Ukraine will not give up territory to Russia for peace, President Volodymyr Zelensky warned on Saturday after Washington and Moscow agreed to hold a summit in an attempt to end the war.
Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump will meet in the US state of Alaska next Friday to try to resolve the three-year conflict, despite warnings from Ukraine and Europe that Kyiv must take part in the talks.
Announcing the summit on Friday, Trump said “there will be a swap of territory that benefits both sides,” without giving details.
“Ukrainians will not give up their land to the occupiers,” Zelensky said several hours later on social media.
“Any decisions against us, any decisions without Ukraine are also decisions against peace. They will not achieve anything,” he said, adding that the war “cannot be stopped without us, without Ukraine.”
In a phone call with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Zelensky also called on Ukraine’s allies to take “clear steps” to achieve sustainable peace.
National security advisers from Kyiv’s allies, including the US, EU countries and Britain, met in Britain on Saturday to coordinate their views ahead of the Putin-Trump summit.
French President Emmanuel Macron, after telephone conversations with Zelensky, Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, said that “the future of Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukrainians” and that Europe should also take part in the negotiations.
Later on Saturday, in his evening address, Zelensky added: “This war must be honestly stopped, and Russia must end the war it started.”
“A Decent World”
Three rounds of talks between Russia and Ukraine this year have failed to produce results, and it remains unclear whether the summit will bring peace closer as the warring sides remain at odds.
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, tens of thousands of people have died and millions have been forced to flee their homes.
Putin has rejected numerous calls from the US, Europe and Kyiv for a ceasefire.
Putin, a former KGB officer who ruled Russia for more than 25 years, has ruled out holding talks with Zelensky at this stage.
The Ukrainian leader has insisted on holding a trilateral summit and has repeatedly said that a meeting with Putin is the only way to make progress on the path to peace.
Far from war
The summit in Alaska, a territory in the far north that Russia sold to the United States in 1867, will be the first meeting between sitting US and Russian presidents since Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva in June 2021.
Nine months later, Moscow sent troops into Ukraine.
Zelensky said the location was “very far from this war that is raging on our land, against our people.”
The Kremlin called the choice “logical” because the state, located near the Arctic, is on the border of the two countries, and it is here that “their economic interests intersect.”
Moscow also invited Trump to visit Russia on a return visit at a later date.
Trump and Putin last met in 2019 at the G20 summit in Japan, during Trump’s first term. They have spoken by phone several times since January, with Trump trying to broker peace in Ukraine but failing to achieve a breakthrough.
Putin held a series of phone calls with allies including Brazil, China and India on Friday as part of a diplomatic flurry ahead of the Alaska summit.
In a 40-minute telephone conversation on Saturday between Putin and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian leader reaffirmed his support for dialogue “and the desire for a peaceful solution,” his office said.
Earlier, the US president imposed an additional tariff on India’s purchase of Russian oil in an attempt to push Moscow into negotiations. He also threatened to impose a similar tax on China, but has so far refrained from doing so.
The fighting continues
Russia and Ukraine continued to carry out dozens of drone strikes on each other’s positions in an exchange of attacks early Saturday.
In the frontline Ukrainian city of Kherson, a bus carrying civilians was hit, killing two people and injuring 16.
The Russian army said it had captured Yablonovka, another village in the Donetsk region, the site of some of the fiercest fighting in the east and one of five regions that Putin claims are part of Russia.
According to Ukrainian authorities, four people have been killed in Russian shelling in Donetsk as of Saturday morning.
In 2022, the Kremlin announced the annexation of four Ukrainian regions – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson – despite not having full control over them.
Earlier, in 2014, Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine.
As a precondition for any peace settlement, Moscow demanded that Kyiv withdraw its troops from the region and commit to remaining a neutral state, renounce Western military support and be expelled from NATO.
Kyiv has said it will never recognize Russia’s control over its sovereign territory, although it has acknowledged that the lands seized by Russia will have to be recaptured through diplomacy rather than on the battlefield.
Source: Source