Trump labels European leaders 'great people' ahead of Ukraine talks
U.S. President Donald Trump praised European leaders as "great people" on Wednesday ahead of talks in Berlin on ending the war in Ukraine.
Trump was to participate in a conference call with European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ahead of his summit with Russia's Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday.
"Will be speaking to European Leaders in a short while," Trump said on Truth Social. "They are great people who want to see a deal done."
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Ya Libnan
38 minutes ago
- Ya Libnan
For Ukraine the Trump- Putin Alaska summit was a complete disappointment
Many Ukrainians were angry to see the US rolling out a red carpet for Putin A red carpet for Vladimir Putin and no results for Ukraine. The Alaska summit, which many had pinned high hopes on, turned out to be a complete disappointment from the perspective of many Ukrainians. During Saturday night, many Ukrainians stayed up and anxiously waited for news from the Alaska summit between US President Donald Trump and Russia's head of state Vladimir Putin . For some, there was hope the talks could lead to some sort of end of Russia's war against Ukraine . Many Ukrainians though feared the price for this might be territorial concessions Kyiv would be pressured into making. But it soon became clear that the summit in Alaska had brought no fundamental changes . 'There were no concrete results for Ukraine,' Oleksandr Kraiev of the Ukrainian Prism think tank told DW. 'Thank God nothing was signed and no radical decisions were made,' the North America expert said. 'The summit was an extremely successful information operation for Russia. The war criminal Putin came to the US and shook hands with the leader of the free world.' According to Kraiev, apart from 'Trump's deference toward Putin, there were no final answers to the most important questions.' He believes that Putin dealt with Trump 'with surgical precision' and told him everything Trump wanted to hear. This way, Putin got everything he wanted out of the summit. According to Ivan Us from Ukraine's Center for Foreign Policy of the National Institute for Strategic Studies, the Russian president never wanted the summit to lead to an end to the war. Instead, Putin's goal was to legitimize himself and end his international isolation. 'For Putin, having a joint photo with Trump was the goal of this summit. To show in Russia that the isolation is over, that there won't be new sanctions, and that everything is fine, so that there'd be positive impulses for the markets. And for Trump, it was a moment where he wanted to demonstrate strength. He was walking next to Putin while a US bomber flew above them, the same bomber that recently attacked Iran. This was a signal to everyone not to forget who the most important country in the world is,' Us told DW. As if to confirm this, Dmitry Medvedev, chairman of Russia's Security Council, said after the Alaska summit that a 'full-fledged mechanism for meetings' between Russia and the US at the highest level had been restored. 'Important: The meeting proved that negotiations without preconditions and simultaneously with the continuation of the Special Military Operation are possible. Both sides directly put the responsibility for future negotiation results on Kyiv and Europe ,' Medvedev wrote on social networks. The term Special Military Operation is how Russia refers to its war against Ukraine. Despite international pressure, Russia continues its war on Ukraine Ivan Us thinks that the summit did not get Ukraine closer to peace. Instead, it intensified the chaos, as the US and Russia are making contradictory statements about continuing possible trilateral dialogue involving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy . For example, Moscow says that Trump and Putin did not discuss a trilateral summit with Zelensky, while Washington says the opposite. Zelenskyy himself spoke of receiving an invitation to a trilateral meeting. 'We support President Trump's proposal for a trilateral meeting between Ukraine, the US, and Russia. Ukraine emphasizes: Important issues can be discussed at the level of heads of state, and a trilateral format is suitable for this,' he wrote on social media after a phone call with Donald Trump. Zelenskyy shared that he would meet with Donald Trump in Washington on August 18. 'Ukraine confirms once again that it is ready to work toward peace as productively as possible. President Trump informed me about his meeting with the Russian president and about the key points of the discussion. It is important that US power influences the development of the situation,' the Ukrainian president said. There are fears in Ukraine that Zelenskyy's trip to Washington could result in new pressure from the US on Ukraine. 'Any 'no' from the Ukrainian side could be portrayed as [a] lack of willingness to end the war. Trump essentially admitted that it's about an 'exchange of territories for security guarantees,' and he confirmed that agreement was reached on certain points and spoke of a 'chance for success,'' Iryna Herashchenko, Ukrainian MP and co-chair of the opposition party 'European Solidarity,' wrote on social media. She believes that such formulations allow Moscow to present this as legitimization of its demands. 'Putin repeated during the brief briefing once again that the actual causes of the conflict must be eliminated. This means that Moscow will not change its goals – because the existence of an independent Ukraine is seen as the actual cause,' warns Herashchenko. Ukrainian political scientist Vadym Denisenko, however, believes that Russia's idea of 'doing business with the US in exchange for Ukrainian territory' didn't work. Putin managed to gain time, though. 'At Alaska, they agreed to negotiate,' Denisenko wrote on social media. Nevertheless, he argues that Putin 'lost what was most important: his maneuverability. He drastically restricted his scope for action and is actually rapidly falling into China's arms.' Denisenko believes that if no results regarding the end of the war are achieved within two months, the issue will become part of Chinese-American negotiations. 'In other words: A new window for negotiations will open earliest at the end of the year, realistically only in spring 2026,' he predicted. DW
LBCI
12 hours ago
- LBCI
Putin says discussed Ukraine peace on 'fair basis' with Trump
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday said he discussed ways of ending the conflict in Ukraine "on a fair basis" at his meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump. Speaking to top officials in Moscow a day after the talks in Alaska, Putin also said the summit with Trump had been "timely" and "very useful," according to images published by the Kremlin. AFP
L'Orient-Le Jour
16 hours ago
- L'Orient-Le Jour
What we know after the Trump-Putin summit on Ukraine
'Peace agreement' rather than a cease-fire in Ukraine, sanctions against Moscow kept quiet: the main outcomes of the Anchorage summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin became clearer on Saturday, through official statements. No cease-fire Ukraine and European leaders had hoped to convince Donald Trump on Wednesday to obtain a cease-fire from Vladimir Putin, more than three and a half years after the Russian army invaded Ukraine. That did not happen. 'It was judged by everyone that the best way to end the war […] is to go directly to a peace agreement, which would end the war, and not just a simple cease-fire agreement, which often does not hold,' Mr. Trump said on his Truth Social network once back in Washington. It is a victory for Vladimir Putin, whose troops have made recent advances in eastern Ukraine. From the start, the Russian president has demanded a broader 'peace agreement,' focused, in his view, on the 'root causes' of the war, beginning with Ukraine's desire to join NATO. Moscow considers this military alliance an existential threat that extends to its borders. According to Kyiv, the Russian army launched 85 drones and one missile on Ukraine during the night from Friday to Saturday, at the time of the summit. On Saturday, the Russian army claimed the capture of two localities in eastern Ukraine. US sanctions on hold Friday marked the expiration of a U.S. ultimatum to Russia to end the war in Ukraine, under threat of so-called 'secondary' sanctions — targeting countries that buy from Russia, particularly oil and weapons. 'Given how things went today, I don't think I need to think about that right now,' U.S. President Donald Trump ultimately said in response to a Fox News question at the end of the summit. Trump has at his disposal a legislative framework giving him 'the ability to impose 500% tariffs on any country that helps Russia and supports Putin's war machine,' according to one of the co-sponsors of this proposal, influential Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. Trump had said he would 'look very closely' at the proposal. European leaders, on the other hand, said Saturday that they 'will continue to strengthen sanctions and targeted economic measures to weigh on Russia's war economy, until a just and lasting peace is established.' Territorial issues unresolved Ukraine's biggest fear was a deal in Anchorage pushing it to cede, de jure or de facto, part of its territory. Beyond Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, the Russian army occupies about 20% of Ukrainian territory in four regions in the south and east (Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia). Neither Putin nor Trump directly addressed this burning issue during their press statements. Did the U.S. president make an implicit reference when he said in his final statement that 'very few' points remained to be settled, and that 'one of them is probably the most important'? Security guarantees Ukraine, supported by European leaders, demands such guarantees in the event of a halt to hostilities to prevent any renewed Russian invasion, which Moscow categorically refuses. This topic was not directly discussed by Trump and Putin in their final statement. However, in his post-summit briefing to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and several European leaders, Trump mentioned a security guarantee for Kyiv similar to NATO's Article 5, though outside the framework of the Atlantic Alliance, according to two Ukrainian sources familiar with the matter. Several European countries, including France and the United Kingdom, indicated they are ready to contribute to a 'reassurance' force stationed in Ukraine, but not on the front line. Tripartite meeting on the horizon? Trump confirmed he would receive Zelensky at the White House on Monday. 'If all goes well, we will then schedule a meeting with President Putin,' he added. He had previously said that an agreement to end the war 'really depends on the Ukrainian president.'
