Keystone-SDA
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rejected all the assignment of territories to Russia on Saturday to obtain peace, before the summit scheduled for Friday between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, who makes kyiv fear an agreement at his expense.
(Keystone-ATS) Russian and American leaders must meet on August 15 in Alaska, the northern United States, as part of Mr. Trump’s efforts to find a way out of the Russian invasion of Ukraine launched in 2022.
The United States does not recognize the International Criminal Court (ICC) which issued an arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin because of this invasion.
This eagerly awaited meeting will take place without Volodymyr Zelensky, who continues to demand to be able to add his voice to the chapter.
“Any decision that would be made against us, any decision that would be made without Ukraine, would be a decision against peace,” said Zelensky on social networks, adding that “the Ukrainians will not abandon their land to the occupants”.
The Russian army currently occupies around 20% of the Ukrainian territory.
Rather than in neutral terrain, the poutine-top tête-à-tête will take place in the vast and wild state of Alaska, in the far northwest of the American continent, near Russia, a territory that the latter had given in to America at the end of the 19th century.
During a telephone conversation with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Saturday, Mr. Zelensky also urged his European allies to take “clear measures” to define a common approach, while the latter are also excluded from talks.
British Minister of Foreign Affairs David Lammy and US vice-president JD Vance will however welcome a “crucial” meeting of European and American national security advisers on Saturday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced by phone with Volodyr Zelensky.
“Territorial exchanges”
French President Emmanuel Macron, after having spent on Saturday on Saturday on the phone with Mr. Zelensky, hammered that “the future of Ukraine” could not “decide without the Ukrainians”. “Europeans will also necessarily be part of the solution because it is their security,” he wrote on X.
“We must remain united,” added the head of the Spanish government Pedro Sanchez on X, after having maintained himself with Mr. Zelensky.
A regulation of the war will include exchanges of territories for the benefit of each, ”said Donald Trump on Friday without giving more details.
“We are talking about a territory on which fights have been raging for over three and a half years (…) it’s complicated,” he added to the White House, alongside the Azerbaijan and Armenian leaders who had just signed a peace agreement.
Donald Trump, who has repeatedly promised to put an end to the conflict in Ukraine, has spoke several times on the phone with his Russian counterpart in recent months, but has not yet seen him in person since his return to the White House on January 20.
The announced tête-à-tête will be the first between the two leaders since June 2019 in Japan, a year after a summit in Helsinki where Mr. Trump had a resolutely reconciling tone with the Kremlin leader.
Mr. Putin has not walked the American soil since 2015, under the chairmanship of Barack Obama.
At this stage, Moscow claims that Ukraine gives him four partially occupied regions (Donetsk, Lougansk, Zaporijjia and Kherson), in addition to the Crimea annexed in 2014, and that it renounces Western arms deliveries and any membership in NATO.
Unacceptable requirements for kyiv, who wants the withdrawal of Russian troops from its territory and Western security guarantees, including the pursuit of arms deliveries and the deployment of a European contingent, to which Russia is opposed.
Russian progression
After more than three years of fighting, the Ukrainian and Russian positions are still irreconcilable. On the ground, the confrontations and deadly strikes continue and the Russian army continues to advance in the East against a less numerous and less well equipped opponent.
On Saturday, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed the capture of the locality of Iablonivka in the industrial region and mining of Donetsk (East), where most of the fighting is concentrated.
The Russian forces, which have accelerated their gains in recent months, are currently threatening two Ukrainian strong places in Donbass, Kostiantynivka and Pokrovsk, as well as the strategic city of Koupiansk, further north.
In the Donetsk region, four people were killed on Saturday in Russian bombings and two others in the Kherson region (South), their respective authorities announced. These attacks also made twenty injured.
Faced with the Russian advance, Ukraine ordered new forced evacuations from families on Friday evening with children in the East. This measure concerns around twenty localities, after a similar initiative at the end of July.