The president of the United States, Donald Trump, said that Ukraine must participate in conversations on territory in any high -fire agreement with Russia, French president Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday.
The comments were the first indication of what arose from the conversations between Trump, European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, aimed at making shape to Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday.
Trump’s insistence to involve Ukraine, if confirmed, could generate a measure of relief to kyiv and his allies, who have feared Trump and Putin can reach an agreement that sells the security interests of Europe and Ukraine and proposes to carve the territory of Ukraine.
Trump and Putin will meet in Alaska on Friday to talk about how to finish the conflict of three and a half years, the largest in Europe since the World War. Trump has said that both parties will have to exchange land to end the fighting that cost tens of thousands of lives and displaced to millions.
On a day of intense diplomacy, Zelensky flew to Berlin for virtual meetings housed Germans with European leaders and then with Trump. Europeans are concerned that an exchange of land can abandon Russia with almost a fifth of Ukraine and embolden Putin to expand more west to the future.
Putin is slaughtering: Zelensky
Zelensky said he warned Trump before his conversations with Putin that the Russian leader was “slaughtering” about his desire to end the war.
“I told the president of the United States and all our European colleagues that Putin is slaughtering,” he said in Joint Information in Berlin with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. “He is trying to apply pressure before the meeting in Alaska along all parts of the Ukrainian front. Russia is trying to demonstrate that it can occupy all Ukraine.”
Zelensky’s comments, made after a virtual call with Trump and European leaders, occur when Russian forces intensify the pressure of the battlefield in eastern Ukraine, with the aim of forcing kyiv to give up the earth.
Zelensky, who said he expected the main theme of the conversations in Alaska to be a high immediate fire, added that any discussion about territory should be covered during a meeting of three leaders.
“With respect to our territorial principles and integrity, in the end, all this is decided at the level of leaders,” he said. “Without Ukraine, it is impossible to decide this. And, by the way, everyone also supports this.”
Zelensky said Trump told him that he would inform him about his conversations with Putin.
