US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that Ukraine must reach an agreement to end the conflict with Russia because “Russia is a very powerful country and they are not”, following a summit at which Vladimir Putin reportedly asked for more Ukrainian territory.
At a subsequent briefing with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a source familiar with the talks cited Trump as saying the Russian leader had offered to freeze most of the front lines if Kyiv's forces ceded all of Donetsk, an industrial region that is one of Moscow's top targets.
Zelensky rejected the demand, the source said. Russia already controls a fifth of Ukraine, including about three-quarters of the Donetsk region, which it first invaded in 2014.
Trump also said he agreed with Putin that a peace deal should be sought without a preliminary ceasefire, which Ukraine and its European allies, who continue to receive support from the United States, have sought.
Zelenskiy said he would meet Trump in Washington on Monday, while Kyiv's European allies praised Trump's efforts but vowed to support Ukraine and tighten sanctions on Russia. The source said European leaders had also been invited to talks on Monday.
Trump's meeting with Putin in Alaska on Friday, the first US-Russia summit since Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, lasted just three hours.
“Everyone has come to the conclusion that the best way to end the terrible war between Russia and Ukraine is to move directly to a peace agreement that ends the conflict, not just a ceasefire that often fails to hold,” Trump wrote in Truth Social.
His many comments on the meeting will be welcomed in Moscow, which says it wants a full settlement rather than a temporary pause, but that will be difficult because the positions are “diametrically opposed”.
Russian troops have been steadily advancing for months. The war, Europe's deadliest in 80 years, has killed and wounded more than a million people on both sides, including thousands, mostly civilians, in Ukraine, analysts estimate.
Trump said before the summit that he would not be satisfied unless a ceasefire was agreed upon. But afterward, he added that after talks with Zelensky on Monday, “if all goes well, we will schedule a meeting with President Putin.”
Monday's talks will be reminiscent of the White House Oval Office meeting in February, where Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance publicly humiliated Zelensky.
Zelensky said he was ready to meet with Putin.
But Putin showed no change in Russia's long-standing position on the issue and made no public mention of a meeting with Zelensky. His aide Yuri Ushakov told Russia's state-run TASS news agency that a trilateral summit had not been discussed.
In an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, Trump hinted that he and Putin had discussed land transfers and security guarantees for Ukraine and “we came to a general agreement.”
“I think we are quite close to an agreement,” he said, adding: “Ukraine has to agree to it. They might say 'no.'”
Asked what advice he would give Zelensky, Trump replied: “We need to make a deal.”
“Look, Russia is a very big power, and they are not,” he said.
Zelensky has repeatedly insisted that he cannot cede territory without changing Ukraine's constitution, and Kyiv views Donetsk's “fortress cities” such as Slovyansk and Kramatorsk as bulwarks against Russian advances into even larger regions.
Zelensky also insisted on security guarantees for Kyiv to prevent Russia from invading again in the future. He said he had discussed with Trump “positive signals from the American side” about engaging in the conflict, and that Ukraine needed a lasting peace rather than “another pause” between Russian incursions.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said the most interesting points of the summit concerned security guarantees based on Article 5 of the transatlantic NATO alliance.
“The starting point of the proposal is the definition
Sourse: breakingnews.ie
