The long-awaited meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss ending the war in Ukraine will take place next Friday in Alaska, Putin announced on his social media account, Truth. Hours earlier, the president said that Ukraine would have to cede territory to reach a peace agreement. President Volodymyr Zelensky rejected that idea on Saturday:"Ukrainians will not give up their land to the occupiers."
"The highly anticipated meeting between me, as President of the United States, and President Vladimir Putin of Russia will take place next Friday, August 15th, in the Great State of Alaska. More details will follow," Trump announced in his message. It is unclear whether Zelensky will have any involvement in the Alaska summit.
The meeting will be the first between a US and Russian head of state since Putin and Joe Biden held a meeting in 2021, months before Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Putin last set foot on US soil in September 2015, when he traveled to New York to attend the UN General Assembly and met with then-President Barack Obama.
Trump's announcement came on the day he set a 10-day deadline for Moscow to take significant steps toward a ceasefire or accept additional economic sanctions and tariffs on countries that buy Russian oil. But the announcement of the meeting appears to have been enough to put the threat to rest, at least for now.
Speaking earlier in the Oval Office at a peace signing ceremony between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Trump said negotiations were underway over a territory swap, signaling that the U.S. could join Russia in pressuring Kyiv to give up parts of the country in exchange for peace.
Asked if Ukraine will have to accept the loss of territory, he replied: “We’re looking at that. We’re actually looking at taking some back and swapping some. It’s complicated, but we’re going to take some back and swap some. There will be a territory swap for mutual convenience, and we’ll talk about that later or tomorrow,” Trump said.
Zelensky, however, declared this Saturday that Ukraine cannot violate its Constitution on territorial issues, Reuters reported. The country is ready for a"real" solution leading to peace and to cooperate with Trump, he stressed. But he added that any solution without kyiv would be a solution against peace and that Russia cannot be"rewarded" for invading the country."President Trump has announced preparations for his meeting with Putin in Alaska: a far cry from this war that is raging on our soil, against our people, and which, in any case, cannot end without us, without Ukraine," the president emphasized.
Some analysts have suggested that Putin could offer to return some of the occupied territories in the Zaporizhia and Kherson provinces in exchange for Donetsk and Luhansk, now partially under Russian control. He would also retain control of the Crimean peninsula, illegally annexed in 2014.
In his Oval Office remarks, Trump declined to provide details about which territories would supposedly be exchanged or other aspects of the peace deal he has in mind, arguing that he did not want to detract from the ceremony.
The prospect of a territory exchange seems complex from a legal or military perspective, and is an absolute taboo for the Ukrainian population. Although the majority of its citizens support a peace agreement, a large majority is also against ceding territory to the aggressor country.
A peace agreement would also have to address Ukraine's demands for security guarantees to prevent Moscow from repeating its aggression in the future. For its part, the Kremlin is demanding limits on the number and quality of weapons that the West can supply to kyiv and what it calls"tackling the root causes of the war": a veto on Ukraine ever joining NATO.
Trump outlined his plans to meet with Putin and Zelensky to his European allies last Wednesday, following a visit by his envoy Steve Witkoff to the Kremlin to convince Moscow to accept a ceasefire. The Russian expressed to Witkoff his interest in speaking face-to-face with the American.
Initially, Washington indicated that the meeting would take place after a meeting between Putin and Zelensky. But on Thursday, after the Kremlin had expressed its opposition to that idea, Trump dismissed the possibility, indicating that he would not require face-to-face meetings between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders as a condition for his summit with Putin.
