Trump and Putin to meet to discuss Ukraine peace deal in Alaska

(Reuters): U.S President Donald Trump will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 15 in Alaska to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, Trump said on Friday.

Trump made the highly anticipated announcement on social media after he said that the parties, including Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, were close to a ceasefire deal that could resolve the three-and-a-half-year conflict, one that could require Ukraine to surrender significant territory.

Addressing reporters at the White House earlier on Friday, Trump suggested an agreement would involve some exchange of land.

"There'll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both," the Republican president said.

The Kremlin subsequently confirmed the summit in an online statement.

The two leaders will "focus on discussing options for achieving a long-term peaceful resolution to the Ukrainian crisis," Putin aide Yuri Ushakov said

This will evidently be a challenging process, but we will engage in it actively and energetically," Ushakov said.

In his evening address to the nation on Friday, Zelenskiy said it was possible to achieve a ceasefire as long as adequate pressure was applied to Russia. He said he had held more than a dozen conversations with leaders of different countries and his team was in constant contact with the United States

Putin claims four Ukrainian regions – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – as well as the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which he annexed in 2014. His forces do not fully control all the territory in the four regions.

Earlier, Bloomberg News reported that U.S. and Russian officials were working towards an agreement that would lock in Moscow's occupation of territory seized during its military invasion

A White House official said the Bloomberg story was speculation. A Kremlin spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Reuters was unable to confirm aspects of the Bloomberg report.

Ukraine has previously signaled a willingness to be flexible in the search for an end to a war that has ravaged its towns and cities and killed large numbers of its soldiers and citizens.

But accepting the loss of around a fifth of Ukraine's territory would be painful and politically challenging for Zelenskiy and his government.

 

Tyson Barker, the U.S. State Department's former deputy special representative for Ukraine's economic recovery, said the peace proposal as outlined in the Bloomberg report would be immediately rejected by the Ukrainians.

"The best the Ukrainians can do is remain firm in their objections and their conditions for a negotiated settlement, while demonstrating their gratitude for American support," said Barker, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council.

Under the putative deal, according to Bloomberg, Russia would halt its offensive in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions along current battle lines.