Donald Trump said on Monday that he wanted to “try the field” during his meeting scheduled for Vladimir Putin on Friday, including Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders fear that it will lead to an unfavorable outcome to Ukraine.
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The American president remained vague on his expectations, saying hoping for a “constructive” meeting in Alaska and stressing, in an approving tone, that he was “very respectful” on the part of his Russian counterpart to move in American territory.
He slipped a remark capable of worrying the Ukrainian president and his European allies, saying to himself “a little annoyed that (Volodymyr) Zelensky Dise” I must have a constitutional authorization “” “to give in territories.
“Because there will be exchanges of territories,” he predicted, while the Russian army currently occupies around 20% of the Ukrainian territory.
The Europeans, whom Trump has committed to contact his meeting with Putin Finie as soon as they are striving to weigh on the American president, with a notoriously fluctuating mood by Friday.
“The Ukrainians must have the freedom to decide their future,” the leaders of the European Union countries insisted on Tuesday – in a text with which Hungary has not been associated – while welcoming “the efforts of President Trump to end the war”.
Trump was also invited to join the leaders of several European countries -France, United Kingdom, Italy, Poland and Finland -, the EU, Ukraine and NATO for videoconferencing on Wednesday.
According to Germany, it will be a question of thinking about possible “additional actions” to “exert pressure on Russia” but also “the preparation of possible peace negotiations” and the questions “relating to territorial claims and security guarantees” which result from it.
The foreign ministers of the Member States of the European Union were already meeting on Monday in videoconference.
Slip
To hear Donald Trump, Friday’s meeting, his first in person with Vladimir Putin since 2019, should ultimately allow a summit between the Ukrainian and Russian heads of state.
“In the end I will put them both in a room, I will be there or I will not be there, and I think it will settle,” said the 79 -year -old republican.
He also indicated, and it was not the first time, that he could also completely disinterested in the conflict triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“Maybe I would say” good luck, keep fighting. ” Or maybe I would say “we can find an agreement,” said Donald Trump, who broke with the Ukraine support strategy of his predecessor Joe Biden as soon as he returned to the White House on January 20.
In a curious period, he said, twice, that the meeting with Vladimir Putin would take place “in Russia”, rather than in Alaska – territory ceded by Russia to the Americans in the 19th century.
Volodymyr Zelensky once again called him not to give in to the requirements of the chief of the Kremlin.
“Russia refuses to stop the massacres and must therefore not receive rewards or advantages. And it is not only a moral position, it is a rational position, “wrote the Ukrainian president on Facebook.
Russian push
Vladimir Putin also deploys intense diplomatic activity before the summit with Donald Trump.
He conversed with nine heads of state or government in three days, including the Chinese Xi Jinping, the Indian Narendra Modi and the Brazilian Inacio Lula Da Silva.
The American president, who had promised to settle the Ukrainian conflict in 24 hours on his return to the White House, began a spectacular rapprochement with his Russian counterpart. But he has also shown growing impatience, Russia having intensified its bombings of Ukraine in recent months.
Since the announcement on Friday of the summit, the worst armed conflict in Europe since the Second World War has continued, with six dead identified in Russian strikes on Sunday in Ukraine.
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed on Monday taking a new village in the Ukrainian Donetsk (East) region, that of Fedorivka, located northeast of Pokrovsk and Myrnograd, cities threatened with encirclement due to a continuous advance of Russian troops for more than a month.
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 Kyïv.
