(Anchorage) On the eve of his tête-à-tête in Alaska with Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump stressed Thursday that only a tripartite summit including Volodymyr Zelensky could seal a peace agreement in Ukraine, repeating that it would be necessary to “share” territories.
What to know
- US President Donald Trump will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin “headache” on Friday;
- The American president assured that only a tripartite summit also including Volodymyr Zelensky could seal a peace agreement in Ukraine, but repeated that it would be necessary to “share” territories;
- Donald Trump assured that Russia would face “very serious consequences” if it did not agree to end the war;
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was received on Thursday in London by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer;
- Responding to a strong Russian military thrust, Ukraine has drawn dozens of drones inside Russian territory, launching a refinery and making three injured;
- Kyiv and Moscow exchanged on Thursday 84 prisoners from each camp.
“This meeting will open the way to another,” said the American president on Radio Fox News.
He had already said before that this anchorage summit only had the vocation of “taking the ground” with Russia.
Kyiv and Europeans fear that in reality Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin undertake on Friday to redraw the map of Ukraine without the agreement of the Ukrainian president.
“The second meeting will be very, very important, because it will be the one where they will conclude an agreement. And I don’t want to use the term “sharing things”, but in a way, it’s not a bad term. There will be giving giving regarding borders, territories, ”also said Donald Trump on Thursday.
“I don’t know where this second meeting will take place,” he added. “We think of three different places as well as of the possibility, because it would be by far the easy, to stay in Alaska”.
Vladimir Putin praised him on Thursday the “fairly energetic and sincere efforts” of the United States “to put an end to hostilities, get out of the crisis and achieve agreements that satisfy all the parties involved”.
“If in one way or another the President Trump can convince Putin to stop the killing, we will want to believe it. We owe […] Hopefully something will get out of the meeting, “said AFP Zori Optasevych, a Ukrainian living in Anchorage, whose family had emigrated to the United States in the 1990s.
Common press conference
The American president estimated at “25 %” the risk of failure of his meeting on Friday with his Russian counterpart.
The head of American diplomacy Marco Rubio told him that the question of “security guarantees” should be addressed to end the conflict started in February 2022 by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the deadliest in Europe since the Second World War.
The Ukrainian president was not invited to ensure that the Kremlin described as a “tête-à-tête” between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, two leaders that a very special relationship, alternating tension and spectacular rapprochements.
Volodymyr Zelensky was warmly received on Thursday in London by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
European leaders are blocking around him and try to weigh on the unpredictable Donald Trump.
His conversation with Vladimir Putin on the basis of Elmendorf-Richardson will take place with performers, said the diplomatic advisor to the Kremlin, Iouri Ouchakov.
“The agenda will mainly relate to the regulations of the Ukrainian crisis,” added Mr. Ouchakov, also evoking “bilateral cooperation”.
The meeting must start on Friday around 3:30 p.m. (eastern time), said the Kremlin.
The Russian and American presidents will then give a joint press conference, the first since their common appearance in front of the cameras in 2018 in Helsinki, remained in the memories for the good understanding then manifested by the two leaders.
Military pressure
On the ground, the pressure increases on the troops of Kyiv, less numerous.
They are faced with a rapid advance in the Russian army on the front in the eastern Donetsk region, where the Russian army claimed on Thursday taking two new villages.
Ukraine pulled dozens of drones in the night from Wednesday to Thursday, burning a refinery and having three injured near the Russian city Volgograd (South), according to local officials.
The official positions of the two belligerents are always irreconcilable.
Capture of the Governor screen of the Belgorod region, supplied by Reuters
A car burns following an attack by a Ukrainian drone in Belgorod, Russia, on August 4, 2025, in this image taken from a video.
Russia claims that Ukraine gives him four partially occupied regions (Donetsk, Louhansk, Zaporijjia and Kherson), in addition to the Crimea annexed in 2014, and that it renounces Western arms deliveries and any membership in NATO.
For Kyiv, these requirements are unacceptable.
During the three sessions of talks since the spring, the last of which was held in Istanbul in July, Russians and Ukrainians had only managed to agree on the exchange of prisoners of war.
In this context, Kyiv and Moscow announced on Thursday that they exchanged 84 prisoners from each camp.
