President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrives at the White House on Friday with a personal appeal to persuade Donald Trump not to sell out his country in the rush to make a peace deal with Russia.

The worst fears seemed to fade a bit on the eve of the trip, as the American president blithely walked back his denunciation of his Ukrainian counterpart as a “dictator” just last week.

“Did I say that? I can’t believe I said that,” Trump told reporters Thursday. “We’re going to get along really well,” he added later, speaking alongside U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Yet the more polite tone couldn’t offset Trump’s refusal to commit to deliver what Starmer, speaking for Kyiv and the rest of its European allies, wanted: assurances that the U.S. would be ready to back up the troops they’re offering to send to Ukraine to ensure Russia abides by any peace deal.

Ukraine and its allies in Europe see the promise of U.S. military involvement as critical to prevent Russia from invading again in the future, after previous agreements failed to deter President Vladimir Putin. French President Emmanuel Macron was at the White House on Monday making a case that Starmer echoed on Thursday.

“We’ve got to make sure it’s a deal that lasts,” Starmer said. “That’s why we need to make sure that it’s secure.”

Trump, eager to extricate the U.S. from a war that he says should be primarily Europe’s problem, wouldn’t be pinned down. “I don’t like to talk about peacekeeping until we have a deal,” he told Starmer. “Right now, we don’t have a deal.”

Still, British officials said afterward that they felt they were leaving Washington in a better position than when they arrived. Trump seemed to understand that some form of American security guarantee was needed to deter Putin and achieve a lasting peace, they said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

U.K. officials were also more assured that the Trump administration wasn’t planning to turn its back the trans-Atlantic security alliance, although they cautioned that there was still much more diplomatic work to do by Europe to shore up American support.

European officials took some encouragement from the fact that Zelenskyy was coming to Washington — and that he was meeting Trump before Putin. The Ukrainian leader is going to seal an agreement handing the U.S. a big stake in future revenues from Ukrainian minerals and other resources as compensation for its support.

Kyiv initially balked at the terms, prompting Trump’s public attack on Zelenskyy last week. The final version omits a $500 billion figure for the value of the U.S. share that Washington originally sought.

Zelenskyy hopes to use the minerals agreement as a starting point for broader discussions about U.S. security guarantees, according to officials in Kyiv.

“The hope is that just by signing it, it will give Donald Trump the perception of having done a deal, having received a payback for the support that he has given to Ukraine,” said Liana Fix, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

As Trump shakes decades-old alliances, allies, too, are hoping that business deals may help sustain fraying ties.

“If the United States has a big economic interest in critical minerals in Ukraine, then the United States also has a big interest in making sure that Ukraine survives as a sovereign country, and it’s not just rolled over by Russia,” said Matthew Kroenig, vice president at the Atlantic Council. “From Trump’s point of view, more of a businessman than a military man, it may be an even better security guarantee than NATO membership.”

Britain and France have proposed deploying “reassurance” forces to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire with Russia. But the pair of founding NATO members want American security guarantees, including air power and intelligence, to deter future aggression by Moscow.

Before the talks, a British official said even some ambiguity from the U.S. could provide a deterrent, leaving Putin uncertain about what the U.S. would do if he were to attack European peacekeepers. But the U.S. and Europe both want the other to make their commitments first, making the discussions complex, the official said, asking not to be identified commenting on matters that aren’t public.

Trump shocked Kyiv and its other allies when he called Putin earlier this month, reversing years of White House efforts to isolate the Russian leader and suggesting the two could soon meet for a summit. Then the U.S. broke with allies over a United Nations resolution blaming Moscow for its invasion, siding instead with Russia, Belarus and North Korea.

Putin has welcomed the White House’s approach. “The first contacts with the new American administration give us some hope,” Putin said in a televised speech, highlighting what he called Trump’s “pragmatism.”

Thursday, Trump said there had been “a lot of progress” toward a deal to end the war and that he’s confident Putin will keep his word if one is reached. “It’ll either be fairly soon or it won’t be at all,” Trump said.

Zelenskyy has repeatedly warned that the Russian leader can’t be trusted, a case he’s likely to make in the White House again Friday.

“It’s at least a symbolic win for Zelenskyy,” said Fix of the Council on Foreign Relations. “If a meeting with Putin would have taken place before meeting with Zelenskyy, the optics would have been terrible.”

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