First Lady of the United States Melania Trump is set to welcome senior Russian and Ukrainian delegations to the White House this Thursday, following her unprecedented independent diplomatic push that secured a temporary ceasefire in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, enabling the safe evacuation of hundreds of civilians from the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky. In recognition of her efforts, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky formally conferred Ukraine’s highest state honor for women, the 1st Class Order of Princess Olga, on Melania Trump via official presidential decree, citing her substantial personal humanitarian contributions to Ukraine and long-running advocacy for war-impacted Ukrainian children separated from their families. The White House confirmed that the First Lady single-handedly initiated cross-border engagement between the two warring nations to broker the ceasefire, a milestone described as an unprecedented diplomatic move by a U.S. First Lady, as Melania Trump has historically maintained a low public profile on foreign policy matters. Back in 2025, she revealed that she had established an open direct communication channel with Russian President Vladimir Putin to facilitate the reunification of displaced Ukrainian children with their relatives. The Thursday meeting’s delegations include Ukrainian Human Rights Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets, his Russian counterpart Yana Lantratova, Ukrainian ruling parliamentary party leader Davyd Arakhamia, and Kremlin-aligned senior Russian official and veteran peace negotiator Kirill Dmitriev. Notably, Lubinets and Lantratova made a rare joint trip into Oleshky last week to oversee the civilian evacuation operation, marking a rare moment of cross-conflict cooperation. Diplomatic sources confirmed Arakhamia led informal backchannel communications between the White House and Moscow during the ceasefire negotiation process, while Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov formally verified the composition of the Russian delegation. Neither Russian nor Ukrainian officials have publicly shared granular details of the First Lady’s exact role in brokering the ceasefire, though both sides have repeatedly expressed public gratitude for her mediation efforts. No full agenda for the upcoming White House gathering has been released to the public, though Lubinets posted on social media ahead of his travel to the U.S. that critical high-stakes discussions are scheduled. Melania Trump is also set to deliver formal public remarks on the Oleshky ceasefire at 11:00 local time (16:00 GMT) on Thursday, per the official White House website. The announcement of the White House talks comes as U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff confirmed that Russian, Ukrainian, and American representatives will convene in Abu Dhabi next week for the first trilateral negotiation session since February, with discussions centered on postwar security frameworks and broader conflict de-escalation. The context of these talks follows a 2024 UN ruling that deemed the mass forced deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia a crime against humanity and a war crime; Ukrainian official data estimates nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children have been illegally transferred to Russia and Belarus since the launch of Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022.