US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet in Alaska on August 15 to discuss ending the three-year conflict in Ukraine, despite warnings from Kyiv and European leaders that Ukraine must be included in any negotiations.
Announcing the summit on Friday, Trump said there would be “some swapping of territories to the betterment of both” Ukraine and Russia, without giving details.
“Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media hours later. “Any decisions against us, any decisions without Ukraine, are also decisions against peace. They will achieve nothing.” He added that the war “cannot be ended without us, without Ukraine”.
Three rounds of talks between Russia and Ukraine this year have failed to produce results. Tens of thousands of people have been killed since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, with millions displaced. Putin has rejected repeated calls from the US, Europe and Kyiv for a ceasefire.
Zelensky said Kyiv was “ready for real decisions that can bring peace” but insisted it must be a “dignified peace”. He has been pressing for a three-way summit and has said meeting Putin is the only way to make progress.
The Kremlin has ruled out talks between the two leaders at this stage.
Read: Russia, Ukraine to swap 2,000 POWs, 6,000 bodies in largest war exchange
The Alaska meeting will be the first between sitting US and Russian presidents since Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva in June 2021, nine months before Russian forces entered Ukraine. The Kremlin called the location “logical” as the state borders Russia and is an area where their “economic interests intersect”.
Russia sold Alaska to the US in 1867. Zelensky described the choice as “very far away from this war, which is raging on our land, against our people”.
Moscow has also invited Trump to visit Russia later. The two leaders last met in person at the G20 summit in Japan in 2019 and have spoken several times by phone since January.
On Friday, Putin spoke with leaders of China and India ahead of the talks. Trump has sought to broker peace in Ukraine since taking office but has yet to achieve a breakthrough.
Earlier this year, the US president imposed an additional tariff on India over its purchases of Russian oil to pressure Moscow into talks, and threatened a similar measure against China but has not acted on it.
Meanwhile, fighting continued along the more than 1,000-kilometre frontline. Overnight, Russia and Ukraine exchanged dozens of drone strikes. In Kherson, a bus carrying civilians was hit, killing two people and injuring six.
