In the five months elapsed since the meeting between Donald Trump and Volodimir Zelenski in the Oval Office at the end of February, high charges and Ukrainian diplomats have struggled to repair the damage caused that day, which ended with the Ukrainian president expelled from the White House.
Following the advice of his European allies, Zelenski emphasized his strategy with the Trump administration, and there was a feeling that, in general, things were going well. “We managed to restart communication, find a new language to work with Trump,” explained a high position in kyiv a week ago.
It also seemed that Trump's speech on Ukraine was finally changing, after in recent weeks he described the Russian bombing on Ukrainian cities in recent weeks and gave Putin in the deadline until last Friday to stop the war or face new and serious sanctions.
In that context, Trump Steve Witkoff's special envoy visited Moscow last Wednesday. It does not seem that Putin made important concessions during the three -hour meeting at the Kremlin and, despite this, instead of the announced sanctions, he has been rewarded with an invitation to meet with Trump in Alaska. This offer to address a peace agreement for Ukraine at a bilateral summit with Trump represents exactly the type of negotiation between great powers that Putin has always longed for. It will be your first trip to the United States since 2007, with the exception of the UN visits.
It is not clear how exactly that summit in Alaska will be, since his announcement was accompanied by Trump's usual confusion and chaos. Ukraine, European capitals and even the Trump administration personnel have tried to understand in recent days what exactly agreed at the Kremlin meeting between Putin and Witkoff.
The first ads of the White House suggested that Putin would meet with Trump, followed by a three -band meeting between Trump, Putin and Zelenski. Putin denied it quickly. He said, “we are still far from the conditions” for a meeting with Zelenski. A member of his team denied that the Russian part had in any case accessed a three -band meeting.
A White House source assured the New York Post on Thursday that, if Putin did not accept to meet with Zelenski, the meeting with Trump would not be held. But a few hours later, Trump denied it: he was satisfied to meet with Putin in any case. The strip and looser demonstrates, not for the first time, that in the relationship between Trump and Putin it is the Russian president who carries the singing voice.
Amid the confusion, members of the Trump administration subsequently informed US media that Zelenski could be invited to Alaska anyway, and the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has said in an interview this Sunday that “he waits and takes for granted” that Zelenski will participate. For now, this does not seem likely. A high position of the White House has explained to the NBC that Trump is “open” to a trilateral summit, but that he is “focusing on the preparation of the bilateral meeting requested by President Putin.”
As worrying for kyiv as the format of the conversations is the apparent agreement raised by Russia that seems to be on the table. What is known about the plan, after it was filtered from the US administration and subsequently to the European capitals, is that the pact passes through the Ukrainian army to retire unilaterally from the parts of Donetsk and Lugansk that still controls, which presumably would include the key position of KramTorsk. In return, Russia would accept freezing their positions in other places.
“The Ukrainians will not deliver their territory to the occupants,” Zelenski said during the weekend, adding that giving Ukrainian soil to Russia would violate the country's constitution. The Ukrainian president has also warned that any agreement made without Ukraine is destined to “be born dead.”
Zelenski's public position that Ukraine will never give in land is certain to some extent. It is unlikely that kyiv resorts to claim its own territory, but the Ukrainian elite and much of the country's society are increasingly willing to an agreement that recognizes the Russian de facto control of certain areas, perhaps for a certain period of time, in exchange for putting an end to the fighting.
The main problem of such agreement has always been what type of guarantees will receive Ukraine that Russia will not use a high fire to reorganize before attacking again. The conversations about the establishment of a European peace force to monitor a high fire soon limited themselves to a “security force” parked away from the front lines. Therefore, the Ukrainians would not have much to trust, except in the word of Putin, from which they have learned from experience not to trust.
Even so, there is an important sector in the Ukrainian political and military elite that believes that, after more than three years of war, the situation is so serious that the country is obliged to accept such an agreement, to achieve a break in the fighting.
The problem for kyiv is that the agreement that Putin apparently proposed to Witkoff is significantly worse than limiting himself to freezing the positions of the conflict. “As things are, Ukraine and Europe are about to face exactly the type of agreement that feared that it would arise in February after Trump's arrival to power,” wrote Sam Greene, professor of the King's College in London, in X.
Zelenski and his team have dedicated the last days to gather support among EU leaders to try to elaborate an alternative plan with European support. Unfortunately for kyiv, the experience so far suggests that Trump is not willing or is not able to exert real pressure on Putin.
“If Putin and Trump reach an agreement directly, Europe will face an consummated fact. kyiv, even more,” said Roman Alekhin, a Russian war blogger, Sunday. This scenario is exactly what Ukraine leaders will do everything possible to avoid before Friday's summit.
