The war in Ukraine could be resolved “very soon,” US President Trump said, adding that he will meet Russia’s Vladimir Putin next Friday in Alaska. Trump said a ceasefire would include some “swapping” of territory.
US President Donald Trump says a ceasefire deal between Russia and Ukraine is edging closer.
As a result, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that he will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 15 in Alaska.
“Putin would like to meet as soon as possible,” Trump said earlier Friday in the White House, adding that the situation in Ukraine “could be solved very soon.”
According to the US leader, the meeting would have been held sooner, but that wasn’t possible due to “security arrangements that unfortunately people have to make.”
The Kremlin confirmed the Putin-Trump summit in Alaska, calling it “quite logical,” and adding that Trump had been invited to visit Russia after the meeting.
Trump: Deal involves ‘swapping’ of territories
In remarks to reporters on Friday, Trump said a ceasefire deal between Ukraine and Russia would include territory swaps between the two countries.
“There’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both,” Trump said.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has repeatedly refused calls to give up any of its territory in exchange for a ceasefire. Tens of thousands of people have been killed since Moscow launched the invasion, with millions of people forced to flee their homes in eastern and southern Ukraine.
Three sets of talks between Russia and Ukraine failed to bring visible progress, and it is unclear whether a Trump-Putin meeting can bring about a ceasefire. Putin has resisted multiple calls from the United States, Europe and Kyiv for a ceasefire.
Trump said if it wasn’t for him, the war between Ukraine and Russia would have developed into a World War.
“I stopped that, that’s stopped,” he said.
Artis Pabriks, the current chair of the Northern Europe Policy Center and a former Latvian defense and foreign minister, told DW the upcoming meeting was a diplomatic achievement for Moscow.
“It will be a big Russian and Kremlin diplomatic victory, because this is what Russians always wanted — to be on equal footing with such a large country as the United States,” Pabriks said. “Russian diplomacy always liked to have decisions made about other countries above the heads of these countries.”
Could Ukraine withdraw from eastern Ukraine?
Friday’s announcement from Trump comes after Putin’s meeting with US special envoy Steve Witkoff in Moscow.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, Putin told Witkoff he would be willing to agree to a ceasefire if Kyiv agreed to withdraw its forces from the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine. Bloomberg News also reported the ceasefire would leave Russia in control of the Ukrainian territory it occupies.
As a result, Russia would take control of the region, which includes the cities Donetsk and Luhansk, as well as the Crimean peninsula it illegally occupied and annexed in 2014, which Russia would like to receive international acknowledgment for its sovereignty over.
As a result, the US newspaper reported, the Trump administration began preparing for a summit with the Russian leader, despite officials in Europe being skeptical of the suggestion being viable due to Ukraine having to give up territory without Russia obliging to more than stopping the fighting. / DW
Edited by Sean Sinico
Video / NBC News
