Trump open to Alaska summit with Putin and Zelenskiy: White House
US President Donald Trump is weighing the possibility of hosting Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for a summit in Alaska next week. While a bilateral meeting with Putin on 15 August is confirmed, the inclusion of Zelenskyy remains undecided. The talks come amid Washington's efforts to broker a ceasefire in Ukraine, despite Russia's proposal to retain occupied territory and Kyiv's outright rejection.
AP FILE - This combination of photos shows Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, in Moscow on May 9, 2025, and President Donald Trump in Washington on Aug. 1. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, Pool, Mark Schiefelbein, File) US President Donald Trump is open to holding a trilateral summit in Alaska with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a White House official said on Saturday.The official added that while the idea is under discussion, current plans centre on a bilateral meeting with Putin, set for 15 August in Alaska at the Russian president's request. 'The President remains open to a trilateral summit with both leaders. Right now, the White House is focusing on planning the bilateral meeting requested by President Putin,' the senior official told Reuters.Another person briefed on the talks said, 'It's being discussed,' while a senior administration source described it as 'absolutely' possible, as per an earlier report by NBC News. The Ukrainian government has not commented.Trump announced on Friday that he would meet with Putin in Alaska to push for a ceasefire in Ukraine. The White House had initially insisted that Putin meet Zelenskyy before Trump agreed to a summit with the Russian leader, but this was later dropped.If Zelenskyy does attend, sources say it is unclear whether he and Putin would meet directly.
The renewed diplomatic push follows a visit to Moscow by Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, ahead of a deadline set by Trump for Putin to agree to a ceasefire or face sanctions. Putin did not agree to the terms but proposed an arrangement allowing Russia to retain large areas of occupied Ukrainian territory. Zelenskyy rejected the idea, stating, 'Ukrainians will not give their land to occupiers.'Trump has previously suggested there could be 'some swapping of territories to the betterment of both.' US officials are continuing talks with Ukraine and European leaders to build support for a potential agreement.
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Business Standard
10 minutes ago
- Business Standard
Explained: Why Donbas is central to Putin's Ukraine peace offer with Trump
Russian President Vladimir Putin has made the future of Ukraine's eastern Donbas region the centrepiece of a possible peace deal with US President Donald Trump. At the Alaska summit on Friday, he reportedly pressed for Ukrainian withdrawal from Donetsk and Luhansk in exchange for halting further advances and freezing the frontline. But Kyiv and its allies have rejected the demand, saying Ukraine's territorial integrity cannot be compromised. Here's why Donbas is central to the negotiations and what is at stake. What's the latest According to The Guardian, Putin told Trump that Russia would agree to halt offensives in southern Ukraine's Kherson and Zaporizhzhia if Kyiv ceded Donetsk and Luhansk. Luhansk is almost fully under Russian control, but parts of Donetsk, including the strategic cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, remain in Ukrainian hands. These are heavily fortified positions that Ukraine has defended at high cost. After the meeting, Trump told European leaders that he supported the plan, The New York Times reported citing officials. He is expected to present the proposal to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during his visit to Washington. Putin described the summit as 'sincere and substantive', according to Russia's TASS news agency. Why Donbas matters to Putin The Donbas (short for Donets Basin) is Ukraine's industrial heartland. It stretches across the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, bordering Russia. The area is rich in coal and heavy industry, making it critical to Ukraine's economy. Control over Donbas would give Russia a near-complete grip on eastern Ukraine and deprive Kyiv of an energy powerhouse. The region also carries deep strategic value. Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War describe Donetsk as a 'fortress belt', where Ukrainian forces have built layered defences since 2014, reported The Independent. These include trenches, bunkers, minefields, and fortified urban zones that have blunted Russia's advances for over a decade. Elina Beketova of the Centre for European Policy Analysis told The Independent that losing Donbas would be 'catastrophic' for Ukraine, as it could shift the front 80km west and open a direct path for Russia to advance towards Kharkiv, Poltava, and Dnipro. Backstory: Donbas under fire since 2014 The battle for Donbas is not new. Russia first moved into the region in 2014 after annexing Crimea. Moscow-backed separatists declared the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, sparking a long-running conflict. By the time of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, Moscow already controlled more than a third of eastern Ukraine. According to Reuters, Russia holds almost all of Luhansk and about 75 per cent of Donetsk today. Ukrainian forces retain control over approximately 6,600 sq km in Donetsk, where battles remain intense. Despite Russia's gains, Kyiv has used fortified cities and terrain to hold back advances. Trump's shifting stance Trump's position after Alaska marked a shift. According to Reuters, Trump told Zelenskyy Putin had offered to freeze most frontlines if Ukraine ceded Donetsk. He argued that a direct peace deal would be more durable than a ceasefire, writing on Truth Social: 'The best way to end the horrific war … is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement.' This aligns closely with Moscow's narrative. Russia has long insisted that Kyiv concede territory and abandon its Nato membership ambitions. While Putin publicly praised the talks, Kremlin aides signalled no readiness to compromise on core demands. How Ukraine reacted Zelenskyy has repeatedly vowed that Ukraine 'will never leave' Donbas. He warned that ceding the region would allow Russia to use it as a springboard for future offensives. 'Donbas for the Russians is a springboard for a future new offensive,' he said, stressing that giving up fortified positions would undermine Ukraine's security. Ukraine has also stressed that conceding land would violate its constitution and embolden Russia. Zelenskyy has insisted any settlement must include robust security guarantees, with Western backing, to deter renewed aggression. What is European allies' position? European leaders have rejected territorial concessions. On Saturday, they reiterated that Ukraine's borders must not be altered through force. Germany's foreign minister said European partners might join Monday's White House meeting, while Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer warned of fresh sanctions on Russia if fighting continues. Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney also welcomed signals from Trump on security guarantees, calling them 'essential to any just and lasting peace'. European leaders, however, have cautioned that Ukraine's right to seek Nato membership cannot be restricted, another sticking point for Moscow. What's next Zelenskyy is expected to meet Trump in Washington to respond to Putin's proposal. A three-way summit has not been agreed, but European leaders are watching closely. Any peace framework will hinge on whether Kyiv can secure ironclad guarantees and resist pressure to cede territory. For Ukraine, holding Donbas is about more than land. It is about defending a strategic shield, protecting its industrial base, and preventing Russia from advancing deeper into the country. For Putin, gaining full control of Donbas would cement Russia's grip on eastern Ukraine and strengthen his hand in any future negotiations.
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First Post
10 minutes ago
- First Post
Of jets, handshakes and smiles: How Putin steamrollered Trump and deflated his deal-making hyperbole
Donald Trump called the Alaska summit hoping for a breakthrough he could tout for his domestic audience and impress upon the Nobel committee. Instead, he was bulldozed by the Russian president Westerners often struggle to grasp Russian psychology. As biographer Richard Lourie observes in his book Putin: 'America's experts know Russia, they just don't know Russians.' That gap becomes sharper when the subject is Vladimir Putin, a former KGB spy trained to mask his fragility and exploit the vulnerabilities of his opponents. This ignorance was on full display in Alaska, where US President Donald Trump hosted Putin for peace talks on Ukraine. The summit was choreographed as a display of American might:B-2 bombers thundered overhead and F-22s lined the runway as Trump clasped Putin's hand with a practised tug meant to project dominance—as though optics alone could substitute for substance. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD But for Putin—an intelligence veteran skilled in reading and exploiting weakness—the theatrics must have bordered on the absurd. Each flyover, each staged handshake, and each show of strength would have highlighted Washington's insecurity. True strength does not need to be advertised—it imposes itself. Trump's 'show of power' revealed the innate American anxiety, and his pompous vanity showcased the inner decay. Behind closed doors, the optics gave way to reality. For nearly three hours the two men spoke, but when they emerged, Trump appeared like a surrendered general, admitting, 'We didn't get there.' His self-proclaimed reputation as master dealmaker was punctured, and he conceded, 'There's no deal till there is a deal.' Putin, by contrast, walked away without ceding an inch. Moscow gained everything it sought: An end to Putin's diplomatic isolation in the Western world, the optics of equality with the president of the world's sole superpower, and the widening of cracks in transatlantic relations, besides Ukraine being pushed further into despair—excluded from the talks and left alone to lick its wounds. The meeting vindicated what everyone knew except, of course, Trump: That tariffs don't stop war; it didn't during Operation Sindoor, and it won't in Ukraine. More importantly, it showed the American dispensation that it was left with fewer cards, especially after the initiation of the tariff war, more so amidst the rebellions led by Bharat and China, along with other Brics nations such as Brazil and South Africa. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Know Your Enemy Coming back to the Alaska summit, had Trump studied Putin more closely, he might have avoided such puerile missteps. He would have known that the Russian President is at his best when pushed to a corner, thanks to his street-fighting experience during his childhood in Leningrad. As Lourie writes: 'The lesson that the streets of Leningrad taught was simple, and it stayed with Putin his whole life: The weak get beaten. Weakness is both disgrace and danger.' That street code shaped Putin's worldview and his political tactics. 'The streets of Leningrad taught me one thing: if a fight is unavoidable, throw the first punch,' the Russian president would concede much later in an interview. Putin thrives on others' aggression, and in Alaska, Trump provided him just that. However, Putin's drive is not just personal psychology. As historian Orlando Figes writes in The Story of Russia, Ukraine is an 'existential war' for him—he will fight until he can claim a credible victory. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Ukraine being non-negotiable for Russia makes Putin doubly lethal—and an almost impossible war for the West to win. Ukraine's importance comes from the fact that it has always been central to Russia's identity, both historically and strategically. 'All Russian history flowed from Kiev. Every schoolchild learned: Kiev is the mother of Russian cities, Ukraine is Russia's breadbasket,' Lourie notes. During the Soviet Union's 75 years, Ukrainian leaders—including Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Chernenko—ruled for three decades. A Missed Opportunity At the heart of the Ukraine conflict lies Russia's enduring apprehension of encirclement by the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato). Lourie recalls how, in 1990, US Secretary of State James Baker promised Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that if Moscow pulled its forces from East Germany and allowed reunification, Nato would not move 'one inch east'. In the three decades since, Nato has expanded not by inches but by hundreds of kilometres. The policy was so fundamentally flawed that it had even drawn criticism from George Kennan, America's foremost Russia strategist and author of the Cold War containment doctrine. Kennan called Nato's enlargement 'the most fateful error of American policy in the post-Cold-War era', predicting it would revive 'nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion'. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The Ukraine war is a making of the West's own folly, envy, and ambition. In his first presidential term, Putin actually sought integration with the West. He frequently emphasised that Russia was part of European culture and even entertained the idea of joining Nato or the EU. But the Western European nations rebuffed him—repeatedly. Orlando Figes describes this rejection as part of a 'recurring pattern running right through Russian history since at least the eighteenth century'. Russia 'sought respect and recognition as part of Europe, but when humiliated, it turned inward, rebuilt, and armed itself against the West'. Putin soon realised Russia's destiny couldn't lie with the West, possibly inspired by thinkers like Nikolai Danilevsky. Figes writes, 'His (Putin's) thinking here was possibly derived from Danilevsky's Russia and Europe, written in the wake of the Crimean War, in which the Pan-Slav thinker had maintained that Russia was a distinctive multicultural civilisation, neither understood nor recognised by Europe, which saw it only as an aggressor state and wanted to diminish it.' STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Western condescension—rooted in a sense of cultural and even racial superiority—pushed Russia to reposition itself, not as European but as a Eurasian power. It started looking afresh at its Asian roots and allies. Conclusion There's no solution to Ukraine without understanding these moot points and differences. Peace comes through negotiations, understanding and fair play, sometimes imposed through the barrel of a gun. It just cannot happen because a leader is in a hurry to gain Nobel nominations or even impress his domestic audience. Trump went to Alaska hoping for a breakthrough he could tout to his domestic audience and impress upon the Nobel committee. Instead, he was steamrolled. For Putin, it was a win-win situation. He secured global legitimacy, widened Western divisions, and strengthened the impression that Russia dictates terms on the Ukrainian issue while Washington scrambles to catch up. However, we are yet to hear the last word on Ukraine—and of course, the Trump-Putin saga. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost's views.
Time of India
10 minutes ago
- Time of India
Melania Trump appeals Putin to 'think about children' amid conflict; letter goes viral
The first lady of the United States, Melania Trump, in an unusual move wrote a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin and got it hand-delivered by Donald Trump during a meeting between the two leaders in Alaska. In her letter, Melania requested Putin to consider the safety and well being of children amid ongoing unrest between Russia and Ukraine. Show more Show less
