• Source:JND
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US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that Ukraine should make a deal to end the war with Russia because "Russia is a very big power, and they're not", after hosting a summit where Vladimir Putin was reported to have demanded more Ukrainian land. In a subsequent briefing with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a source familiar with the discussion told news agency Reuters that Trump as said the Russian leader had offered to freeze most front lines if Kyiv's forces ceded all of Donetsk, the industrial region that is one of Moscow's main targets.

Zelenskyy rejects Putin's demand

Zelenskyy rejected the demand, Reuters reported, citing the source. Russia already controls a fifth of Ukraine, including about three-quarters of Donetsk province, which it first entered in 2014. Trump also said he had agreed with Putin that a peace deal should be sought without the prior ceasefire that Ukraine and its European allies, until now with US support, have demanded.

 
Zelenskyy said he would meet Trump in Washington on Monday, while Kyiv's European allies welcomed Trump's efforts but vowed to back Ukraine and tighten sanctions on Russia. The report said European leaders had also been invited to attend those talks. Trump's meeting with Putin in Alaska on Friday, the first US-Russia summit since Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, lasted just three hours.

Trump-Putin summit failed to secure ceasefire

"It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up," Trump posted on Truth Social. RUSSIA LIKELY TO WELCOME TRUMP'S COMMENTS His various comments on the meeting mostly aligned with the public positions of Moscow, which says it wants a full settlement - not a pause - but that this will be complex because positions are "diametrically opposed". Russia has been gradually advancing for months. 

 
The war - the deadliest in Europe for 80 years - has killed or wounded well over a million people from both sides, including thousands of mostly Ukrainian civilians, according to analysts. Before the summit, Trump had said he would not be happy unless a ceasefire was agreed on. But afterwards he said that, after Monday's talks with Zelenskyy, "if all works out, we will then schedule a meeting with President Putin". 
 
(With inputs from Reuters)