Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected suggestions that Kyiv would have to cede territory to Russia, as the White House and the Kremlin announced face-to-face talks to try to resolve the 41-month-old Ukraine war.
US President Donald Trump announced he and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, would be meeting in Alaska on August 15 -- their first meeting since Trump took office in January.
Trump suggested that any resolution to the war could include "swapping of territories." That would potentially conflict with Kyiv's longstanding position that it must regain all the territory Russia currently occupies.
“We’re going to get some back, and we’re going to get some switched,” Trump said at the White House on August 8. “There’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both, but we’ll be talking about that either later, or tomorrow.”
In a video released hours later, Zelenskyy, who has not been invited to the Alaska meeting, warned that any peace deal excluding Kyiv would lead to “dead solutions.”
"Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier," he said
“Any decisions that are without Ukraine are at the same time decisions against peace. They will not bring anything. These are dead decisions. They will never work," Zelenskyy said.
The talks come at a pivotal moment, with Trump increasingly frustrated with Putin and the Russian president showing no signs of bending on the Kremlin's maximalist demands. Trump and Putin have held six phone calls, and the White House's lead envoy has traveled to Moscow at least three times.
Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yury Ushakov confirmed the meeting and said that Alaska was a symbolic location, given the two countries' shared Arctic borders.
"Russia and the United States are close neighbors, bordering each other," Ushakov said in a video released by the Kremlin. "Of course the presidents themselves will be focusing on possibilities for reaching a lasting resolution to the Ukrainian crisis."
Russia's invasion has turned into the largest land war in Europe since World War II, devastating Ukraine, and transforming Russia, turning its economy into a war machine and establishing a police-state government criminalizing dissent.
Moscow's casualties, dead and wounded, stand at more than 1 million, according to Western estimates. Ukraine's war dead are believed to exceed 100,000, with overall casualties around 400,000.
Despite the toll, and international pressure, Putin has pressed his advantage on and off the battlefield.
Russian troops are grinding down Ukrainian defenses, closing in on two major cities, Pokrovsk and Chasiv Yar.
Russia forces have also battered Ukrainian cities with record numbers of missiles and drones in recent months, targeting civilians, residential buildings, and electricity infrastructure.
Early on August 9, a Russian drone hit a minibus in the suburbs of the southern city of Kherson, killing at least two civilian passengers and wounding 16. Officials said the bus was then targeted with a second drone -- a so-called "double tap" -- as police and emergency responders treated the injured. Three officers suffered concussions, officials said.
Meeting In Alaska
The decision to meet Putin face-to-face -- something that Trump's predecessor Joe Biden refused to do following the invasion -- reflects Trump's belief that his relationship with the Russian leader will yield a durable peace agreement.
For Putin, meeting Trump in person -- without the presence of Zelenskyy or Ukrainian officials -- is a small victory, reflecting Putin's position that Zelenskyy is an illegitimate leader and that a grand bargain to end the war can only be reached directly with the United States.
Traveling to the United States is also a small victory for Putin who is under a war crimes arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court. Only members of the court are obliged to detain him, and the Trump administration is openly hostile to the Hague tribunal.
Brett McGurk, who served as a White House National Security Council adviser under four presidents, said the optics of Putin traveling to the United States were not good.
Speaking in an interview on CNN, McGurk said a cease-fire must be the priority.
Short of that, "you have to walk away," he said. "Otherwise, [the war] is going to continue and Putin gets a big gigantic win."
A Climb Down?
Oxana Shevel, a political scientist and expert on Ukraine and Russia at Tufts University, noted that Trump only recently said he was “very disappointed” with Putin for continuing missile and drone barrages -- after cordial phone conversations -- if Putin didn't agree to a cease-fire.
“He’s clearly climbing down from that position,” Shevel told RFE/RL.
The fact that neither Ukraine nor any Europeans countries will have any place at the Alaska talks is also problematic, she said.
"They said before that any deal about Ukraine cannot be made without Ukraine," she said. "That's been the position of the Ukrainian government for a long time."
It was unclear what Trump meant by "swapping" territory; Ukraine doesn't currently hold any Russian territory.
Shevel said this could involve a handful of villages near Ukraine's northeastern border that Russia has occupied in exchange for the part of the Donetsk region that Russian doesn't hold.
The announcement of the summit coincided with a deadline Trump set for Putin to agree to a cease-fire or face severe tariffs targeting Russia's oil and other exports, along with its trading partners facing secondary tariffs on oil purchased from Russia.
Russia has been able to fund its war effort in large part by oil and gas sales, to China and India, among others.
Trump this week signed an executive order imposing an additional 25 percent tariff on India but did not raise tariffs on China.
The Russian leader has long insisted that Ukraine relinquish the territories Russia occupies -- including Crimea, which Russia claims to have annexed in 2014. He has also insisted Western nations stop supplying Ukraine with weapons and that Ukraine be excluded from NATO membership.
Zelenskyy and his European allies have rejected those demands, though Zelenskyy has expressed openness to meeting with Putin.
US Senator Jeanne Shaheen criticized Trump for failing to "get tough" on the Kremlin.
"Setting deadlines and blowing through them deeply undermines America’s credibility, our deterrence to other aggressors, and our ability to finally get Russia to the negotiating table," she said in a statement.
