- Putin claims four Ukrainian regions for Russia.
- Trump’s Ukrainian war ceasefire is close.
- According to peace, the agreement would imply an exchange of territory.
US President Donald Trump will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 15 in Alaska to negotiate the end of the war in Ukraine, Trump said on Friday.
Trump made the highly anticipated announcement on social networks after declaring that the parties, including the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, were close to a cease-fire agreement which could resolve the three and a half year conflict, the one who could demand that Ukraine renounce an important territory.
Speaking to journalists at the White House earlier Friday, Trump suggested that an agreement would imply an exchange of land.
“There will be an exchange of territories towards the improvement of the two,” said the republican president.
The Kremlin later confirmed the summit in an online statement.
The two leaders “will focus on the discussion of the options to obtain a long -term peaceful resolution for the Ukrainian crisis,” said Putin, Yuri Ushakov.
“It will obviously be a difficult process, but we will act actively and energetically,” said Ushakov.
On Friday, in his evening speech to the nation, Zelenskiy said that it was possible to reach a ceasefire as well as adequate pressures were applied to Russia. He said he had held more than a dozen conversations with leaders from different countries and that his team was in constant contact with the United States.
Putin claims four Ukrainian regions – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – as well as the Crimean Black Sea Peninsula, which he enforced in 2014. His forces do not fully control the whole territory in the four regions.
Earlier, Bloomberg News reported that US and Russian officials were working towards an agreement that would lock the occupation of the territory by Moscow seized during its military invasion.
A White House official said that the Bloomberg History was speculation. A Kremlin spokesperson did not respond to a request for comments.
Reuters could not confirm the aspects of the Bloomberg report.
Ukraine previously pointed out a desire to be flexible in the search for an end of a war which ravaged its cities and killed a large number of its soldiers and citizens.
But accepting the loss of about a fifth of the territory of Ukraine would be painful and politically difficult for Zelenskiy and his government.
Tyson Barker, the former special deputy representative of the American State Department for the economic resumption of Ukraine, said the peace proposal, as indicated in the Bloomberg report would be immediately rejected by the Ukrainians.
“The best that the Ukrainians can do is to remain firm in their objections and their conditions for a negotiated settlement, while demonstrating their gratitude for American support,” said Barker, the main member of the Atlantic Council.
As part of the putative agreement, according to BloombergRussia would stop its offensive in the regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia along the current battle lines.
Trump and Putin
The last time the Alaska organized a diplomatic rally with high issues was in March 2021, when senior officials of the administration of former Democratic president Joe Biden met the senior Chinese officials in Anchorage.
The meeting involving the best diplomat of Biden, Antony Blinken and his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, quickly turned into a superb public confrontation in front of the cameras, the two sides putting apart the net rebukes of the other policies which reflected the strong tension within the bilateral limits.
Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has moved to repair relations with Russia and sought to end the war. In his public comments, he turned between the admiration and the lively criticism of Putin.
In a sign of his growing frustration with Putin’s refusal to stop Russia’s military offensive, Trump had threatened to impose new sanctions and Friday prices against Moscow and countries that buy his exports unless the Russian chief accepts to end the conflict, the deadliest in Europe since the Second World War.
Friday evening, it was not clear if these sanctions would take effect or will be delayed, or will be canceled.
The administration took a step towards the punishment of Moscow oil customers on Wednesday, imposing an additional 25% tariff on India goods on its Russian oil imports, marking the first financial penalty for Russia in the second term of Trump.
Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff held three hours of talks with Putin in Moscow on Wednesday that the two parties described as constructive.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland, a close ally of Ukraine, said earlier on Friday than a break in the conflict could be close. He spoke after discussions with Zelenskiy.
“There are certain signals, and we also have an intuition, that perhaps a frost in the conflict – I do not want to say the end, but a frost in the conflict – is closer than further,” said Tusk at a press conference. “There are hopes for this.”
Tusk also said that Zelenskiy was “very prudent but optimistic” and that Ukraine wanted Poland and other European countries playing a role in planning a ceasefire and a possible peace regulation.
