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The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has dismissed the early 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 on Telegram on Saturday, one day after Trump said the summit would take place on August 15 in Alaska and planned to discuss the finishing of the Russia-Ukraine war.
Trump had previously agreed to see Putin even if the Russian leader did not meet with Zelenskyy, fueling Ukraine’s fears could be set aside in the efforts to stop war.
Zelenskyy said that Ukraine “will not give Russia any prize for what he has done” and “the Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupant.”
Touching Ukrainian anxieties that a direct meeting between Putin and Trump could marginalize the interests of kyiv and Europe, the president of Ukraine said: “Any decision without Ukraine at the same time has decisions against peace. They will not bring anything. These are dead decisions. They will never work.”
Ukrainian officials previously told Associated Press in private that kyiv would be susceptible to a peace agreement that in fact would recognize Ukraine’s inability to recover the militarily lost territories.
In a statement published in the Kremlin news channel, the Putin Foreign Affairs Advisor, Yuri Ushakov, referred to the next summit.
“It seems completely logical that our delegation flys through the Bering Strait simply, and for such an important and anticipated summit of the leaders of the two countries that will be held in Alaska,” said Ushakov.
Such a meeting can be fundamental in a war that began more than three years ago when Russia invaded its western neighbor and has taken tens of thousands of deaths. However, Moscow and Kyiv remain very separate in their peace conditions.
In the comments to the White House journalists before their position confirmed the date and place of the summit, Trump suggested that any agreement would probably imply “some exchange of territories”, but did not give details.
Analysts, including some close to the Kremlin, have suggested that Russia could offer to renounce the territory that controls outside the four regions that claims to have annexed.
Trump said his meeting with Putin would come before a sitting discussion that involves Zelenskyy. His announcement that he planned to organize one of his country’s adversaries on American soil broke with the expectations that they would be in a third country.
The gesture can validate Putin after the United States and his allies had tried to make him a out of his war against Ukraine.
Nigel Gould-Davies, an associate member of Chatham House, a group of British experts based in London, told The Associated Press that the “symbology” of celebrating the summit in Alaska was clear and that the location “favors Russia.”
“It is easy to imagine Putin to make the point … ‘Once we had this territory and we gave it to you, therefore, Ukraine had this territory and now should give it to him,” he said, referring to the transaction of 1867 known as the purchase of Alaska when Russia sold Alaska to the US for $ 7.2 million of the United States.
Ultimatums and sanctions
He exasperated that Putin did not pay attention to his calls to stop bombing Ukrainian cities, Trump, almost two weeks ago, uploaded his ultimatum to impose additional sanctions on Russia and introduce secondary tariffs aimed at countries that buy Russian oil if the Kremlin did not move towards a settlement.
Look | What would be needed so that the United States Russia arrives at ‘a high significant fire’:
Marcus Kolga, the main member of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, says “is only with significant pressure” that the United States and Russia “will reach a significant fire.” This comes after the special envoy of the USA. UU. Steve Wikoff met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow to discuss a high fire agreement with Ukraine.
The deadline was Friday. But the White House did not answer questions that night about the state of possible sanctions after Trump announced the next meeting with Putin. Before that, Trump’s efforts to press Russia to stop the fight had not given any progress.
The largest army of the Kremlin slowly advances Ukraine to a great cost in troops and armor, while releasing cities. Russia and Ukraine are very separate in their terms for peace.
Gould-Davies compared attempts to understand what seems to be Trump’s last axis to Moscow with “Kremlinology”, the practice of the cold war era of deciphering the opaque signals of Soviet leadership.
“We are … looking for clues and clues … about what the hell is happening; what the combination of influences around Trump and, in fact, in Trump’s head is promoting his last statement,” he said.
“It’s as if his disappointment with Putin … It never happened,” said Gould-Davies, pointing out a sudden return to the most conciliatory Russian policy that Trump adopted at the beginning of his presidency.
Russia, Ukraine, commercial 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 of Kherson, said regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin.
Two others died after a Russian drone hit his car in the Zaporizhzhia region, according to regional governor Ivan Fedorov.
The Ukraine Air Force said that 16 of the 47 Russian drones launched during the night, while 31 drones achieved targets in 15 locations. He also said he knocked down one of the two missiles that Russia deployed.
The Russian Ministry of Defense said its aerial defenses knocked down 97 Ukrainian drones about Russia and the Black Sea during the night and until Saturday, and 21 later in the morning.
