The deadline for a ceasefire in Ukraine was just about to expire before US President Donald Trump announced late on Friday that he would meet Russian President Vladimir Putin face to face on August 15. It is the two leaders' first physical meeting since 2019.
On the agenda is the war in Ukraine. The war that Trump claimed before taking office that he would be able to put an end to within 24 hours. But Ukraine is apparently not invited, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is not enthusiastic about the US-Russian meeting.
- Ukraine is ready for real decisions that can lead to peace. All decisions that are against us, all decisions that are made without Ukraine, are also decisions against peace. They will lead to nothing. They will be stillborn decisions, Zelensky wrote on X on Saturday.
The meeting between Trump and Putin will be held in the US state of Alaska. A territory that was Russian until Russia sold it to the United States in 1867.
Before announcing the upcoming meeting, Trump said on Friday that there would be "some exchange of territories" for the benefit of both Ukraine and Russia, and that the issue would be discussed soon. But no form of surrender of Ukrainian territory is out of the question, Zelenskyy emphasizes.
- The answer to the question of Ukrainian territory is already found in the Ukrainian constitution. No one will deviate from this - and no one will be able to.
- Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier, Zelensky later said, referring to Russia on X.
Russia has previously set as a condition for peace in Ukraine that Ukraine recognizes the Crimean peninsula and the Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson as Russian territory.
The five areas together constitute approximately one fifth of Ukraine's territory and were home to a quarter of the Ukrainian population before the war. In addition, Russia has demanded that Ukraine never become a member of the Western defense alliance NATO.
The meeting is preceded by several telephone conversations between Trump and Putin, while US special envoy Steve Witkoff has visited Russia several times - most recently on Wednesday. Here he was received by Putin in the Kremlin.
Ukrainian and Russian delegations have also met in Istanbul.
Since the presidential election campaign, Trump has become less cocky on the issue of peace in Ukraine. Peace in 24 hours was probably too much to promise anyway.
- I'm going to try, Trump said at a press conference in December 2024 - just a month after he was elected president.
During the winter and spring, he repeatedly accused Zelensky of being an obstacle to peace. This happened, among other things, during a heated meeting between Zelensky, Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance at the White House in February.
- Can you see the hatred he has for Putin?
- It is very difficult for me to make a deal with that kind of hatred, said the US president, referring to his guest from Ukraine.
However, Putin also received a reprimand from Trump in April after a major Russian attack on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.
- Vladimir, stop, wrote the president.
/ritzau/
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