US President Donald Trump will meet with Vladimir Putin in Alaska next Friday to discuss ending the war in Ukraine. The meeting will be held without the president of the invaded country, Volodymyr Zelensky, who warned Saturday that decisions made without kyiv are"stillborn."

Trump indicated that any deal would likely involve "some exchange of territory," but did not provide further details. Putin claims four Ukrainian regions: Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson, as well as the Crimean Peninsula, which he annexed in 2014. His forces do not fully control all of the four regions. President Zelensky warned Saturday that Ukraine could not violate its constitution on territorial issues, adding that"Ukrainians will not give up their land to the occupiers." In a video address to the nation posted on his Telegram channel on Saturday, Zelensky said any decision without Ukraine would be a decision against peace.

"They won't achieve anything. They're failed decisions. They're unworkable decisions. And we all need real and genuine peace," he insisted.

Trump had commented that"President Putin, I think, wants peace, and Zelensky wants peace." He indicated that "to be fair to President Zelensky, he'll get everything he needs, assuming we get something done." "Not easy," Trump said."But we're going to get something back. We're going to make some changes. There will be some exchange of territory, to the benefit of both parties." The Ukrainian constitution prohibits the Ukrainian president from ceding any territory. A similar situation exists in Russia, a country that has even incorporated territories held by Ukraine into its constitution.

Previously, Bloomberg News reported that US and Russian officials were working toward a deal that would cement Moscow's occupation of the territory seized during its military invasion. Under the purported agreement, Russia would halt its offensive in the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions along the current battle lines. A White House official said the Bloomberg article was pure speculation. A Kremlin spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment, Reuters reports.

"These are decisions that cannot work. A peace that people respect," Zelensky said in an English-language message posted on X. Zelensky, who had demanded to be present at a leaders' summit on ending the war, as well as European participation. Analysts and diplomats have warned that Putin may be more interested in recreating diplomacy to have time to punish Ukraine than in securing a peace deal.

The Ukrainian president indirectly alluded to the leaked information about Trump's alleged proposal to Putin, which, according to some media outlets, would involve freezing the conflict in exchange for lifting sanctions against Moscow."We are not going to reward Russia for what it has perpetrated," he emphasized, noting that all international partners must understand"what a dignified peace is." Zelensky pointed out, on the one hand, that it must be Russia that ends the war, since it is the one that started it and is prolonging it. He also once again rejected the possibility that an agreement with Russia would imply even a formal transfer of Ukrainian territories. The Ukrainian president concluded by emphasizing his willingness to work with Trump and the rest of his partners towards a"real and, above all, lasting" peace, one that is not in danger of"collapsing because of Moscow's wishes."

The outcome of the process remains uncertain.Beyond the territorial question, several equally thorny issues would need to be resolved. Among them, whether Zelensky would obtain security guarantees from Europe, the United States, or NATO to prevent Russia from suspending and then resuming a war to try to take over the rest of the country. Putin has also demanded strict limits on the amount of weapons the West could provide to Ukraine and has expressed his desire to change the government in Ukraine.

TRUMP IN MOSCOW?

The Kremlin confirmed Friday's summit in a statement. The two leaders"will focus on discussing options for achieving a long-term, peaceful solution to the Ukrainian crisis," said Putin's foreign adviser, Yuri Ushakov. The two leaders' decision to meet on US soil is"quite logical," Ushakov added, noting that Russia and the United States are"close neighbors." "This will obviously be a difficult process, but we will participate in it actively and vigorously," Ushakov said.

The Kremlin has announced a possible second meeting between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. They want to hold it on Russian territory. According to Yuri Ushakov, Moscow has already extended an invitation to Washington.

"Russia and the United States are close neighbors, sharing a border. And it seems entirely logical that our delegation will simply cross the Bering Strait and that such an important and long-awaited summit between the leaders of both countries will be held in Alaska," Yuri Ushakov told reporters, as quoted by TASS.

The meeting came about following US envoy Steve Witkoff's visit to Moscow last Thursday, the day before the expiration of Trump's ultimatum for Russia to take steps to end the war, or face new sanctions. But Trump seemed unwilling to follow through on that threat after announcing his meeting with Putin.

Trump and Putin haven't met in person since the 2019 G8 summit in Osaka, Japan, but have spoken by phone multiple times over the past year. Putin's last visit to the U.S. was in 2015, when he attended the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York. The meeting in Alaska would be the first U.S.-Russia summit since 2021, when former President Joe Biden met with Putin in Geneva.

A White House official told CBS News that there was a possibility the Ukrainian president could also attend next week's meeting, although there has been no mention of such a decision from Moscow so far.

Welcoming the news of Saturday's meeting, the influential head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, Kirill Dmitriev, called on Moscow and Washington to"unite on environmental protection, infrastructure, and energy issues in the Arctic and beyond," but said nothing about the prospects for the two leaders making progress toward peace in Ukraine.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said in an assessment Thursday that"Putin remains uninterested in ending his war and is seeking to extract bilateral concessions from the United States without meaningfully engaging in a peace process" because he "continues to believe that time is on Russia's side and that Russia can outlast Ukraine and the West."