Within hours of brokering a historic peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan, President Donald Trump announced on Friday that he would meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Aug. 15 to discuss similarly resolving the war in Ukraine, which is now five months into its third year.
Trump’s plan is to join Putin for a “feel-out meeting,” confer afterward with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders, and then at a later date, meet with both Putin and Zelenskyy in hopes of ironing out the details and ultimately sealing the deal.
‘He’s got approval to go to war and kill everybody, but he needs approval to do a land swap.’
Zelenskyy was evidently peeved that the initial summit would take place without him as well as by Trump’s suggestion to reporters that the peace deal would likely involve “some swapping of territories to the betterment of both.”
Following Trump’s announcement, Zelenskyy said in a video statement that “Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupier” and that “any decisions that are against us, any decisions that are made without Ukraine, are at the same time decisions against peace. They will not achieve anything. These are unworkable decisions.”
Trump, who has made no secret of his frustration with Zelenskyy and who in February accused the foreign leader of “gambling with the lives of millions of people,” did not respond well to this apparent effort to sabotage the upcoming summit.
“I get along with Zelenskyy, but, you know, I disagree with what he’s done — very, very severely disagree,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday.
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“I was a little bothered by the fact that Zelenskyy was saying that ‘well, I have to get constitutional approval.’ I mean, he’s got approval to go to war and kill everybody, but he needs approval to do a land swap,” said Trump. “There will be some land swapping going on. I know that through Russia and through conversations with everybody.”
European officials who have spoken to U.S. officials about their talks with Putin claim that Moscow wants Ukraine to cede the eastern portion of the country known as the Donbas, reported the New York Times.
‘The money that’s been spent and the death is incredible.’
Russia occupies around 20% of the entire country and most of the Donbas — including all of the Luhansk region, most of the Donetsk region, much of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, and parts of the Sumy and Kharkiv regions.
Trump noted that “Russia’s occupied a big portion of Ukraine. They’ve occupied some very prime territory. We’re going to try to get some of that territory back for Ukraine.”
According to the Institute for the Study of War’s latest assessment of the Russian offensive campaign, the “prime territory” that Trump was referencing was likely the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
“The money that’s been spent and the death is incredible. It’s the worst thing that’s happened — by far the worst that’s happened — since World War II. So I’m going in to speak to Vladimir Putin, and I’m going to be telling him, ‘You gotta end this war.'”
The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated in June that upwards of 250,000 Russian soldiers have died in Ukraine and hundreds of thousands more have been wounded — leaving Moscow with a potential fatality rate five times the number of all Russian and Soviet wars combined since World War II. Ukraine has seen upwards of 100,000 soldiers killed with a total of 400,000 casualties.
The war, which the U.S. has sunk hundreds of billions of dollars into, has also resulted in the displacement of over 3.7 million people and an exodus of around seven million Ukrainians.
“I’d like to see a ceasefire. I’d like to see the best deal that could be made for both parties,” continued Trump. “It takes two to tango, all right.”
When asked whether Zelenskyy is expected to soften his position on this matter, the State Department referred Blaze News to the White House for comment. Blaze News has reached out to the White House.
Zelenskyy may not presently want to make any concessions, but recent polling suggests Ukrainians are growing increasingly desperate to negotiate an end to the conflict.
According to a Gallup poll conducted last month, 69% of Ukrainians said that they favor a negotiated end to the war as soon as possible. Only 24% said they support continuing to fight until victory.
‘I believe he wants to get it over with.’
This is nearly a total reversal of the responses to a 2022 poll, where 73% of Ukrainian respondents said they favored fighting until victory and 22% said they wanted to see a negotiated end as soon as possible — a peace that was spiked during negotiations in Turkey.
Despite the U.S. propping up Kyiv and Trump’s efforts to broker a peace, pollsters found that 73% of Ukrainians signaled disapproval of “the job performance of the leadership of the United States.” Only 16% of respondents signaled approval, which spiked in 2022 then began to plummet during former President Joe Biden’s term.
A trend that might make negotiations simpler is the Ukrainian sense that NATO membership is a bridge too far.
Whereas 64% of respondents said in 2022 that they expected Ukrainian NATO membership within 10 years, that optimism has dissipated such that now only 32% of Ukrainians expect acceptance into the organization, which Moscow has indicated would be intolerable.
Although Trump indicated Putin has disappointed him before, he said that this time around, “I believe he wants to get it over with.”
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