Zelenskyy to fly to Washington as Merz says US ready to be part of Ukraine security guarantees – as it happened | Russia

It is almost 6.30pm in Kyiv and Moscow. We will be closing this blog soon, but you can stay up to date on the Guardian’s Russia-Ukraine war coverage here.

Here’s a recap of the developments from today:

• Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is scheduled to meet president Trump in Washington on Monday after Trumps’s summit with Putin resulted in no ceasefire deal. The US and Russian leaders met on a red carpet laid down for them at a US military base in the former Russian territory of Alaska, and spent about three hours in private talks, with top foreign policy aides, aimed at ending the war in Ukraine. Regarding the upcoming meeting with Zelenskyy, Trump wrote in a post on social media platform Truth Social that, “If it all works out, we will then schedule a meeting with President Putin. Potentially, millions of people’s lives will be saved.”

• Trump publicly dropped plans for an immediate ceasefire he had himself championed for months, instead embracing Putin’s preferred path of pushing through a far-reaching “Peace Agreement” before halting any fighting. “Unfortunately, Trump has taken Putin’s position, and this was Putin’s demand,” Oleksandr Merezhko, the head of the Ukrainian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, told Reuters on Saturday.

• Speaking to German public broadcaster ZDF, chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Saturday that the United States was ready to be part of security guarantees for Ukraine. The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen also said in a post on X that strong security guarantees for Ukraine and Europe were “essential” in any peace deal to end the war in Ukraine.

• Trump’s debriefing to European leaders after the Alaska summit with Putin included discussions about security guarantees for Ukraine, which is outside Nato. A source familiar with the matter told Reuters that the guarantees would be equivalent to article 5, which states that if a Nato ally is the victim of an armed attack, each and every other member of the Alliance will consider this as an armed attack against all members. Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said that the discussion of security guarantees was area where “most interesting developments” happened during the Trump-Putin Alaska summit.

• After a debriefing from president Trump, the European Commission released a joint pledge to back Ukraine, emphasising that “Ukraine must have ironclad security guarantees to effectively defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity. We welcome President Trump’s statement that the US is prepared to give security guarantees. The coalition of the willing is ready to play an active role. No limitations should be placed on Ukraine’s armed forces or on its cooperation with third countries. Russia cannot have a veto against Ukraine’s pathway to EU and Nato. It will be up to Ukraine to make decisions on its territory. International borders must not be changed by force.”

• Several European leaders lauded Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine. UK prime minister Keir Starmer said in a statement: “President Trump’s efforts have brought us closer than ever before to ending Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine. His leadership in pursuit of an end to the killing should be commended.” The Czech foreign minister Jan Lipavský said he was “glad that President Trump is trying to stop the war” but that there has been “propagandistic nonsense about the ‘roots of the conflict’” from Putin in the subsequent press conference.

• European leaders have been invited to attend the Monday meeting with US president Donald Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House, the New York Times reported on Saturday, citing two senior European officials.

• During the Alaska meeting, Putin told Trump that he would freeze the frontline in the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in exchange for the Donetsk region of Ukraine, according to a Financial Times report. In a statement posted on the social media platform X earlier on Saturday, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said: “All issues important to Ukraine must be discussed with Ukraine’s participation, and no issue, particularly territorial ones, can be decided without Ukraine.”

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that Russia may step up its attacks on Ukraine following the inconclusive Putin-Trump summit and the news that the Ukrainian leader would fly to Washington to meet the US president on Monday.

• Two people were killed in a Ukrainian drone strike on Russia’s Kursk region, the local governor said on Saturday.

• A blast at a factory in the Russian region of Ryazan on Friday killed 11 people and left 130 injured, Russia’s emergencies ministry said on Saturday. Some Russian media outlets reported that the explosion was caused by gunpowder catching fire.

• The Russian defence ministry said its forces had taken Kolodyazi village in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, according to state media reports on Saturday. The Guardian could not independently verify battlefield reports.

• Trump reportedly hand-delivered a letter from his wife, Melania, to Putin at the meeting. The letter raised the plight of children abducted during the war in Ukraine – for which Putin is wanted by the international criminal court – White House officials said, without providing further details.