Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia refusing to accept a ceasefire was complicating efforts to end Moscow’s more than three-year-long conflict, after a summit between the US and Russian presidents yielded no deal on ending the war: “We see that Russia rebuffs numerous calls for a ceasefire and has not yet determined when it will stop the killing. This complicates the situation,” Zelenskyy said in a social media post late Saturday. “If they lack the will to carry out a simple order to stop the strikes, it may take a lot of effort to get Russia to have the will to implement far greater – peaceful coexistence with its neighbors for decades.” Trump has said that he had agreed with Putin that a peace deal should be sought without the prior ceasefire that Ukraine and its European allies, until now with US support, have demanded. Ukrainian and European leaders fear that a straight-to-peace deal, skipping over a preliminary ceasefire, gives Moscow an upper hand in talks.
After his meeting with Vladimir Putin on Friday, Donald Trump told European leaders that he supported a plan to end the Ukraine-Russia war by ceding unconquered land to Russia, the New York Times reported, citing two senior European officials. The officials said Trump will discuss the plan with Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday when the Ukrainian president visits the White House, adding that European leaders have been invited to join. Trump earlier said that Kyiv should make a deal with Moscow because “Russia is a very big power, and they’re not.”
European officials will decide this weekend whether Zelenskyy will be accompanied on the visit to Washington, German foreign minister Johann Wadephul said on Saturday. European leaders, including Macron, Merz and Starmer, are set to discuss the issues with Zelenskyy on Sunday via video call ahead of his meeting with Trump, the French president’s office said in a statement. A joint statement issued by European leaders said they were “ready to work with US President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy towards a trilateral summit with European support” but “it will be up to Ukraine to make decisions on its territory. International borders must not be changed by force.”
The leaders of eight Nordic-Baltic nations said on Saturday that they remain steadfast in their support for Ukraine and to the efforts by Trump to end the Russian aggression against Ukraine. The leaders of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Sweden said in a statement that achieving peace between Ukraine and Russia requires a ceasefire and security guarantees for Ukraine: “We welcome President Trump’s statement that the US is prepared to participate in security guarantees. No limitations should be placed on Ukraine’s armed forces or on its cooperation with other countries,” the statement said.
At the Alaska summit, Putin demanded Ukraine withdraw from Donetsk and Luhansk as a condition for ending the war, but offered Trump a freeze along the remaining frontline, two sources with direct knowledge of the talks told the Guardian. Although Luhansk is almost entirely under Russian control, Ukraine still holds key parts of Donetsk, including the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk and heavily fortified positions whose defence has cost tens of thousands of lives.
Eight pages of US government planning documents for the summit meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin were left in a hotel printer in Anchorage before the meeting on Friday, NPR reported. The documents, which were posted online by NPR, appear to have been produced by Trump administration officials in charge of summit planning and included the precise locations and times for the scheduled meetings, as well the phone numbers of US government employees.
Canadian prime minister Mark Carney welcomed what he said was US openness to providing security guarantees to Ukraine under a peace deal to end Russia’s war against Kyiv. “Robust and credible security guarantees are essential to any just and lasting peace. I welcome the openness of the United States to providing security guarantees as part of Coalition of the Willing’s efforts,” Carney said in a statement.
Donald Trump hand-delivered a personal letter from first lady Melania Trump to Russian leader Vladimir Putin raising the plight of Ukrainian and Russian children caught in the middle of the ongoing war between the two European countries, it was reported on Saturday. The contents of the letter were unknown – but two Trump administration officials told Reuters that it mentioned the abductions of children resulting from the war that broke out after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. However, the text of the letter, which was obtained and posted online by Fox News on Saturday, is extremely opaque and makes no reference at all to the abductions or transfer of children from Russian-occupied Ukraine to Russia.
Vladimir Putin has said that his visit to Alaska was “useful and timely”, the Russian news agency Tass reported on Saturday. Putin also added that his conversation with Trump was “sincere and substantive”, adding that Russia respects the position of the US and also wants to settle the Ukrainian conflict peacefully.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov held calls on Saturday with his Turkish and Hungarian counterparts, the Russian foreign ministry said. The phone call between Lavrov and Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan took place at Turkey’s initiative, the Russian foreign ministry said, and exchanged views on the Russia-US meeting, without elaborating further.
The Ukrainian military said it had pushed Russian forces back by about 2km (1.2 miles) on part of the Sumy front in northern Ukraine. There was no immediate comment from Russia, which controls a little over 200 sq km in the region, according to Ukraine’s battlefield mapping project DeepState.
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