Ukrainian President warns against making any decision without Ukraine
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned Saturday that decisions made without his country wouldn’t bring peace, rejecting the idea of ceding territory to Russia, as the Russian and US presidents prepare for a summit next week in Alaska.
Zelensky wrote on social media, “Ukrainians won’t give up their land to the occupier,” stressing, “any decision against us, any decision without Ukraine, is also a decision against peace… It’ll achieve nothing,” noting that the war “cannot end without us, without Ukraine”.
Zelensky said Ukraine is ready for real decisions that will bring peace, which should be a decent peace.
Three rounds of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine have failed to achieve tangible results, while it remains unclear whether the upcoming summit between the US and Russian presidents will contribute to achieving peace.
Moscow has ignored repeated calls from Kyiv and allied European capitals for a 30-day ceasefire.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ruled out a meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky at this stage, a meeting the Ukrainian president considers essential to achieving progress toward an agreement.
The last round of direct talks between the two sides in July in Istanbul resulted in only a new deal to exchange prisoners of war and the remains of soldiers.
From his part, US President Donald Trump announced on Friday that he will meet with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on August 15 in Alaska, indicating that a final agreement between Moscow and Kyiv to end the war in Ukraine may include a land swap.
He said there would be some land swaps for the benefit of both sides, Russia and Ukraine, without giving further details.
The Alaska summit will be Putin’s first with a US president since his meeting with Joe Biden in Geneva in June 2021.
The last meeting between Trump and Putin was in 2019 during the G20 summit in Japan during Trump’s first term, but they have spoken by phone several times since January.
The Kremlin announced on Saturday that it had invited Trump to visit Russia after the summit next Friday in Alaska.
