Trump says he will meet with Putin to discuss possible Ukraine deal next Friday
Later on social media, he announced what he called 'the highly anticipated meeting' would happen Aug. 15 in Alaska. He said more details would follow.
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Trump had told reporters that the summit would have been sooner, 'but I guess there's security arrangements that unfortunately people have to make.'
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Trump said, 'President Putin, I believe, wants to see peace, and Zelenskyy wants to see peace.' He said that, 'In all fairness to President Zelenskyy, he's getting everything he needs to, assuming we get something done.'
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Trump said a peace deal would likely mean Ukraine and Russia would swap some territory they each control.
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'Nothing easy,' the president said. 'But we're gonna get some back. We're gonna get some switched. There'll be some swapping of territories, to the betterment of both.'
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Pressed on if this was the last chance to make a major peace deal, Trump said, 'I don't like using the term last chance,' and said that, 'When those guns start going off, it's awfully tough to get 'em to stop.'
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Exasperated that Putin did not heed his calls to stop bombing Ukrainian cities, Trump almost two weeks ago moved up his ultimatum to impose additional sanctions on Russia and introduce secondary tariffs targeting countries that buy Russian oil if the Kremlin did not move toward a settlement. The deadline was Friday.
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Prior to his announcing the meeting with Putin, Trump's efforts to pressure Russia into stopping the fighting have so far delivered no progress. The Kremlin's bigger army is slowly advancing deeper into Ukraine at great cost in troops and armor while it relentlessly bombards Ukrainian cities. Russia and Ukraine are far apart on their terms for peace.
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Ukrainian forces are locked in intense battles along the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line that snakes from northeast to southeast Ukraine. The Pokrovsk area of the eastern Donetsk region is taking the brunt of punishment as Russia seeks to break out into the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region. Ukraine has significant manpower shortages.
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Intense fighting is also taking place in Ukraine's northern Sumy border region, where Ukrainian forces are engaging Russian soldiers to prevent reinforcements being sent from there to Donetsk.
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In the Pokrovsk area of Donetsk, a commander said he believes Moscow isn't interested in peace.
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'It is impossible to negotiate with them. The only option is to defeat them,' Buda, a commander of a drone unit in the Spartan Brigade, told The Associated Press. He used only his call sign, in keeping with the rules of the Ukrainian military.
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'I would like them to agree and for all this to stop, but Russia will not agree to that. It does not want to negotiate. So the only option is to defeat them,' he said.
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In the southern Zaporizhzhia region, a howitzer commander using the call sign Warsaw, said troops are determined to thwart Russia's invasion.
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The Kremlin said Friday that Putin had a phone call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, during which he informed Xi about the results of his meeting earlier this week with Trump envoy Steve Witkoff. Kremlin officials said Xi 'expressed support for the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis on a long-term basis.'
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