Wednesday briefing: How Trump and Putin might make peace in Ukraine without Zelenskyy at the table

The Guardian

a day ago

Good morning. All eyes will be on Alaska this Friday for a peace summit aimed at ending the war in Ukraine. The meeting will be between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Even more striking: Ukraine, the country under invasion and with parts of its territory occupied, has not been invited.
But behind the buzz of diplomacy lies the fog of war. Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that Russia is not preparing to end the conflict, but 'making movements that indicate preparations for new offensive operations'.
What exactly this new offensive will entail remains uncertain. But just days before the Trump-Putin summit, Zelenskyy admitted in a press briefing that groups of Russians advanced about 10km in several places, as part of their bid to seize full control of the Donetsk region.
To understand how the upcoming summit and reports of fresh Russian incursions might shape the course of the war and any potential peace settlement, I spoke to Dan Sabbagh, the Guardian's defence editor, who is reporting from the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. That's after the headlines.
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During the presidential campaign last year, Donald Trump repeatedly vowed to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office. But eight months into his presidency, the war rages on into its fourth year.
In that time, Russia has been building up its industrial capability. It is now manufacturing about 100 Shahed drones a day, while ramping up missile production, especially Iskander ballistic missiles, which are very hard for Ukraine to intercept, Dan tells me.
'They've started using these in combination and in greater numbers,' Dan says. 'In spring, we saw more regular missile attacks on Kyiv, which included all-night drone raids. In one attack, dozens of people were killed. The biggest was in the western city of Lutsk, near a Ukrainian airbase, when about 700 drones came in one night. We're seeing the Russian military-industrial complex grinding along, trying to win through attrition.'
Russia started to slightly dial down its attacks on Ukrainian urban centres after complaints by the US, but that changed this week.
And there's more movement on the frontlines, with reports that raiding parties have broken through a few kilometres from Donetsk. 'These are small, about 30 to 50 troops, but the point is psychological: to make Americans and negotiators think Ukraine is in trouble,' Dan says. 'Ahead of this much-hyped Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, the Russians are trying to create 'facts on the ground'.'
What about Ukraine's offensive into Russia?
Last year, Ukrainian forces crossed the border into Russia's Kursk region in a surprise incursion that caught Russia off guard. 'It was a big morale-boosting operation,' Dan says. But by the spring of this year, Russia had successfully repelled the attack.
Reclaiming the region occurred during a crucial time: the big row between Trump and Zelenskyy in the Oval Office that was seen around the world.
Shortly after that diplomatic spat, the Americans briefly withheld intelligence sharing, which is crucial for targeting and knowing where the enemy is, and paused weapons shipments for the first time.
'The Russians gained a lot of territory in a few days. Even though both were later switched back on, a lot of momentum was lost,' Dan says. 'So, Ukraine lost what might have been a bargaining chip in future negotiations.'
What will happen at the Alaska peace summit?
There are reports that Ukrainians only knew about the peace summit after it had been arranged. And they have not been invited – despite pleading from European leaders that Zelenskyy be at the negotiating table.
The relationship between Trump and Zelenskyy can best be described as rocky. But Dan says that Trump has seemed to lose patience with Putin. He gave the Russian leader a 50-day deadline to agree to a Ukraine ceasefire or face US sanctions on oil exports, and began to threaten secondary sanctions on China and India for buying Russian oil.
Then, Trump's negotiator Steve Witkoff went to Moscow last week, and news broke that Trump would meet the Russian president this week. It will be the first US-Russia leadership summit since Joe Biden met his counterpart in Geneva in June 2021.
'Trump wants the headline 'I stopped the war', but may not care what that looks like,' cautions Dan. 'The two leaders agreed to meet in Alaska, a kind of midpoint between the two countries, though geopolitically nowhere. European leaders aren't invited. Zelenskyy isn't invited. This is purely bilateral and it's Trump and Putin's first face-to-face since Helsinki 2018.
'The Ukrainian fear is that Russia will offer a ceasefire in exchange for Ukraine giving up the rest of Donetsk oblast, which is about 9,000 sq km, including heavily fortified cities like Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.'
In a press briefing attended by Dan, Zelenskyy said that Ukraine would never accept this, because it's strategically vital territory and giving it away would invite future Russian offensives. The region sought by Russia amounted to 'about 90,000 square kilometres' of the country, he said.
He adds that Ukraine's counteroffer is a ceasefire on current frontlines, prisoner and child returns, and then talks on territory and security guarantees. They refuse any voluntary handover of cities Russia hasn't taken. But Putin has thus far refused to meet Zelenskyy.
What do ordinary Ukrainians want?
Dan has been in Kyiv every August since 2022. That year, the city was recovering after repelling Russian attempts to seize it. In 2023, the counteroffensive was under way but the future remained uncertain. By 2024, after the Kursk incursion, there was renewed optimism.
'There's now a growing weariness. People want to see what happens with this diplomatic track, but no one expects a military miracle. People get very tired when there's a run of missile and drone attacks, they lose sleep and real life becomes hard work. People are sheltering in the metro station and if you've got a family you're thinking 'what am I doing here?' But when those stop the city comes back to life. It's a resilient place,' Dan says.
The Ukrainian people want the war to end – nearly everyone has lost someone or been displaced – but they won't accept peace at any price, Dan added. And while there's growing acceptance that Ukraine can't reconquer all their lost territory, there's also a hard line on not giving up more.
What is on the mind of people in the country is what role Trump is going to play. 'Ukrainians, particularly the negotiators, want to be very careful here. No one wants to alienate the US leader for obvious reasons. If there is a world where Trump is going to be a mediator, the guy who can bring Putin and Zelenskyy round the table, the guy who can make this a threeway summit to end the war, or at least stop the fighting, then in Ukraine's view Trump can be a hero,' Dan says.
'But if Trump is going to try to negotiate with Putin and then try to force Ukrainians to accept that negotiated peace, if he is less of an honest broker, then that's something to fear and not something they want'
The problem is no one knows which Trump will turn up in Alaska.
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