US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin walked out of their closed-door meeting in Alaska on Friday without a firm conclusion on the Ukraine-Russia matter. However, they eventually presented a united front for the cameras at a subsequent joint press conference that saw them both showering each other with praises while Ukrainian officials held out big hopes for a potential ceasefire announcement.
Alas, the same wasn’t delivered to them, and soon, complaints about the Alaska summit playing to Putin’s advantage spread like wildfire. In the aftermath of the meeting with the Russian leader, Trump issued several statements via social media and otherwise, noting that a lasting and full-fledged peace deal was the best way to end the war in Ukraine instead of eyeing an immediate ceasefire proposition.
Similarly, Putin called the Friday meeting in the US “timely” and “very useful” despite the two presidents failing to reach a decision. Trump’s pivot to lasting peace has now offered the Russian president added advantage, as he foregrounded that achieving that end required eliminating “root causes” of what he calls the “Ukraine crisis.”
Here’s the latest on the Trump-Putin summit aftermath:
Zelenskyy and European leaders invited to White House
After the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, the US president briefed the Ukrainian president over a “lengthy” phone call, and has since confirmed that Zelenskyy will be sitting down with him in Washington, DC, on Monday. A White House official further told CNN that multiple European leader will also be joining the Oval Office discussions. Their names have yet to be confirmed.
Vice President JD Vance is also expected to attend the Monday meeting, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.
Zelenskyy’s chief ‘grateful’ to Melania Trump
The Ukrainian president’s chief of staff Adriy Yermak thanked the US First Lady Melania Trump for her letter to Putin in a bid to save children in the face of Russia’s incessant onslaught on Ukraine.
“The return of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia should be a key condition for any peace agreement,” he wrote in a social media post on Sunday. Acknowledging her gesture, he said he was “grateful” to Melania for her words addressed to the Russian president as he called on him to “singlehandedly restore” kids’ “melodic laughter.”
According to the Ukraine Conflict Observatory, more than 35,000 Ukrainian children have been abducted amid Russia’s war on the country and taken to over 100 locations therein.
Three-way meeting
Donald Trump is planning to arrange a meeting with both the Russian and Ukrainian presidents by next Friday. The final decision will hinge on his interactions with Zelenskyy on Monday.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s key European allies, called the “Coalition of the Willing,” are set to meet on Sunday, ahead of Zelenskyy’s interaction with Trump.
Zelenskyy still apprehensive of Putin amid ongoing attacks
Ukraine’s president, who warned the world ahead of the Trump-Putin summit that his Russian counterpart will do everything to “deceive” the US president during the Friday meeting, has once again sounded the alarm on his intentions. In a social media post Saturday, Zelenskyy highlighted that Russia was clearly unwilling to stop its attacks on Ukraine, even on a temporary basis.
“We see that Russia is rejecting numerous demands for a ceasefire and has not yet determined when it will stop the killings. This complicates the situation,” he said. “If they do not have the will to implement a simple order to stop the strikes, it may take a lot of effort for Russia to have the will to implement much more, namely peaceful living with its neighbors for decades.”
Putin demands ‘land swaps’ in exchange of peace deal
European officials privy to Trump’s information about his meeting with Putin reportedly claim that that the Russian president has clear demands about taking over eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. Putin’s condition entails that he is open to freezing the front lines in Ukraine as long as the control of the region is passed on to him.
Zelenskyy, on the other hand, has asserted last week that he was not willing to make the trade. “If we withdraw from the Donbas today – our fortifications, our terrain, the heights we control – we will clearly open a bridgehead for the Russians to prepare an offensive,” he said at the time.
Putin’s ask also goes against the European leader’s firm warnings and the need for Ukraine’s “territorial integrity” to be respected. While they have been counting on international borders not being changed by force, Putin’s demand hinges on territorial gain.
Known as Ukraine’s industrial heartland, the Donbas region comprises of Donetsk (already 70% Russia-occupied) and Luhansk. It has been the centre of the territorial feud between the countries since 2014. It is said that around 88% of Donbas is already under Russia’s control.
Update: Kyiv reels from ‘stab in the back’
Trump’s recent reversal from pushing for a ceasefire agreement to a full-fledged peace deal has been viewed as out-and-out betrayal by Kyiv. A senior Ukrainian official has since described Trump’s Washington DC’s U-turn as a “stab in the back,” as per the Financial Times.
Another senior official added that the POTUS just wanted a “quick deal.”
Oleksandr Merezhko, chair of the Ukrainian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, also slammed the outcome, saying, “It looks like Trump has aligned with Putin and they both might be starting to force us to accept a peace treaty, which means in reality capitulation of Ukraine.”
He continued, “The whole idea of the summit, as we were explained by Trump and Rubio, was to present Putin with a demand for an immediate ceasefire. And if he rejects this proposal there would be severe consequences for him. Putin has rejected that by offering instead a ceasefire as peace treaty, and we don’t see from Trump any reaction, let alone severe consequences.”
Alexander Khara, a former Ukrainian diplomat and analyst at the Kyiv-based Centre for Defence Strategies think-tank, called the summit a “huge summit,” and a “huge win for Putin.”