(Bloomberg) — Donald Trump downplayed expectations for his upcoming meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin as the US president seeks to end the war in Ukraine, casting it as a “feel-out meeting” and saying he would confer with Ukrainian and European leaders after the sitdown.
“I’m going to be telling him, ‘You got to end this war. You got to end it,’” Trump said Monday at a White House press conference. As he previewed the Aug. 15 summit with Putin in Alaska — the Russian leader’s first visit to US soil in nearly a decade — Trump added that it wasn’t “up to me to make a deal.”
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“I’m going to go and see the parameters,” Trump added. “I may leave and say, ‘Good luck,’ and that’ll be the end. I may say this is not going to be settled.”
He indicated he did not plan to invite Volodymyr Zelenskiy to the summit, saying the next step after the Alaska meeting would be for Putin and the Ukrainian president to meet directly. Trump said he would mediate that conversation, if necessary.
“I would say he could go, but he’s gone to a lot of meetings,” Trump said of Zelenskiy. “You know, he’s been there for three-and-a-half years, nothing happened.”
Trump’s effort to moderate expectations for the summit follows Zelenskiy ruling out Putin’s demand for territory that Moscow doesn’t control as a pre-condition for a ceasefire, with the Ukrainian leader citing the need for constitutional approval. Trump on Monday slammed that excuse, adding that he was “a little bothered” by it.
As diplomatic efforts continue to end the Kremlin’s war on its neighbor, Ukraine and its European allies have been pushing for a halt to the fighting, freezing the current frontline as a first step before talks on a more enduring settlement.
Putin is demanding that Ukraine cede its entire eastern Donbas area as well as Crimea, which his forces illegally annexed in 2014, as a condition to unlock a ceasefire and enter negotiations over a longer-term accord.
Trump said he expected to confer with Zelenskiy and European allies by phone immediately after his meeting with Putin. The president said he expected to either outline to them the contours of a deal that included land swaps negotiated with Putin, or that he did not believe a peace deal could be brokered.
“I think we’ll have constructive conversations, then after that meeting, immediately, maybe as I’m flying out, maybe, as I’m leaving the room, I’ll be calling the European leaders,” Trump said.
This week’s meeting with Putin represents a high-stakes gamble for the US president, who campaigned on ending the war quickly but whose efforts have been frustrated in office. Ceding to Putin’s demands would require Zelenskiy to order a withdrawal of troops from parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions still held by Kyiv.
Trump said there may be “some changes” in land. “We’re going to change the lines, the battle lines. Russia has occupied a big portion of Ukraine. They’ve occupied some very prime territory. We’re going to try and get some of that territory back for Ukraine,” he added.
Such an arrangement would hand Russia a victory that its army has not been able to achieve militarily since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said over the weekend that territory would “have to be on the table” along with security guarantees for Ukraine.
Territorial Integrity
The prospect of Trump and Putin negotiating a deal that swaps land for peace has worried European leaders, fearful that the US president will concede too much and leave Ukraine without security guarantees against further Russian aggression or stick allies with policing an uncertain truce.
“As far as Russia has not agreed to full and unconditional ceasefire, we should not even discuss any concessions,” European Union top diplomat Kaja Kallas said Monday as EU foreign ministers and their Ukrainian counterpart met for a video call. “It has never worked in the past with Russia, and will not work with Putin today.”
Zelenskiy, along with the leaders of France, Germany, the UK, Italy, Poland and Finland, will hold a call with Trump and Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday ahead of the summit with Putin.
In a statement agreed late on Monday, EU leaders said that any peace agreement must “respect international law, including the principles of independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity,” adding that international borders must not be changed by force.
The joint statement, which was agreed by all member states except for Hungary, said that the bloc and individual member states “are ready to further contribute to security guarantees based on their respective competences and capabilities.”
The statement also noted Ukraine’s right to choose its own destiny, underlining the EU’s continued support for Kyiv’s bid to join the European Union.
–With assistance from Piotr Skolimowski, Andrea Palasciano and Alberto Nardelli.
(Updates with a fresh statement from EU leaders in the last three paragraphs.)
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