In Washington— President Donald Trump has said that he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on August 15 to talk about a possible ceasefire in Ukraine. During a three-way summit with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Trump said that a peace accord might be close.
Trump stated, “I’ll be meeting with President Putin very soon,” confirming a meeting that had been planned for weeks. He said that the peace process is “very complicated,” but they will get some back. Some of them are going to change. There will be some territory changes that will be good for both sides.
Reports say that the President of Russia is eager to end the war if he gets control of Eastern Ukraine. According to the Wall Street Journal, Putin’s proposal, which was sent to the Trump administration by special envoy Steve Witkoff, would mean that Russia would agree to a ceasefire if Kyiv pulls its troops out of Donetsk and Luhansk and recognizes Russia’s control over Crimea, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. The U.S. has been trying to get Ukraine and its European allies to agree to such a deal, but it is not certain that Ukraine would be willing to give up a lot of its land.
This would be the first meeting between the two leaders since 2019. It would be a big diplomatic push by the Trump administration to stop the war. But it comes right after Trump’s deadline for Russia to agree to a ceasefire, which expired on Friday without any official agreement from the Kremlin.
Ukrainian troops on the front lines still don’t believe that diplomacy will work. A commander of a drone unit in the Pokrovsk area of Donetsk, who went by the name “Buda,” told The Associated Press, “It is impossible to negotiate with them.” The only choice is to beat them. This feeling shows how far apart the diplomatic efforts are from the reality on the ground, where combat has been continuing on for more than three and a half years.
The idea of a settlement that would involve “swapping territories” has also worried Ukraine’s European allies and people in Ukraine itself, where polls show that most people are strongly against giving up any land. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that he is open to a ceasefire, but his government has said that any peace deal must be based on the full restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity.