US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet in Alaska on August 15 to discuss the end of the three -year conflict in Ukraine, despite kyiv’s warnings and European leaders that Ukraine must be included in all negotiations.
Announcing the summit on Friday, Trump said that there would be “an exchange of territories towards the improvement of the two” of Ukraine and Russia, without giving details.
“The Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier,” said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on social networks a few hours later. “All decisions against us, any decision without Ukraine, are also decisions against peace. They will not realize anything. ” He added that the war “cannot be finished without us, without Ukraine”.
This year, three cycles of talks between Russia and Ukraine failed to produce results. Tens of thousands of people have been killed since Russia’s large -scale invasion in February 2022, with displaced millions. Putin rejected repeated calls from the United States, Europe and Kyiv for a ceasefire.
Zelensky said Kyiv was “ready for real decisions that can bring peace” but insisted that it should be “worthy peace”. He put pressure on a three top and said that meeting Putin was the only way to progress.
The Kremlin excluded the talks between the two leaders at this stage.
Read: Russia, Ukraine to exchange 2,000 prisoners of war, 6,000 bodies in greater war exchange
The Alaska meeting will be the first between the Presidents of the United States and Russians since Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva in June 2021, nine months before Russian forces entered Ukraine. The Kremlin qualified the location of “logic” while the State borders Russia and is an area where their “economic interests meet”.
Russia sold Alaska in the United States in 1867. Zelensky described the choice as “very far from this war, which rages on our earth, against our people”.
Moscow also invited Trump to visit Russia later. The two leaders met for the last time in person at the G20 summit in Japan in 2019 and spoke several times by phone since January.
Friday, Putin spoke with leaders of China and India before the talks. Trump has sought to negotiate peace in Ukraine since its entry into office, but has not yet succeeded.
Earlier this year, the American president imposed an additional rate on India on his Russian oil purchases to put pressure on Moscow in talks and threatened a similar measure against China but did not act.
Meanwhile, the fighting continued along the first line of more than 1,000 kilometers. Overnight, Russia and Ukraine exchanged dozens of drone strikes. In Kherson, a bus carrying civilians was hit, killing two people and injuring six.
