It's back to square one in the war in Ukraine, but under worse conditions. The announcement of next Friday's meeting in Alaska between the presidents of the United States and Russia, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, respectively, to discuss a ceasefire leading to peace in Ukraine, puts things back where they were in February, when the American leader announced contacts with the Russian leader and a possible face-to-face meeting to end the conflict, under conditions unacceptable to the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelensky. Half a year of negotiations and thousands of deaths later, the humiliating concessions made by European allies in recent months to try to get the Republican to support kyiv appear to have been for nothing. Ukraine, absent from the talks in Alaska, fears it may be forced to cede territory. Trump appears to have granted Putin a huge diplomatic triumph.

The Russian president will get a photo with the American and put an end to his pariah status. And he will do so on US territory, which had been hostile to him since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In a particularly symbolic state: Russia sold Alaska to Washington in 1867 for $7.2 million at the time. Now, Moscow is not planning to cede land, but to annex it.

For Ukraine, next Friday's meeting poses a huge risk. It hasn't been invited, despite the United States having expressed interest in a three-way meeting. A senior White House official told NBC that a possible invitation to Zelensky is"under discussion." Nor will the Europeans, its greatest backers, be present. Its future as a country will be discussed without it having a seat at the table. To add insult to injury, the announcement comes just as it seemed the tables had turned: Washington had authorized the supply of US weapons to kyiv, paid for by the Europeans; this Friday, the time Trump had given Putin to accept a ceasefire expired, and the White House was about to impose new sanctions on Moscow. The deadline has been blown, and the only party affected is India, which now faces tariffs of up to 50% for buying Russian oil.

Whether he realizes it or not, Trump has faithfully followed the tactics of the Prince of Salina, the character created by Giovanni di Lampedusa in The Leopard: he has changed everything so that nothing changes. Since February, when he was praising Putin and berating Zelensky in the Oval Office—"You don't have the cards!" to win the war, he reproached him—he had been, in fits and starts and under pressure from the Europeans, apparently evolving toward more favorable positions toward Ukraine. Faced with promises from NATO partners to invest 5% of their GDP in military spending and to pay for US weapons for kyiv, and with renewed Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities, Trump had exchanged his praise of the Russian for this threat of sanctions.

Territorial concessions

But it seems that a visit by White House envoy Steve Witkoff to Moscow—his first in three months, a period when Trump was most skeptical of Putin—was enough to force him back to square one: accepting Moscow's position and seemingly leaving Kiev in the lurch. The US president, who wants to boast about an agreement that will earn him points toward becoming a Nobel Peace Prize winner, made it clear in a few sentences that seemed to condemn Ukraine, before announcing the meeting location and heading off to play golf this Saturday at his club in Northern Virginia: any peace agreement will include a land swap. In other words, kyiv will have to give up land."We're going to get some land back. We're going to exchange some land. There will be an exchange of land, to the benefit of both parties," he declared from the Oval Office during the peace agreement ceremony between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Today, Russia occupies 20% of Ukraine: in addition to the Crimean peninsula, illegally annexed in 2014, it also seized the entire Luhansk province, which it controls completely, and 70% of Donetsk province at the beginning of its 2022 invasion. It also controls half of Zaporizhia and the eastern half of Kherson. All of these are in eastern Ukraine, and Moscow claims them as part of its territory.

Trump's words seem to indicate that he is leaning toward Putin's proposal, reported by several US media outlets, to end the war. Russia would take complete control of Donetsk and Luhansk. This would require the Ukrainian army to withdraw from several thousand square kilometers of land in the 30% of Donetsk it controls, including strategically important cities such as Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. In exchange, according to these reports, the Russian leader is offering to return territory in the provinces of Zaporizhia and Kherson, in southwestern Ukraine.

In that proposal,"territorial concessions to Moscow come first, and the key issues on which Moscow must concede are left for future peace negotiations," notes John Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Kyiv and currently at the Atlantic Council think tank. These issues include the supply of U.S. and European weapons to Kyiv, Ukraine's future in NATO, and the possible deployment of international forces to ensure that Russia doesn't repeat its aggression against Ukraine.

It's no surprise, then, that Putin rushed to confirm the meeting and its format, without any other participants who might want to change Trump's mind. The Russian president"wants an agreement with Trump that can be presented to Kyiv and other European capitals as a fait accompli," Herbst believes.

Zelensky's rejection

Zelensky has been quick to reject, horrified, any possibility of giving up territory. “The answer to the territorial question is already in the Constitution. No one will deviate from this. Ukrainians will not give away their territory to the occupier,” the Ukrainian leader said in a message on the social network X, while launching an intensive round of contacts with European allies to create the largest possible firewall against what might happen next week in Alaska.

European partners have sided with Ukraine. French President Emmanuel Macron stressed in X that"the future of Ukraine cannot be decided without the Ukrainians who have been fighting for their freedom and security for more than three years now." He also called for a role for Europe, which knows that if Ukraine falls, it will be the next target in Putin's sights:"Europeans must necessarily be part of the solution, because this affects their security," he wrote.

European foreign ministries raced to present an alternative proposal at Chevening, the British Foreign Secretary's country retreat, where British Foreign Secretary David Lammy and US Vice President J.D. Vance led a hastily arranged meeting with European national security advisers yesterday in preparation for the Alaska meeting.

The European plan includes, according to the Wall Street Journal, a demand for a ceasefire before any further steps are taken. It also specifies, according to the outlet, that the exchange of territory can only occur reciprocally: if Ukraine withdraws from some areas, Russia must also withdraw from others. And any territorial concessions that kyiv can (or should) make will only occur if unwavering security guarantees for Ukraine are approved, including its integration into NATO as a member.

The main obstacle to agreeing to a truce is that Russia has so far shown little interest in it. This is a war of attrition, and the Kremlin believes Ukraine is collapsing more than they are, and increasingly so. The Russian military is superior in numbers, both in terms of troops and weapons, and starting in 2025, according to soldiers and experts consulted by EL PAÍS in July and August, it is superior in drone technology. In July alone, Russian troops conquered between 500 and 550 square kilometers more of Ukrainian soil, according to analyses by the British Ministry of Defense.

“We don't have enough resources to stop them; the best thing that could happen is for them to agree to some kind of truce,” explained Mitya, the code name for an officer in a Ukrainian police assault platoon, on Thursday. Mitya spoke to this newspaper on foot from an armored infantry vehicle near Kostiantinivka, awaiting the start of a night shift in positions on this sector of the front in Donetsk province. His colleague Uziv adds that motivation is crucial and has been waning for some time: “Many of the new recruits have been forced to join, reluctantly, and their motivation depends on many factors, for example, a good commander or the weapons they have, and the decline in American support is very noticeable.”

Trump has approved just over $1 billion in military aid for the Ukrainian Armed Forces in seven months of his presidency, all during the month of July, a far cry from the efforts of his predecessor, Joe Biden. And if he has done so, it is on the condition that it be pre-purchased by his European NATO partners.

Desire for a truce at the front

This is the first time in three and a half years of war that a majority of Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines, when asked about the issue, believe that, despite their conviction that Russia wants to see their country disappear, the best option is a truce. And this sentiment is shared not only by the military but also by civilians: a Gallup poll released Thursday indicates that 69% of Ukrainians want to see an agreement to end the war as soon as possible.

The same Gallup poll, published in the summer of 2022, provided opposite results. This was when the Ukrainian army was pushing back Russian troops from most of the territories they had occupied the previous spring: at that time, according to this polling station, only 22% of the population wanted to agree to an end to the war as soon as possible. A further 73% said the fight should continue until victory.

Zelensky insisted this week that Ukraine is the main party interested in a truce and peace negotiations. To achieve this, the Ukrainian president reiterated, a bilateral meeting with Putin is necessary. The latter, in his usual strategy of prolonging the diplomatic process, said on Thursday that he was not opposed to this meeting, but that there are"conditions that must be met first." The Russian autocrat did not specify what these conditions were, but his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, stated last spring that such a meeting would only make sense if it was to sign an end to the war.

But not everything is black and white. The Russian economy is also suffering from the wear and tear of the war, so Moscow's acceptance of a favorable truce under the conditions Putin spoke of cannot be ruled out. And not everyone in Ukraine will accept a pact with the Russians. Any surrender of sovereignty over the occupied regions will be difficult for many to accept.

Zelensky has already made it clear that he will never recognize Ukrainian land as part of Russia, even if it is partially occupied. The problem will come when Trump pressures kyiv to make concessions that no one in Ukraine wants.