Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Hoping to push for a ceasefire in Europe’s longest conflict after the Second World War, ongoing in Ukraine, US President Donald Trump will meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on August 15 in Alaska, the territory Moscow ‘sold’ to Washington in October 1867 for USD 7.2 million, and which Russia now wants back!
Interestingly, Trump has even suggested a possible “territory swap” between Russia and Ukraine as part of the likely deal, raising European fears of sidelining Ukraine. Since its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Russia is reported to have captured over 40 percent of what was Ukrainian territory.
President Trump said he will meet Putin next Friday in Alaska to discuss ending the war in Ukraine, a potential breakthrough after weeks of expressing frustration that more was not being done to quell the fighting.
The Kremlin has not yet confirmed the details, which Trump announced on social media, but both nations said they expected a meeting could happen as soon as next week, the media reported on Saturday.
Putin said in a previous statement that he hoped to meet with Trump as early as next week, possibly in the United Arab Emirates.
This upcoming summit could become a pivotal moment in a war that began when Russia invaded its western neighbour, destroyed vast swathes of Ukraine, led to tens of thousands of deaths, and displaced millions others, although there’s no guarantee it will stop the fighting since Moscow and Kyiv remain far apart on their conditions for peace: Russia wants to retain Ukrainian territory and insists that Ukraine must not join Nato; Ukraine wants its lost territory back.
Trump earlier on Friday suggested that any agreement would likely involve “some swapping of territories,” but he gave no details. Analysts, including some close to the Kremlin, have suggested that Russia could offer to give up some of territory it controls outside of the four Russian-speaking regions it claims to have recaptured.
Earlier on Friday, Trump indicated his meeting with Putin would come before any sit-down discussion involving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He also previously agreed to meet with Putin even if the Russian leader would not meet with Zelenskyy. That stoked fears in Europe that Ukraine could be sidelined in efforts to stop the continent’s biggest conflict since 1945.
The US President’s announcement that he planned to host one of America’s adversaries on US soil broke with expectations that he would meet Putin in a third country. The gesture gives Putin validation after the US and its allies had long sought to make him a pariah over his war against Ukraine.
Early in Putin’s tenure, he regularly met with his US counterparts. That dropped off and the tone became icier as tensions mounted between Russia and the West after Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and faced allegations of meddling in the 2016 US elections.
Putin’s last visit to the US was in 2015, when he attended the US General Assembly Meeting in New York. The meeting in Alaska would be the first US-Russia summit since 2021, when former President Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva.
Earlier on Friday, Trump said he would meet with Putin “very shortly,” but refused to say exactly when or where. Later, on social media, he announced what he called “the highly anticipated meeting” would happen on August 15 in Alaska. He said more details would follow.
Trump had told reporters that the summit would have been sooner, “but I guess there’s security arrangements that unfortunately people have to make.” He said, “President Putin, I believe, wants to see peace, and Zelenskyy wants to see peace.” He said that, “In all fairness to President Zelenskyy, he’s getting everything he needs to, assuming we get something done.” Trump said a peace deal would likely mean Ukraine and Russia would swap some territory they each control.
“Nothing easy,” the President said. “But we’re gonna get some back. We’re gonna get some switched. There’ll be some swapping of territories, to the betterment of both.” Pressed on if this was the last chance to make a major peace deal, Trump said, “I don’t like using the term last chance,” and said that, “When those guns start going off, it’s awfully tough to get ’em to stop.”
Exasperated that Putin did not heed his calls to stop bombing Ukrainian cities, Trump around two weeks ago moved up his ultimatum to impose additional sanctions on Russia and introduce secondary tariffs targeting countries that buy Russian oil if the Kremlin did not move toward a settlement. The deadline was Friday (August 8).
Prior to his announcing the meeting with Putin, Trump’s efforts to pressure Russia into stopping the conflict have so far delivered no progress. The bigger Russian army is slowly advancing deeper into Ukraine at great cost in troops and armour while it relentlessly bombards Ukrainian cities. Russia and Ukraine are far apart on their terms for peace.
Ukrainian forces are locked in intense battles along the 1,000-km front line that snakes from northeast to southeast Ukraine. The Pokrovsk area of the eastern Donetsk region is taking the brunt of punishment as Russia seeks to break out into the neighbouring Dnipropetrovsk region. Ukraine has significant manpower shortages, while Russian forces are reportedly being reinforced by regular soldiers and ‘stateless’ mercenaries from North Korea, China, Pakistan, Iran and other ‘friendly’ countries.
Intense fighting is also taking place in Ukraine’s northern Sumy border region, where Ukrainian forces are engaging Russian soldiers to prevent reinforcements being sent from there to Donetsk.
The Kremlin said on Friday that Putin had a phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping, during which the Russian leader informed Xi about the results of his meeting earlier this week with Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff. The Kremlin officials said Xi “expressed support for the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis on a long-term basis.” Putin is due to visit China next month. China, along with North Korea and Iran, have provided military support for Russia’s war effort, the US says.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on X that he also had a call with Putin to speak about the latest Ukraine developments.
Trump on Wednesday imposed an additional 25 percent tariff on India for its purchases of Russian oil, which the US President claims is helping to finance Russia’s war but keeps mum about China buying even more Russian oil and Europe buying the Russian crude refined in India.
The Kremlin said Putin’s calls followed his phone conversations with the leaders of South Africa, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Belarus in what some analysts said was his attempts to brief Russia’s most important allies about a potential settlement that could be reached at a summit with Trump.