Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has issued a warning to Donald Trump as the US President prepares for a meeting with Vladimir Putin.
Set for Friday, August 15, the Alaska meeting will be the first between a sitting U.S. president and the Russian leader since Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva in 2021 — nine months before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as reported by the BBC.
Trump announced the upcoming talks on Truth Social, calling it “the highly anticipated meeting between myself, as President of the United States of America, and President Vladimir Putin, of Russia.”
While Trump has hinted at the possibility of a trilateral meeting including Zelenskyy, that remains uncertain.
For now, it’s a Trump-Putin summit — reportedly at Putin’s request — and the Kremlin has repeatedly avoided direct talks with Kyiv since the war began.
One of Trump’s most contentious suggestions is that a peace deal could involve “some swapping of territories” to reach an agreement — an idea Kyiv has flatly rejected.
CBS News reports the White House has been trying to convince European leaders to back a plan that would allow Russia to keep Crimea, annexed in 2014, as well as take full control of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.
Under the same proposal, Russia would reportedly give up claims to Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — though both remain partly under Russian military control.
Zelenskyy dismissed the notion outright on Telegram: “The answer to Ukraine’s territorial question is already in the constitution of Ukraine. No one will and no one can deviate from it. Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier.
"Any solutions that are without Ukraine, are at the same time, solutions against peace. They will not bring anything. These are dead solutions, they will never work.”
He also accused Moscow of trying to frame such swaps as mutual exchanges when in reality they would only strengthen Russia’s position to “resume the war.”
In a rare joint statement, the leaders of the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Finland, and the European Commission stressed that “international borders must not be changed by force” and vowed to continue supporting Ukraine “diplomatically, militarily, and financially,” per BBC News.
“Ukraine has the freedom of choice over its own destiny,” the statement read, emphasizing that any settlement must protect both Ukraine’s sovereignty and Europe’s security.
French President Emmanuel Macron went further, warning on X that “Europeans will also necessarily be part of the solution, as their own security is at stake.”
Zelenskyy publicly thanked his allies on Sunday: “The end of the war must be fair, and I am grateful to everyone who stands with Ukraine and our people today for the sake of peace in Ukraine, which is defending the vital security interests of our European nations.”