes the ceasefire itself as an “unprecedented diplomatic initiative.” The administration says the first lady independently initiated engagement between the two countries, which have been at war since Russia's February 2022 invasion. The White House has not named which representatives will attend or said whether the meeting is expected to produce a broader agreement.
The Oleshky evacuation ran from Oct. 27 under an agreement between Ukraine and Russia with the United States acting as guarantor, according to Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine's Parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights, who said representatives of all three countries signed copies of the ceasefire document. Most of the evacuated civilians chose to relocate to Ukrainian-controlled territory. Ukrainian military personnel raised concerns that Russia used the pause to rotate troops and move equipment; Lubinets disputed those claims, saying the activity Ukraine observed was demining work. Several hundred people, possibly as many as 1,000, reportedly remain in Oleshky.
Thursday's meeting builds on a diplomatic channel the first lady has run since October 2025, when she began direct outreach to Russian President Vladimir Putin's team, separate from the broader U.S.-brokered peace process her husband has pursued. That channel has focused chiefly on reuniting Ukrainian children separated from their families by the war; the White House announced the third such reunification in February and a fourth in April.