US president Donald Trump will meet Russian president Vladimir Putin on August 15th in Alaska to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, Mr Trump said on Friday.
Mr Trump made the highly anticipated announcement on social media after he said that the parties, including Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, were close to a ceasefire deal that could resolve the 3½-year conflict, one that could require Ukraine to surrender significant territory.
Addressing reporters at the White House earlier on Friday, Mr Trump suggested an agreement would involve some exchange of land.
“There’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both,” the Republican president said.
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However, Mr Zelenskiy said on Saturday that Ukraine could not violate its constitution on the territorial issues, adding that “Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupiers.”
The Kremlin confirmed the summit in an online statement.
The two leaders will “focus on discussing options for achieving a long-term peaceful resolution to the Ukrainian crisis,” Putin aide Yuri Ushakov said.
“This will evidently be a challenging process, but we will engage in it actively and energetically,” Ushakov said.
In a video address to the nation posted on his Telegram channel on Saturday, Mr Zelenskiy said that any decisions without Ukraine would be decisions against peace.
“They will not achieve anything. These are stillborn decisions. They are unworkable decisions. And we all need real and genuine peace,” Mr Zelenskiy said.
Mr Putin claims four Ukrainian regions – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – as well as the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which he annexed in 2014. His forces do not fully control all the territory in the four regions.
Earlier, Bloomberg News reported that US and Russian officials were working towards an agreement that would lock in Moscow’s occupation of territory seized during its military invasion.
A White House official said the Bloomberg story was speculation. A Kremlin spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. Reuters was unable to confirm aspects of the Bloomberg report.
Ukraine has previously signalled a willingness to be flexible in the search for an end to a war that has ravaged its towns and cities and killed large numbers of its soldiers and citizens.
But accepting the loss of about a fifth of Ukraine’s territory would be painful and politically challenging for Mr Zelenskiy and his government.
Tyson Barker, the US state department’s former deputy special representative for Ukraine’s economic recovery, said the peace proposal as outlined in the Bloomberg report would be immediately rejected by the Ukrainians.
“The best the Ukrainians can do is remain firm in their objections and their conditions for a negotiated settlement, while demonstrating their gratitude for American support,” said Mr Barker, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council.
Under the putative deal, according to Bloomberg, Russia would halt its offensive in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions along current battle lines.
Since his return to the White House in January, Mr Trump has moved to mend relations with Russia and sought to end the war. In his public comments he has veered between admiration and sharp criticism of Mr Putin.
In a sign of his growing frustration with Mr Putin’s refusal to halt Russia’s military offensive, Mr Trump had threatened to impose new sanctions and tariffs from Friday against Moscow and countries that buy its exports unless the Russian leader agreed to end the conflict, the deadliest in Europe since the second World War.
It was unclear by Friday evening whether those sanctions would take effect or be delayed or cancelled.
The administration took a step toward punishing Moscow’s oil customers on Wednesday, imposing an additional 25 per cent tariff on goods from India over its imports of Russian oil, marking the first financial penalty aimed at Russia in Mr Trump’s second term.
Mr Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff held three hours of talks with Mr Putin in Moscow on Wednesday that both sides described as constructive.
Polish prime minister Donald Tusk, a close ally of Ukraine, said earlier on Friday that a pause in the conflict could be close. He was speaking after talks with Mr Zelenskiy.
“There are certain signals, and we also have an intuition, that perhaps a freeze in the conflict – I don’t want to say the end, but a freeze in the conflict – is closer than it is further away,” Mr Tusk told a news conference. “There are hopes for this.”
Mr Tusk also said Mr Zelenskiy was “very cautious but optimistic” and that Ukraine was keen that Poland and other European countries play a role in planning for a ceasefire and an eventual peace settlement. – Reuters
