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US President Donald Trump will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate an end of the war in Ukraine on 15 August in Alaska, Trump said on Saturday.
Trump made the announcement on social media after he said that the parties, including Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, were close to a ceasefire deal that could resolve the three-year conflict.
Addressing reporters at the White House overnight, Trump suggested an agreement would involve some exchange of land.
“There will be some exchanges of territories to benefit both sides,” Trump mentioned.
In his evening address to the nation, Zelenskyy said it was possible to achieve a ceasefire as long as adequate pressure was applied to Russia. He said he had held more than a dozen conversations with leaders of different countries and his team was in constant contact with the United States.
Putin claims four Ukrainian regions — Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — as well as the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which he annexed in 2014. His forces do not fully control all the territory in the four regions.
Ukraine has previously signalled a willingness to be flexible in the search for an end to a war that has ravaged its towns and cities and killed large numbers of its soldiers and citizens.
However, the acceptance of losing about 20% of Ukraine’s land would be a difficult and politically sensitive issue for Zelenskyy and his administration.
The US and Russia were aiming to reach a deal to halt the war in Ukraine that would lock in Moscow’s occupation of territory seized during its military invasion, Bloomberg News reported on Friday.
Under the putative deal, according to Bloomberg, Russia would halt its offensive in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions along current battle lines.
Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has moved to mend relations with Russia and sought to end the war. In his public comments he has veered between admiration and sharp criticism of Putin.
In a sign of his growing frustration with Putin’s refusal to halt Russia’s military offensive, Trump had threatened to impose new sanctions and tariffs from Friday against Moscow and countries that buy its exports unless the Russian leader agreed to end the 3.5 year conflict, the deadliest in Europe since World War Two.
It was unclear if or when those sanctions would take effect.
The administration took a step toward punishing Moscow’s oil customers on Wednesday, imposing an additional 25 per cent tariff on goods from India over its imports of Russian oil, marking the first financial penalty aimed at Russia in Trump’s second term.
Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff held three hours of talks with Putin in Moscow on Wednesday that both sides described as constructive.
