Trump Expects 'Constructive Conversation' With Putin
The US president has spent the first months of his second term in office trying to broker peace in Ukraine -- after boasting he could end the conflict in 24 hours -- but multiple rounds of talks, phone calls and diplomatic visits have failed to yield a breakthrough.
Trump and Putin will hold a summit in Alaska on Friday in a bid halt the conflict, which was triggered by Moscow's February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
It will be the first between sitting US and Russian presidents since Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva in June 2021.
"I'm going to speak to Vladimir Putin and I'm going to be telling him 'you've got to end this war,'" Trump told a White House press conference, saying that he would "like to see a ceasefire very, very quickly."
"I think we'll have constructive conversations," said the president, noting that he would seek out Putin's "parameters" for peace, then call Zelensky and other European leaders right after the meeting.
Trump said last week that "there'll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both" Ukraine and Russia -- a suggestion Zelensky rejected.
The Ukrainian president warned Saturday that "decisions without Ukraine" would not bring peace and said his country's people "will not give their land to the occupier."
Trump said he was a "little bothered" by Zelensky's stance on territorial concessions, and insisted that land swaps would take place.
"There'll be some swapping, there'll be some changes in land," he said.
But Trump also stated that he would not make a unilateral agreement: "I'm not going to make a deal, it's not up to me to make a deal," he said, while emphasizing that he thinks "a deal should be made."
Three rounds of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine have failed to bear fruit, and it remains unclear whether the Trump-Putin summit would bring peace any closer.
Russian bombardments have forced millions of people to flee their homes and have destroyed swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine, and Putin has resisted multiple calls from the United States, Europe and Kyiv for a ceasefire.
Trump said he will know fairly quickly into the talks with Putin whether or not a deal would be coming, and that he may still walk away from trying to broker peace in Ukraine.
"I may leave and say good luck and that'll be the end. I may say this is not going to be settled," Trump said.
The US president said his aim is to bring Putin and Zelensky together, with or without being present himself.
"Ultimately I'm going to put the two of them in a room, I'll be there or I won't be there, and I think it'll get solved," Trump said.
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DW
3 hours ago
- DW
For Ukraine, the Alaska summit was a complete disappointment – DW – 08/16/2025
A red carpet for Vladimir Putin and no results for Ukraine. The Alaska summit, which many had pinned high hopes on, turned out to be a complete disappointment from the perspective of many Ukrainians. During Saturday night, many Ukrainians stayed up and anxiously waited for news from the Alaska summit between US President Donald Trump and Russia's head of state Vladimir Putin. For some, there was hope the talks could lead to some sort of end of Russia's war against Ukraine. Many Ukrainians though feared the price for this might be territorial concessions Kyiv would be pressured into making. But it soon became clear that the summit in Alaska had brought no fundamental changes. "There were no concrete results for Ukraine," Oleksandr Kraiev of the Ukrainian Prism think tank told DW. "Thank God nothing was signed and no radical decisions were made," the North America expert said. "The summit was an extremely successful information operation for Russia. The war criminal Putin came to the US and shook hands with the leader of the free world." According to Kraiev, apart from "Trump's deference toward Putin, there were no final answers to the most important questions." He believes that Putin dealt with Trump "with surgical precision" and told him everything Trump wanted to hear. This way, Putin got everything he wanted out of the summit. According to Ivan Us from Ukraine's Center for Foreign Policy of the National Institute for Strategic Studies, the Russian president never wanted the summit to lead to an end to the war. Instead, Putin's goal was to legitimize himself and end his international isolation. "For Putin, having a joint photo with Trump was the goal of this summit. To show in Russia that the isolation is over, that there won't be new sanctions, and that everything is fine, so that there'd be positive impulses for the markets. And for Trump, it was a moment where he wanted to demonstrate strength. He was walking next to Putin while a US bomber flew above them, the same bomber that recently attacked Iran. This was a signal to everyone not to forget who the most important country in the world is," Us told DW. As if to confirm this, Dmitry Medvedev, chairman of Russia's Security Council, said after the Alaska summit that a "full-fledged mechanism for meetings" between Russia and the US at the highest level had been restored. "Important: The meeting proved that negotiations without preconditions and simultaneously with the continuation of the Special Military Operation are possible. Both sides directly put the responsibility for future negotiation results on Kyiv and Europe," Medvedev wrote on social networks. The term Special Military Operation is how Russia refers to its war against Ukraine. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Ivan Us thinks that the summit did not get Ukraine closer to peace. Instead, it intensified the chaos, as the US and Russia are making contradictory statements about continuing possible trilateral dialogue involving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. For example, Moscow says that Trump and Putin did not discuss a trilateral summit with Zelensky, while Washington says the opposite. Zelenskyy himself spoke of receiving an invitation to a trilateral meeting. "We support President Trump's proposal for a trilateral meeting between Ukraine, the US, and Russia. Ukraine emphasizes: Important issues can be discussed at the level of heads of state, and a trilateral format is suitable for this," he wrote on social media after a phone call with Donald Trump. Zelenskyy shared that he would meet with Donald Trump in Washington on August 18. "Ukraine confirms once again that it is ready to work toward peace as productively as possible. President Trump informed me about his meeting with the Russian president and about the key points of the discussion. It is important that US power influences the development of the situation," the Ukrainian president said. There are fears in Ukraine that Zelenskyy's trip to Washington could result in new pressure from the US on Ukraine. "Any 'no' from the Ukrainian side could be portrayed as [a] lack of willingness to end the war. Trump essentially admitted that it's about an 'exchange of territories for security guarantees,' and he confirmed that agreement was reached on certain points and spoke of a 'chance for success,'" Iryna Herashchenko, Ukrainian MP and co-chair of the opposition party "European Solidarity," wrote on social media. She believes that such formulations allow Moscow to present this as legitimization of its demands. "Putin repeated during the brief briefing once again that the actual causes of the conflict must be eliminated. This means that Moscow will not change its goals - because the existence of an independent Ukraine is seen as the actual cause," warns Herashchenko. Ukrainian political scientist Vadym Denisenko, however, believes that Russia's idea of "doing business with the US in exchange for Ukrainian territory" didn't work. Putin managed to gain time, though. "At Alaska, they agreed to negotiate," Denisenko wrote on social media. Nevertheless, he argues that Putin "lost what was most important: his maneuverability. He drastically restricted his scope for action and is actually rapidly falling into China's arms." Denisenko believes that if no results regarding the end of the war are achieved within two months, the issue will become part of Chinese-American negotiations. "In other words: A new window for negotiations will open earliest at the end of the year, realistically only in spring 2026," he predicted. Judging by discussions among ordinary Ukrainians, what angers them most is the red carpet that was rolled out for Putin at the US military base in Anchorage. Countless angry comments on social media leave little doubt over how this was perceived in Ukraine. "History always remembers not only those who kill, but also those who bestow murderers with honors. This is a special kind of shame and complicity in crime, which is too often confused with diplomacy. Today, this gallery was expanded with a new picture, with a bloody carpet and a parade of honor guard for the architect of Bucha, Mariupol, Izium, thousands of torture chambers, mass shootings, and deportations," said Mustafa Nayyem, former parliament member and ex-head of the State Agency for Reconstruction and Infrastructure.
Int'l Business Times
6 hours ago
- Int'l Business Times
Europeans Try To Stay On The Board After Ukraine Summit
For European leaders, the absence of a Ukraine deal at the summit between Russian leader Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump has at least one upside: They have not yet been completely sidelined in a key strategic moment for the Continent's future. "It's good news that there was no deal, for both Ukraine and the Europeans," said Alberto Alemanno, a European law professor at the HEC university in Paris. He noted a serious risk that "a new European security map" would be drawn up while Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky and Europe's leaders watched from the sidelines. Europe found itself shut out of the summit in Alaska, and tried to weigh in ahead of the meeting with a flurry of calls and urgent meetings between leaders ahead of time. On Saturday, the French presidency said the leaders of Britain, France and Germany would host a video call Sunday for their so-called "coalition of the willing" to discuss steps towards peace in Ukraine. The meeting would come a day before Zelensky travels to Washington for talks with Trump -- five months after the Ukrainian leader was ambushed with a televised scolding during his previous Oval Office visit. European leaders also proposed a three-way summit between Zelensky, Putin and Trump. But it remains unlikely that Russia, hit by 18 rounds of European sanctions since it invaded Ukraine in February 2022, is ready for any thaw in its glacial relations with the bloc. Putin made his stance clear on Friday, warning Ukraine and European countries to "not create any obstacles" and not "make attempts to disrupt this emerging progress through provocation or behind-the-scenes intrigues". "Clearly, what Vladimir Putin's intention is, is to keep Europeans out and Americans in," said James Nixey, a specialist in Russian foreign policy. After a debriefing with Trump and with Zelensky on Saturday, European leaders held their own video call on their next steps. Moscow "cannot have a veto" on Ukraine joining the European Union or NATO, they said in a statement signed by French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. Macron later called for increased pressure on Russia until "a solid and durable peace" had been achieved. But since the beginning of the war, European leaders "have never engaged with Putin", said Alemanno. "And all of a sudden they have to do so, without knowing exactly what are the terms of engagement," he said. "So they're a bit stuck." The risk is all the greater since Trump has clearly indicated in recent weeks that he is ready to walk away from the war, despite his campaign promise to end it within "24 hours". "Each morning when I wake up, my first thought is that we have to re-arm ourselves even faster," Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told the Jyllands-Posten newspaper on Saturday.
DW
9 hours ago
- DW
Germany updates: Merz backs possible Putin-Zelenskyy meeting – DW – 08/16/2025
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and other European leaders have signed a joint statement backing a meeting between Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. DW has more. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has backed a potential meeting between the presidents of Ukraine, Russia and the United States. In other news, a prominent German lawmaker has made the case for Switzerland to join the European Union, particularly in light of the heavy tariffs placed on the Alpine country by the United States. Meanwhile, a man suspected of sexually abusing a 6-year-old girl at the Rulantica water park in Germany has been detained in Romania, according to German lawmaker Omid Nouripour has suggested that Switzerland could become a member of the European Union. "The German government should offer Switzerland the opportunity to quickly deepen cooperation, up to turbo membership in the EU," Nouripour, who is vice president of the German lower house of parliament (the Bundestag), told the German DPA news agency. "If our Swiss friends want to move closer to the European Union in light of new times, Germany should actively support this," he added. US President Donald Trump has imposed a hefty 39% tariff on imports from Switzerland, far higher than the 15% tariff on most products from the EU. Swiss economic associations have claimed this has put tens of thousands of jobs at risk. With a population of 9 million, Switzerland relies heavily on exports, with the US being the most important market, accounting for 18% in 2024. "For centuries, the Swiss have maintained a tradition of strict neutrality," said Nouripour. "However, the recent tariff dispute with Donald Trump painfully shows how vulnerable smaller states are when they are left to fend for themselves. Politically neutral, economically global — That no longer works in the new era." "From a Swiss perspective, the EU may not be the best choice, but it is by far the more reliable one," he said. For now, EU membership seems unlikely, with Switzerland's strongest party by votes, the right-wing populist Swiss People's Party (SVP), strictly against the notion. A 31-year-old man suspected of sexually abusing a 6-year-old girl at the Rulantica water park in Germany has been detained in Romania, police said in a statement. "Following intensive police investigations, the 31-year-old suspect was arrested in Romania on Friday evening," the statement read. "No further details about the arrest in Romania are available at this time," the statement added. Authorities had been searching for the Romanian national via an international arrest warrant. He is accused of taking the child from the Rulantica water park in Rust, near the French border, into a nearby wooded area last Saturday and abusing her. The man, who also lives in the region, allegedly left the child alone after the assault. She was discovered after being missing for around two hours. Police said surveillance footage identified the suspect. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz joined French President Emmanuel Macron, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in backing a three-way meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Russia's Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump. The support for such a meeting comes after a US-Russia summit failed to yield any results as Trump and Putin met in Alaska. Merz, Macron, Starmer and Von der Leyen signed a statement supporting Ukrainian presence at any future US-Russia summits and insisted on maintaining pressure on Moscow, including through sanctions. The statement was also signed by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. The European leaders also insisted Russia "cannot have a veto against Ukraine's pathway to EU and NATO." "It will be up to Ukraine to make decisions on its territory. International borders must not be changed by force." Merz posted on X: "We welcomed President Trump's efforts to stop the killing in Ukraine, end Russia's war of aggression, and achieve just and lasting peace. Ukraine can count on our unwavering solidarity as we work towards a peace that safeguards Ukraine's and Europe's vital security interests." To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video from the Bonn online news team and welcome to our weekend edition of this blog covering current affairs in Germany. Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz, along with other European leaders, has backed a possible meeting between Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. Follow up on this and more news, videos and analyses on the latest in Germany this weekend.
