Trump says Zelensky won't attend Alaska summit with Putin, but Ukraine-Russia talks should follow
U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed during an Aug. 11 press conference that Volodymyr Zelensky will not take part in his upcoming talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, set for Aug. 15 in Alaska.
"He wasn't part of it," Trump told reporters. "I would say he could go, but he's gone to a lot of meetings; he's been there for three and a half years, and nothing happened."
As Washington seeks a path to end the war in Ukraine, the upcoming meeting between Trump and Putin will mark their first face-to-face talks since the start of Trump's second term.
Trump said after his meeting with Putin, a meeting between the Ukrainian and Russian leaders should take place.
"Ultimately, I'm going to put the two of them (Putin and Zelensky) in a room, I'll be there or I won't be there, and I think it'll get solved," Trump said.
During the press conference, Trump added that he was "a little bothered" by Zelensky's words regarding "constitutional approval" for land swaps as part of a potential peace agreement.
"He's got approval to go into war and kill everybody, but he needs approval to do a land swap? There'll be some land swapping going on," Trump said.
"We're going to change the battle lines. Russia has occupied a big portion of Ukraine. They've occupied some very prime territory. We're going to try and get some of that territory back for Ukraine," he added.
Trump described the upcoming meeting with Putin as a "feel-out meeting" and added that the Russian president wants "to get involved" and "to get over" the war.
"At the end of that meeting, probably in the first two minutes, I'll know exactly whether or not a deal can be made," Trump said.
On Aug. 8, Trump announced a summit with Putin and reportedly told Ukraine and European leaders that the Kremlin is open to negotiations if "land swaps" are part of the deal.
Though it remains unclear what such a deal would entail, a source in Ukraine's Presidential Office told the Kyiv Independent that Moscow seeks Kyiv's full withdrawal from partially occupied Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in the east while offering to withdraw its forces from the limited areas it holds in the northeastern Sumy and Kharkiv oblasts.
Publicly, Putin has demanded a ban on Ukraine's NATO membership and a full Ukrainian withdrawal from partially occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts as a precondition for peace talks.
In turn, Zelensky has rejected ceding territory to Russia and urged a ceasefire as the first step toward peace talks, a position backed by Kyiv's European partners.
Zelensky is also expected to hold talks with European leaders and Trump two days before the summit in Alaska, on Aug. 13.
