Zelenskyy says that any peace agreement without Ukraine at the table “ will never work ‘like Trump and Putin to meet

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected the planned summit between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, warning that any peace agreement excluding kyiv would lead to “dead decisions”.

Zelenskyy made the comments in a statement published in Telegram on Saturday, one day after Trump said that the summit would be held on August 15 in Alaska and that he planned to discuss the end of the Russian-Ukraine war.

Trump had previously agreed to see Putin even if the Russian chief did not meet Zelenskyy, the fears of Ukraine could be sidelined in efforts to stop the war.

Zelenskyy said that Ukraine “would not give Russia a reward for what it has done” and “the Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier”.

By approaching the Ukrainian anxieties according to which a direct meeting between Putin and Trump could marginalize kyiv and European interests, the president of Ukraine said: “All the decisions which are without Ukraine are at the same time decisions against peace. They will bring nothing. These are dead decisions. They will never work.”

Ukrainian officials previously declared to the Associated Press in private that kyiv would be ready for a peace agreement which would de facto recognize the inability of Ukraine to regain the lost territories militarily.

In a press release published on the Kremlin news channel, Putin’s foreign adviser Yuri Ushakov has referred to the next summit.

“It seems completely logical that our delegation simply crosses the Bering Strait, and for such a important and anticipated summit of the leaders of the two countries to hold in Alaska,” said Ushakov.

Such a meeting can be essential in a war that started over three years ago when Russia has invaded its Western neighbor and has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths. However, Moscow and Kyiv remain far from their peace conditions.

In comments to the Journalists of the White House before his post confirming the date and place of the summit, Trump suggested that any agreement would probably imply “an exchange of territories”, but he gave no details.

Analysts, some of whom were close to the Kremlin, suggested that Russia could propose to give up a territory that it controls outside the four regions it claims to have annexed.

Trump said his meeting with Putin would present himself before any sitting sitting involving Zelenskyy. His announcement that he was planning to welcome one of his country’s opponents on American soil has broken with the expectations they would meet in a third country.

The gesture can give Putin validation after the United States and its allies have long sought to make a pariah during its war against Ukraine.

Nigel Gould-Davies, associate member of Chatham House, a British reflection group based in London, told the Associated Press that the “symbology” of the holding of the summit in Alaska was clear and that the location “naturally promotes Russia”.

“It is easy to imagine that Putin takes stock … ‘We had once this territory had given it to you, so Ukraine had this territory and we should now give it to ourselves,” he said, referring to the 1867 transaction known as the Alaska purchase when Russia sold Alaska in the United States for US dollars.

Ultimatums and sanctions

Exasperated that Putin did not take into account his calls to stop bombing the Ukrainian cities, Trump, almost two weeks ago, went up his ultimatum to impose additional sanctions on Russia and introduce secondary prices targeting countries that buy Russian oil if the Kremlin did not approach a regulation.

Look | What it would take in the United States to reach “a significant ceasefire”:

To what to expect to follow the American envoy, the ceasefire of Putin talks to Moscow

Marcus Kolga, a principal researcher at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, known as “it is only in significant pressure” that the United States and Russia “will arrive at a significant cease-fire”. This comes after the American special envoy Steve Wtikoff met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow to discuss a cease-fire agreement with Ukraine.

The deadline was Friday. But the White House did not answer questions that evening on the state of possible sanctions after Trump announced the next meeting with Putin. Before that, Trump’s efforts to put pressure on Russia to stop fighting had no progress.

The largest army in the Kremlin progresses slowly in Ukraine at a high price in troops and armor while relentlessly bombing cities. Russia and Ukraine are far from their conditions for peace.

Gould-Davies compared the attempts to understand what seems to be Trump’s last pivot towards Moscow to “Kremlinology”, the practice of the era of the Cold War to decipher the opaque signals of the Soviet management.

“We are … looking for clues and advice … on what is happening, what the mixture of influences around Trump and indeed in Trump’s head propels his last statement,” he said.

“It is as if his disillusionment with Putin … never happened,” noted Gould-Davies, showing a sudden return to the more conciliatory politics of Russia that Trump kissed at the start of his presidency.

Russia, Ukraine Trade Attacks

Also on Saturday, two people died and 16 were injured after a Russian drone hit a minibus in the suburbs of the Ukrainian city in Kherson, said regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin.

According to Governor Ivan Fedorov, two others died after a Russian drone hit his car in the Zaporizhzhia region.

The Air Force of Ukraine said that he had intercepted 16 of the 47 Russian drones launched overnight, while 31 drones have reached targets on 15 sites. He also said that he had shot down one of the two missiles that Russia has deployed.

The Russian Defense Ministry said its air defenses killed 97 Ukrainian drones on Russia and the Black Sea during the night and Saturday, and 21 others later in the morning.