Trump holds talks with Zelenskyy, EU leaders ahead of Putin summit
With nerves running high, Zelenskyy said the talks went well and Trump agreed that he hoped the summit with the Russian leader could lead to an immediate ceasefire.
The European allies, led by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and Ukraine fear Trump will get duped by Putin into making major concessions without their agreement.
'Putin doesn't want peace, he wants to occupy Ukraine,' Zelenskyy said at a news conference after the talks with Trump.
Trump has said he wants to see whether Putin is serious about ending the war, now in its fourth year, and described the summit as 'a feeling-out meeting' where he can assess the Russian leader's intentions.
He pushed back against armchair critics who underestimate his deal-making prowess and insists he won't be afraid to walk away from the talks if he believes Putin isn't serious.
'If I got Moscow and Leningrad free, as part of the deal with Russia, (they) would say that I made a bad deal,' Trump wrote on his social media site.
Trump and Putin will meet on Friday at a U.S. Air Force base in Anchorage, Alaska. It's the first face-to-face meeting between Putin and an American president since he launched the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Trump already unnerved allies in Europe in recent months by making significant unilateral concessions to Putin, like agreeing that Ukraine should never join NATO and would need to give up some lands that Russia has seized in its invasion, along with the disputed Crimea region that the Kremlin seized in 2014.
Putin has stubbornly refused to respond in kind and has snubbed Trump's demands for a ceasefire. It's unclear why Trump believes the Russian leader might be ready change course now.
European allies have pushed for Ukraine's involvement in any peace talks, fearful that discussions that exclude Kyiv could otherwise favor Moscow.
Trump has said that if Friday's summit is a success, it could be followed by a meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy or a three-way meeting with him.
Russian forces on the ground in Ukraine have made advances in recent days around the city of Pokrovsk in the eastern Donetsk region that Putin claims for Russia.
Losing the town would hand Russia an important victory ahead of the summit and could complicate Ukrainian efforts to hold the rest of the province.
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