In a Trump-Putin summit, Ukraine fears losing say over its future
Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, himself invited such comparisons in a speech to his people hours after Trump raised the specter of deciding Ukraine's fate in a one-on-one meeting in Alaska, territory that was once part of the Russian empire. (While Putin has made clear that he regards Ukraine as rightful Russian territory dating back to the days of Peter the Great, the Russian leader has not called for the reversal of the $7.2 million sale of Alaska to the United States in 1867, during a period of financial distress for the empire.)
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'Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier,' Zelensky said, noting that the Ukrainian constitution prohibits such a deal.
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Then, in what sounded like a direct warning to Trump, he added: 'Any solutions that are against us, any solutions that are without Ukraine, are simultaneously solutions against peace. They will not bring anything. These are dead solutions.'
Zelensky is the one with the most on the line in the summit. After his bitter Oval Office encounter with Trump in February, which ended in Trump's declaration that 'you don't have the cards right now,' he has every reason to fear Trump is at best an unreliable partner. At worst, Trump is susceptible to being flattered and played by Putin, for whom he has often expressed admiration.
But there are also considerable political risks for Trump. Those would be especially acute if he is viewed as forcing millions of Ukrainians into territorial concessions, with few compensating guarantees that Putin would not, after taking a breather of a few years, seize the rest of the country.
'President Trump still seems to be going into this conversation as if Putin is negotiating as a partner or friend,' said Tressa Guenov, director for programs and operations at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council. 'That will continue to make these discussions difficult if Ukraine isn't involved.'
Trump's personal envoy, Steve Witkoff, raised the possibility of a meeting of Trump, Zelensky, and Putin, and in the past week, it looked like that might be a precondition for the session in Alaska. But Trump waved away the notion when asked about it by reporters Friday.
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A senior administration official said Saturday that the president remained open to a trilateral meeting with Putin and Zelensky, but that the meeting between Trump and Putin was set to go ahead as scheduled.
Yet the gap in how Trump approaches these negotiations and how the United States' allies in Europe approach them became all the more vivid Saturday.
After a meeting of European national security advisers and Ukrainian officials with Vice President JD Vance, who is on a visit to Britain, leaders of the European Union's executive branch and nations including France, Britain, Italy, and Germany called in a statement for 'active diplomacy, support to Ukraine and pressure on the Russian Federation to end their illegal war.'
They added that any agreement needed to include 'robust and credible security guarantees that enable Ukraine to effectively defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity,' phrases Trump has avoided. 'The path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine,' the leaders said.
Trump has long sought a direct meeting with Putin, declaring publicly that a problem like Ukraine could only be resolved with a meeting between the two top leaders. He also said last week that he expects to see President Xi Jinping of China before the end of the year. And he seems reluctant to impose more tariffs or sanctions ahead of those meetings. In fact, his deadline for Putin to declare a cease-fire or face crushing 'secondary sanctions' melted away Friday without a mention from Trump, other than that people should wait for his meeting with Putin.
The fact that Trump is even meeting with Putin represents a small victory for the Russian president, Guenov said.
'Trump still has given Putin the benefit of the doubt, and that dynamic is one Putin will attempt to exploit even beyond this meeting,' she added.
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While Trump has insisted that an understanding between himself and the Russian president is crucial to a broader peace, Putin, Guenov said, would certainly welcome any land concessions Trump is willing to grant.
Already the president has signaled that is where these talks are headed. Trump on Friday suggested that a peace deal between the two countries could include 'some swapping of territories,' signaling that the United States may join Russia in trying to compel Ukraine to permanently cede some of its land — the suggestion flatly rejected by Zelensky.
'We're going to get some back, and we're going to get some switched,' said Trump, leaving unclear who the 'we' in that statement was. 'There'll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both, but we'll be talking about that either later, or tomorrow.'
Russian officials have demanded that Ukraine cede the four regions that Moscow claimed to have 'annexed' from Ukraine in late 2022, even as some of that land remains under Ukrainian control. And Russia is seeking a formal declaration that the Crimean Peninsula is once again its territory. (Yalta, where the meeting of three great powers was held 80 years ago, is a resort city on the southern coast of Crimea.)
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