Trump touts second trilateral meeting before Putin summit; Zelenskyy pushes
Zelenskyy delivered the message after the call on Wednesday, two days ahead of a summit between Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Alaska, which comes as part of Washington's so far failed attempts to end the war in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Trump promised to hold trilateral talks with both Ukraine and Russia, if Friday's summit 'goes OK'.
'I would like to do it immediately,' he said. 'We'll have a quick second meeting between President Putin and President Zelenskyy and myself if they'd like to have me there.'
The rapid developments came after Trump met virtually with Zelenskyy and other European leaders including France's Emmanuel Macron and the United Kingdom's Keir Starmer on Wednesday.
Arranged in a bid for Europe to try and influence Trump's meeting with Putin on Friday, this second call took place after talks earlier in the day between Zelenskyy, European leaders and the heads of NATO and the European Union.
Trump and European leaders called their joint meeting a success, with the US president describing it as a 'very good call'.
'I would rate it a 10. Very friendly,' he said, speaking during a press conference at the Kennedy Center.
Trump noted that he would be calling Zelenskyy and European leaders immediately following his meeting with Putin.
At a press conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Zelenskyy expressed his hope that the Trump-Putin summit would focus on an 'immediate ceasefire'.
'Sanctions must be in place and must be strengthened if Russia does not agree to a ceasefire,' he added.
As the Russian army continues to make sizable territorial gains in the east Ukrainian province of Donetsk, Zelenskyy told the US president and his European colleagues that Putin was 'bluffing' about pursuing peace.
His choice of words, a term commonly used in reference to poker, evoked Trump telling Zelenskyy, 'you don't have the cards' in the infamously hostile news conference at the White House on February 28th.
'He is trying to apply pressure before the meeting in Alaska along all parts of the Ukrainian front,' Zelenskyy suggested. 'Russia is trying to show that it can occupy all of Ukraine.'
After the Trump call, Merz, who described the meeting as 'exceptionally constructive', stressed that Ukraine is willing to negotiate, but noted that 'legal recognition of Russian occupation is not up for debate'.
'The principle that borders cannot be changed by force must continue to apply,' Merz said.
'Negotiations must include robust security guarantees for Kyiv,' he added. 'The Ukrainian armed forces must be able and remain able to effectively defend the sovereignty of their country. They must also be able to count on Western aid in the long term.'
After the online meeting, France's Macron said Trump would be seeking a ceasefire in Ukraine during his meeting with Putin on Friday.
The US president would also seek a trilateral meeting with Putin and Zelenskyy in the future, the French president noted.
The Trump-Putin summit in Alaska has been a cause for anxiety in Kyiv and Europe more widely, after Trump declared that both Ukraine and Russia would have to swap land if a truce is to be reached.
Speaking from the UK on Wednesday, JD Vance, the US vice-president, seemed to try to allay fears in Europe.
'I just talked to him [Trump] right before I came on the stage, and he said very simply that we are going to make it our mission as an administration to bring peace to Europe once again,' Vance said.
Reporting from Berlin, Al Jazeera's Step Vaessen said there was 'some optimism' in Europe that Trump had agreed to Wednesday's meeting.
However, Vaessen noted that European leaders were still 'concerned that everything changes as soon as President Trump is in that room with President Putin, who they know is a very keen, a very sharp negotiator'.
Elsewhere, the Russian Foreign Ministry sought to downplay the relevance of Europe's last-minute diplomatic efforts with Trump, branding them 'practically insignificant'.
On the battlefield, Russia has claimed to have captured the villages of Suvorovo and Nikanorovka as its gains in Donetsk continue, with the Ukrainian authorities issuing evacuation orders for around a dozen settlements.
The Kremlin's forces achieved their largest 24-hour advance in more than a year on Tuesday, according to data from the US-based Institute for the Study of War.
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Attempts by Russian troops to capture Sloviansk and the cities of the fortress belt in 2022-2023 were unsuccessful, and Ukrainian counteroffensives drove the Russian forces far from key positions. 'Ukraine's fortress belt has served as a major obstacle to the Kremlin's territorial ambitions in Ukraine over the last 11 years,' the Washington, DC-based think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported on August 8. Russian advances: What's the situation on the ground now? In August, Russian forces made significant gains, advancing about 10km (6 miles) beyond the front lines as they intensified efforts to seize the fortress belt from the southwest, concentrating forces in the Toretsk and eastern Pokrovsk directions. Al Jazeera military expert Alex Gatapoulous said, 'I'm not sure what Ukraine has to offer in terms of territory. Russia has it all and is slowly winning this conflict, albeit at a great cost. 'There is already movement around Pokrovsk in the east, and Konstantinivka is also in danger of encirclement. If Ukraine hasn't built defensive positions in-depth, Russian forces will have the ability to break out into open country. This is a really dangerous time for Ukraine. They've lost all the Russian territory they had taken in Kursk and have little to trade with.' How has the war progressed over the past three years? In the war's early weeks, Russia advanced from the north, east and south, rapidly seizing vast areas of Ukrainian territory, with fierce battles in Irpin, Bucha and Mariupol – the latter of which fell to Russian forces in May 2022. The siege of Mariupol was one of the deadliest and most destructive battles of the war. Ukrainian officials estimated tens of thousands of civilian deaths. By March 2022, Russian forces seized the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the largest in Europe, and by April of that year, Russia controlled 27 percent of Ukraine. By late 2022, Ukraine had turned the tide with major counteroffensives in Kharkiv and Kherson, with Kyiv reclaiming 54 percent of the land Russia had captured since the beginning of the war, according to ISW data, reducing Russian-occupied land to just 18 percent of the country. In August 2024, Ukraine launched a significant incursion into Russia's Kursk region, marking a notable escalation in the conflict. This offensive saw Ukrainian forces advancing approximately 10km (6 miles) into Russian territory, seizing control over an estimated 250 sq km (96.5 sq miles), all of which has since been retaken by Russia. By late 2024 and into 2025, the war had settled into a grinding impasse, with both sides suffering heavy losses. However, Russia's recent incursions, pushing towards Sloviansk, allude to the potential for another offensive to take land it has historically struggled to capture. What was the pre-war situation? Prior to Russia's full-scale 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia had held Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Moscow also supported separatists in the Donbas region, leading to the creation of the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics. Russia officially recognised these entities on February 21, 2022, and launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine three days later. The war in Ukraine has resulted in one of the largest and fastest-growing displacement crises in Europe since World War II. According to the UN, approximately 10 million Ukrainians have been displaced, which is about 21 percent of the country's pre-war population. Of these, 3.7 million remain internally displaced within Ukraine, while 6.9 million have fled abroad as refugees.
