President Donald Trump on Friday said he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin next Friday in Alaska to discuss ending the Ukraine war.
Hours earlier, during a peace summit at the White House between the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Trump suggested that a Russia-Ukraine peace deal will involve “some swapping of territories.”
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Bloomberg had reported the same day that Putin was demanding Ukraine give up the entire eastern Donbas region, including areas in the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts that Russia does not control militarily. In exchange, Putin would halt Russia’s offensive in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, the two other oblasts that the Russian leader claimed to annex in 2022.
Trump’s remark about land swaps may indicate that Washington will push for Russian forces to withdraw from parts of Ukrainian territory. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky opposes the ceding of any territory to Russia and says his country’s constitution prohibits him from doing so.
A meeting next week with Putin would be the first in-person summit between the Russian leader and a U.S. president since June 2021.
