WASHINGTON. Several diplomatic offensives have been launched following US President Donald Trump's announcement on Saturday that he would meet Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday.

The most important one was initiated by Ukraine after Trump admitted on Thursday that he was willing to meet with Putin without Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which would give the Russian leader his first success - negotiations in a great-power format in which Russia and the US would reach an agreement without Europe and Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held telephone talks with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Saturday.

"The future of Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukrainians," the Kyiv Post newspaper quotes the French president as saying.

"I spoke with the French president. I thank him for his support. We exchanged views on the diplomatic situation. It is very important that the Russians are not able to deceive anyone again," the Ukrainian president wrote on the X network.

Vladimir Putin also met with the leaders of China, India, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan on Friday.

The leaders of the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Finland and the European Commission have come out in support of Ukraine in a joint statement, the BBC reported on Sunday.

Putin can be happy

Trump's"ultimatum" expired on Friday, threatening Moscow with 100% tariffs on its trading partners if it did not enter into ceasefire negotiations.

That hasn't happened yet, and Putin likely got the opportunity to meet Trump on a level after Wednesday's meeting with Trump's emissary, Steve Witkoff.

It is from Witkoff's visit to Moscow that the widely publicized assumption that Moscow is now willing to negotiate territorial changes comes, which Kiev has so far rejected, saying that Ukrainians will not hand over their land to the occupier.

"Putin has had a very good week. He has extricated himself from a vulnerable position and maneuvered the entire process into the position he essentially wanted to be in," Sam Greene, a professor of Russian politics at King's College London, told the New York Times.

The daily adds that few experts today believe that Putin will be willing to stop the war solely on the basis of territorial concessions.

Greene pointed out that Russia's goal is still total control of Ukraine. Excluding the possibility of joining NATO, excluding the presence of foreign peacekeeping troops, limiting the size of the Ukrainian armed forces - in other words, its defenselessness against Russia.

Will they invite Zelensky too?

Meanwhile, foreign media are discussing the format of the Alaska summit. There is speculation that the Trump-Putin meeting would be followed by a meeting between Trump and Zelensky, and the possibility of a trilateral meeting is also being considered, although Putin would prefer a"great power format".

If Trump wants to claim foreign policy success, he will not be able to leave out the Ukrainian president. But Putin still faces several options in which he has an advantage, Alexander Gabuyev of the Carnegie Center in Berlin tells the NYT.

The Russian leader still has the option of Trump offering him a favorable deal that they will try to force on Ukraine, which it will either accept or not. If Kiev rejects it, Trump can leave Ukraine altogether.

Another possibility is that Putin will drag out the war in its current form for another year, year and a half, hoping that Ukraine will run out of soldiers and money before Russia.

According to Gabuyev, Putin understands that Trump will be willing to offer him things that no other American president would give him, which means opportunities for Moscow to divide the Western alliance.

"If they can convince Trump to recognize Russia's claim to the occupied territories, even if Ukraine and Europe disagree, it could drive a long-term wedge between the US and Europe," said Sam Greene.

However, according to Gabuyev, Putin will not stop the war anyway, because if its result were to be a truncated but sovereign Ukraine with a strong army and allies in the West and capable of producing its own weapons, he would not be willing to accept it.

Europe must protect itself

The meeting, requested by US Vice President J. D. Vance, was held near London on Saturday and was attended by British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, Ukraine's Security Council chief Rustem Umerov and Zelensky's chancellor Andriy Yermak, along with representatives of the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Finland and NATO, the BBC reports.

The station reported that the White House is trying to convince Europe to agree to a deal that would cede Crimea and occupied territories in the Ukrainian Donbas to Russia.

In a joint statement, European leaders stressed that"international borders must not be changed by force" and confirmed that they would continue to support Ukraine diplomatically, militarily and financially.

European leaders are fighting to ensure they are not left out of any negotiations because the eventual resolution of Russia's war in Ukraine also has an impact on European security, a point French President Emmanuel Macron has also stressed.

Unnamed Ukrainian officials according to the Financial Times said that Russia is proposing to freeze the front line in eastern Ukraine if Kiev is willing to withdraw from the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions it still controls.

The newspaper adds that Moscow also claims the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, of which it occupies only parts and both regional capitals are under Ukrainian control. Moscow is also"willing to discuss" other territories in Sumy and Kharkiv regions, according to the FT.

According to the New York Times, analyst Stefan Meister from the German Council on Foreign Relations points out that Trump and Putin will come to Alaska with different goals.

Trump wants to end the war and Putin wants to carve out a new strategic position for Russia.

"Putin has higher goals here. It's about his legacy, about where Russia will stand when the war is over. That also implies a difference in willingness to pay," he warns. He sees the possibility that Zelensky will not be in the room where decisions can be made about Ukrainian territory as a disaster for Ukraine.

While representatives of Western European states, Poland, Finland, the EU and NATO expressed support for Ukraine and opposition to decisions"about us without us", Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico irritated Kiev with a Facebook comment in which he accused the West of"using Ukraine to try to weaken Russia, which failed and for which Ukraine will apparently have to pay dearly."

He accused Ukrainian leaders of being complicit in this situation.

"After more than three years of armed aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine, the Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic Robert Fico still fails to realize the real reasons for this criminal invasion and the danger of cooperation with the aggressor state," the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded.