After Putin summit, Trump says peace deal is best way to end Ukraine war
In response, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv needs a 'real peace, not a temporary pause in Russian attacks' and announced he would travel to Washington on Monday for talks with his US counterpart.
Following his meeting with Putin, Trump described the talks as 'very successful.' In a post on his Truth Social platform, he said a subsequent phone call with Zelenskyy and several European leaders, including NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, 'went very well.'
'Everyone agrees that the best way to end the war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a peace agreement that ends the war, instead of just a ceasefire agreement that sometimes may not last long,' Trump wrote.
'If the meeting with Zelenskyy on Monday goes well, we will set a date to meet with Putin. This could potentially save the lives of millions of people,' he added.
The statement appears to mark a shift in Trump's stance. As he was travelling to Alaska, he told reporters he 'would not be satisfied if Putin did not agree to a ceasefire,' Britain's Sky News noted.
A senior Ukrainian lawmaker said Trump was 'adopting Putin's position by suggesting abandoning a ceasefire in favour of a quick peace deal.'
'Unfortunately, Trump has taken Putin's position. This was Putin's demand,' Oleksandr Merezhko, head of the foreign affairs committee in Ukraine's parliament, told Reuters.
Zelenskyy seeks 'real peace'
After speaking with Trump, Zelenskyy said he held a call with European leaders and stressed that his country needed a genuine and lasting peace. He said he told Trump of the need to increase pressure on Russia and ensure reliable, long-term security, insisting that Europe and America must provide security guarantees.
He reiterated that issues related to territory could only be resolved with Ukraine's involvement.
Zelenskyy confirmed he would visit Washington on Monday to discuss 'the details of ending the war with Russia.' He said his phone call with Trump 'lasted more than an hour and a half,' beginning as a one-on-one discussion before European leaders were invited to join.
The Ukrainian president expressed support for a trilateral summit involving Ukraine, the United States and Russia. 'Substantive issues can be discussed at the leadership level, and the trilateral format is suitable for that,' he said.
Talks with European leaders
During his call with European leaders, Trump said Putin 'prefers a comprehensive agreement to end the war with Ukraine' and does not want a temporary ceasefire, a source on the call told Axios.
'I think a quick peace deal is better than a ceasefire,' Trump reportedly told the leaders.
In addition to Rutte, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, French President Emmanuel Macron, and leaders from Germany, Finland, Poland, Italy, and Britain also participated in the call.
Zelenskyy said the call included a discussion of 'positive signals' from Washington regarding security guarantees.
Alaska summit outcome
The summit in Alaska on Friday between Trump and Putin, which lasted over two and a half hours, was described by both sides as 'fruitful,' though their public statements did not confirm any full agreement on Ukraine.
After the meeting, Trump said in an interview with Fox News that it was 'really up to President Zelenskyy to get it done.' He added, 'The European countries have to step up a little bit, but it's up to President Zelenskyy… and if they'd like, I'll be at the next meeting.'
A Kremlin official, quoted by Russia's TASS news agency, said the topic of a trilateral summit 'has not yet been discussed' and that there was 'no information yet on a date' for another meeting between Putin and Trump.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin got everything he could have hoped for in Alaska. President Donald Trump got very little — judging by his own pre-summit metrics. The question now is whether Trump secured any moderate gains or planted seeds for Ukraine's future security if there's an eventual peace deal with Russia that were not immediately obvious after Friday's summit. And he's left with some searing strategic questions. Despite Trump's claim to have made 'a lot of progress' and that the summit was a '10 out of 10,' all signs point to a huge win for the Russian autocrat. Trump's lavish stage production of Putin's arrival Friday, with near-simultaneous exits from presidential jets and red-carpet strolls, provided some image rehabilitation for a leader who is a pariah in the rest of the West and who is accused of war crimes in Ukraine. And by the end of their meeting, Trump had offered a massive concession to his visitor by adopting the Russian position that peace moves should concentrate on a final peace deal — which will likely take months or years to negotiate — rather than a ceasefire to halt the Russian offensive now. As CNN's Nick Paton Walsh pointed out, that just gives Putin more time to grind down Ukraine. Most importantly, Trump has, at least for now, backed away from threats to impose tough new sanctions on Russia and expand secondary sanctions on the nations that buy its oil and therefore bankroll its war. He'd threatened such measures by a deadline that expired last week out of frustration with Putin's intransigence and a growing belief the Russian leader was 'tapping' him along. This leverage may have brought Putin to Alaska. But Trump seems to have relaxed it for little in return. 'Because of what happened today, I think I don't have to think about that now,' Trump said in an interview with Fox News after the summit. Trump briefed European leaders after the summit, telling them that Putin called on Ukraine to yield the roughly a third or so of the Donbas, encompassing the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, that Russia does not currently control. In return, he'd offer to freeze the front lines in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, CNN's Kevin Liptak reported, citing European officials. This would force Ukraine into an agonizing dilemma. Some analysts fear such a deal would allow Moscow's forces a platform to launch a future attack. European leaders also said Trump voiced openness to providing US security guarantees for Ukraine once the war ends. This could be significant because the president has yet to commit to US support for any Western-led peace mission in the country. But he didn't specify what kind of backing he's willing to provide. CNN's Kit Maher reported Saturday that multiple European leaders had been invited to a meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House on Monday. It was unclear which of them will attend, but it raises the possibility of a new widening of Trump's peacemaking effort to include US allies. But the Kyiv government will also be on alert for any attempt to pressure it to make concessions to plans that Trump agreed with Putin. Dueling shows of force F-35 jets and a B-2 bomber accompany the plane carrying the Russian President Vladimir Putin as he arrives at Elmendorf-Richardson Joint Base ahead of Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump meeting in Alaska, United States on August 15, 2025. Fatih Aktas/Anadolu/Getty Images Friday's meeting began with a B-2 stealth bomber and F-22 fighters roaring overhead in a dramatic moment of US superpower signaling. But Putin one-upped that symbolism by greeting Trump with the words 'Good afternoon, dear neighbor,' as he leveraged the summit's location in Alaska to imply that the two countries had important and immediate mutual interests that should not be disrupted by a distant war in Europe. For Ukrainians and their European allies — who were shut out of the meeting and whom Trump briefed afterward — there was at least a moment of relief that Trump didn't sell Kyiv out. The fact that a US-Russia land swap plan didn't emerge from Alaska is a win for Europe's emergency pre-summit diplomacy. Still, Trump hinted that he will pile pressure on Ukraine's leader when they meet at the White House on Monday. It's 'now up to President Zelensky to get it done,' Trump told Fox News in the friendly post-summit interview, after refusing to answer questions with Putin in what had been billed as a joint press conference. Trump's options moving forward Before the summit, Trump obliterated careful efforts by his staff to lower expectations when he told Fox News, 'I won't be happy if I walk away without some form of a ceasefire.' President Donald Trump after speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One while en route to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, on Friday, August 15, 2025. Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP The failure to get there is important. Russia is happy to commit to a detailed peace process with interminable negotiations that would allow it to continue fighting — including in its increasingly successful summer offensive — while it talks. But Ukrainians are desperate for relief from years of Russian drone and missile attacks on civilians as a generation bleeds out on World War I-style battlefields. Peace talks without a ceasefire will leave it open to Russian or US pressure. Trump's zeal to work for peace in Ukraine is commendable, even if his repeated public requests for a Nobel Peace Prize raise questions about his ultimate motives. And one upside of the summit is that the US and Russia — the countries with the biggest nuclear arsenals — are talking again. But the underlying premise of Trump's peacemaking is that the force of his personality and his supposedly unique status as the world's greatest dealmaker can end wars. That myth is looking very ragged after his long flight home from Alaska. And by falling short of his own expectations in the Alaska summit, Trump left himself with some tough calculations about what to do next. ► Does he revert to his previous attempts to pressure Ukraine in search of an imposed peace that would validate Putin's illegal invasion and legitimize the idea that states can rewrite international borders, thereby reversing a foundation of the post-World War II-era? ► Or as the dust settles, and he seeks to repair damage to his prestige, does he revert to US pressure and sanctions to try to reset Russian calculations? He at least left open the possibility of sticks rather than carrots in his Fox News interview, saying: 'I may have to think about it in two weeks or three weeks or something, but we don't have to think about that right now.' ► Alternatively, Trump could commit to the Russian vision of talks on a final peace agreement. History shows that this would be neither quick nor honored by the Russians over the long term. 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And I think that's how you can be manipulated.' Trump's style-before-substance strategy clearly backfired in Alaska. Putin appeared far more prepared as Trump winged it. In retrospect, it's hard to see what the Russian president offered to US envoy Steve Witkoff in the Kremlin that convinced the administration that the Alaska talks were a good idea. And Russia is clearly playing on Trump's desire for photo-op moments in the expectation that it can keep him engaged while offering few other concessions. Trump's Nobel campaign suffered a setback Trump may remain the best hope for peace in Ukraine. He can speak directly to Putin, unlike Ukraine or its European allies. Ultimately, US power will be needed to guarantee Ukrainian security, since Europeans lack the capacity to do it alone. And the US retains the capability to hurt Russia and Putin with direct and secondary sanctions. But Trump has to want to do it. And for now he seems back under Putin's spell. 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