Putin faces ‘very severe consequences' if no Ukraine truce agreed, Trump says

The Guardian

2 days ago

Vladimir Putin will face 'very severe consequences' if he does not agree a ceasefire in the war in Ukraine at his summit with Donald Trump in Alaska, the US president said on Wednesday.
Speaking after a call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders, including Britain's Keir Starmer, Trump also suggested he would push for a second summit if his meeting with Putin goes well – this time including his Ukrainian counterpart.
'If the first one goes OK, we'll have a quick second one,' Trump told reporters in Washington. 'I would like to do it almost immediately, and we'll have a quick second meeting between President Putin and President Zelenskyy and myself, if they'd like to have me there.'
Trump did not provide a timeframe for a second meeting. He is to meet Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday. The meeting will reportedly be held at Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson, a military facility crucial to countering the Soviet Union during the height of the cold war.
Asked if Russia would face consequences if Putin did not agree to stop the war after the Alaska meeting, Trump said: 'Yes, they will … very severe consequences.'
The president's remarks followed what he described as a very good call with European leaders in which he consulted about the goal and strategy for his summit. He pleased Europe's leadership by giving reassurances that a ceasefire was his priority and he would not make any territorial concessions without Kyiv's full involvement.
Trump's approach at the video conference, as described by France's Emmanuel Macron, appeared to reassure some of the leaders, who were making a final collective plea to the unpredictable US president that he had a duty to protect Ukraine's sovereignty – and European security – at the talks.
The European leaders spoke to Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance, in a hastily convened one-hour meeting in an effort to shape Trump's negotiating strategy. Zelenskyy and European leaders have been excluded from the summit and fear that Trump, intent on fulfilling his election campaign guarantee that he could easily end the bloodshed in Ukraine, will make concessions that compromise Ukraine's future sovereignty.
But Trump underlined his promise that the summit was not in itself a substantive negotiation and was what he described as a 'feel-out' to test Putin's terms to sign a temporary ceasefire that would then lead to talks with Kyiv. Trump said it had been a very good call, and that he rated it 10 out of 10.
Britain, France and Germany, co-chairs of the so-called 'coalition of the willing', later laid out their position on the talks, reiterating that international borders must not be changed by force, and insisting that Ukraine must have 'robust and credible security guarantees to effectively defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity'.
The three countries repeated that meaningful negotiations could happen only with a ceasefire in place, and called for Russia to face further economic sanctions if it did not agree to cease hostilities at the summit.
Speaking alongside Zelenskyy in Berlin, the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said Europe wanted Trump to be successful in Alaska but that it had made clear to the US president that Ukrainian and European interests had to be protected at the summit.
Merz called for a 30-day ceasefire, and then substantive talks. Putin has resisted a ceasefire for months.
Setting out the key principles on which Europe is united he said: 'Negotiations must be part of a common transatlantic strategy. Then they can ultimately be most likely to succeed. This strategy must continue to rely on strong support for Ukraine and necessary pressure against Russia. This also means, if there is no movement on the Russian side in Alaska, then the United States and we Europeans should … increase the pressure.'
He added that there could not be any Russian legal ownership of Ukrainian territory. 'President Trump knows this position, he shares it very extensively and therefore I can say we have had a really exceptionally constructive and good conversation with each other.'
Macron said no serious discussions had taken place about Russian-Ukrainian land swaps involving the ceding of Ukrainian territory, and Trump had anyway underlined that any such discussions could only be negotiated with Kyiv. He said Trump would fight for a trilateral meeting between Ukraine, the US and Russia and that such a meeting would be held in Europe.
One European diplomat said: 'Overall the meeting was reassuring in that our points came across, but the question remains whether Trump will stick to the agreed script when he gets into the room with Putin.'
Trump met heads of state and government leaders from Germany, the UK, France, Italy, Poland and Finland, as well as the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen. The issue of security guarantees for Ukraine was raised in the call with Trump, but no breakthrough was made in the US offering to provide practical support to the coalition.
But the Europeans' main objective had been to seek reassurances from the notoriously fickle Trump that he would not be lured into making irretrievable pledges requiring Ukraine to make concessions of land as the price for securing Putin's agreement to a ceasefire. They also tried to extract assurances that Trump was still prepared to deploy as yet unused economic levers that could damage Russian revenues.
European leaders have been careful in public to welcome Trump's summit but in private fear Trump is bent on improving US-Russia relations and sees a loss of Ukrainian sovereignty as a necessary and unavoidable price to secure that objective.
Trump has been vague about his strategy, including the terms he will offer to induce Putin to agree to a ceasefire.
Zelenskyy has vowed that the Ukrainian military will not voluntarily surrender territory in Donetsk and Luhansk, but Russia is insisting at least four Ukrainian regions will become Russian either at the negotiating table or through force.
Earlier on Wednesday, Trump vented his fury at media reporting of his meeting with Putin, writing on Truth Social: 'The media is being really, really unfair about my meeting with Putin. They keep quoting fired losers and really stupid people like John Bolton, who just said that even though the meeting is on US soil, 'Putin has already won'. What the hell is this? We win EVERYTHING.'
The treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said further sanctions or secondary tariffs could yet be placed on Russia's trading partners if the Alaska meeting did not go well.
A confident Moscow dismissed the importance of Europe's consultation with Trump. The foreign ministry spokesperson Alexei Fadeyev said: 'We consider the consultations requested by the Europeans to be politically and practically insignificant actions. Verbally, the Europeans support the diplomatic efforts of Washington and Moscow to resolve the Ukrainian crisis, but in reality the European Union is sabotaging them.'
Russia says the Alaska meeting is likely to address the full gamut of Russian-American bilateral relations, and not just Ukraine. 'We hope that this meeting will allow the leaders to focus on the full range of issues, from the crisis in Ukraine to the obstacles that hinder normal and constructive dialogue, which is crucial to ensuring international peace and stability,' the spokesperson said.
The veteran Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, will be present at the talks.