Following a summit with Russia President Vladimir Putin which failed to bring a ceasefire in Ukraine, U.S. President President Donald Trump has turned to Kyiv saying the onus is on them to agree to a deal.
“Russia is a very big power, and they’re (Eds: Ukraine) not”, he said bluntly after the talks yielded no concrete reports.
In what was a major shift, Trump said he had agreed with Putin that the best way to end the war was to go straight to a peace settlement rather than a ceasefire, as Ukraine and European allies and Trump himself have been demanding.
After the talks, Trump announced he would hold talks at the White House with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday.
“If all works out, we will then schedule a meeting with President Putin. Potentially, millions of people’s lives will be saved,” he said.
Trump and Zelenskiy held a lengthy conversation after the Alaska summit and Zelensky confirmed that Ukraine was ready for constructive cooperation, and he supported a three-way meeting with Trump and Putin.
“Ukraine reaffirms its readiness to work with maximum effort to achieve peace,” he wrote on X.
Zelensky has repeatedly stressed the importance of security guarantees for Ukraine as part of any deal, to discourage Russia from launching a new invasion in the future.
Putin signaled no change in Russia’s long-held positions, but said he agreed with Trump that Ukraine’s security must be “ensured”.
Trump and Putin talked for nearly three hours at the historic summit, billed by some as the most important high-level meeting since World War II. It was the first U.S.-Russia summit since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the first summit between the leaders since 2018.
“It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up,” Trump posted on Truth social.
Before the summit, Trump said his goal was agreeing to a ceasefire in the war.
More than one million have been killed or maimed during the nearly 3 ½ year war, including thousands of mostly Ukrainian civilians, analysts say.
Trump and Putin meet in Alaska at start of high-stakes summit
