Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be resisting a bilateral meeting with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, casting doubt over whatever hopes for peace may have been generated by a week of summit diplomacy.
That bilateral meeting is supposed to be the next step in a process inaugurated by US President Donald Trump last Friday, when he and Putin met in Alaska.
European leaders told Trump in a follow-up meeting in Washington on Monday that if Putin doesn’t cooperate, more sanctions should be imposed on the creaking Russian economy.
The week of meetings did nothing to lessen hostilities in Ukraine, where Russia appeared to try to deal a decisive blow to Ukrainian defenders ahead of the Trump-Putin summit, but was instead pushed back from previously captured territory. It also maintained a steady rain of drones and missiles on Ukraine’s cities every day.
Ukraine, too, kept up pressure on Russia, continuing a highly successful series of strikes against refineries and oil depots that have deprived Russia of 13 percent of its refining capacity.
On the battlefield
A day ahead of the Alaska summit, Russian forces attempted a major push towards Dobropillia, a city in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region that lies just 15km (9 miles) north of Pokrovsk, a target Russia has prioritised since last summer.
Ukrainian General Staff spokesman Andriy Kovalev said reserves had stabilised the situation. On Friday, Dnipro Group of Forces spokesman Colonel Viktor Trehubov confirmed Russian infiltrators had been cleared from Pokrovsk and a group of outlying villages. Geolocated satellite imagery also confirmed this on Saturday.
“Russia’s intention was to demonstrate strength ahead of Alaska, but in fact, for the occupier, this ends with its destruction,” Zelenskyy said in his Friday evening address.
Russia did seize some land. Its Defence Ministry confirmed the capture of Sobolivka near Kupiansk in Ukraine’s northern Kharkiv region on Tuesday, and Novogeorgievka in Dnipropetrovsk and Pankovka in Donetsk on Wednesday.
Russia also continued its aerial campaign against Ukraine’s cities, launching 1,421 missiles between August 14 and 21. Ukraine downed 1,114 of them. Over the same period, it downed 38 missiles out of a total of 62 launched.
Ukraine, too, continued its long-range campaign to destroy Russia’s ability to wage war. It struck the Lukoil oil refinery in Volgograd on August 14 and the Rosneft Syzran Oil Refinery in Samara region on Friday. Both attacks caused explosions and fires.
Ukraine on Friday also struck the port of Olya in Russia’s Astrakhan region, through which it says Russia imports drones and other war supplies from Iran. It said the strike had also destroyed the Port Olya 4 vessel, which was carrying Shahed-type drone components and ammunition from Iran.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian drones struck a Russian freight train carrying oil through Zaporizhia. Aerial video showed several oil cars burning.
Russian authorities said on Tuesday that they had thwarted an attempt to blow up the Crimea Bridge, a major supply route, when they seized a car carrying 130kg (286lbs) of explosives. The car had been “driven across many European countries” to end up in Georgia, they said. It was then supposed to travel to Russian territory on board a ferry, before being driven across the bridge and detonated.
From Anchorage to Washington
Meanwhile, Trump appeared to seesaw between the positions of his interlocutors across the two summits.
On August 13, Trump had warned of “very severe consequences” if Putin did not stop the war in Ukraine. He had previously said he was considering a severe package of primary sanctions on Russia and secondary measures on countries buying its oil and gas that is being drafted in the US Senate.
After spending just under three hours in talks with Putin at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson near Anchorage on Friday, Trump reversed himself on sanctions, opening a new rift between the US and Ukraine’s European allies.
“Because of what happened today, I don’t have to think about that. Maybe I have to think about it in two weeks or three weeks,” Trump told Fox presenter Sean Hannity.
“What happened” remained something of a mystery because Putin and Trump took no questions from the media, and the US leader made other concessions.
Trump moved away from his demand for a ceasefire, a condition he announced shortly after assuming office.
“The US president’s position has changed after talks with Putin, and now the discussion will focus not on a truce, but on the end of the war. And a new world order. Just as Moscow wanted,” Olga Skabeyeva, a prominent Russian state TV host, wrote on Telegram.
Trump has previously made another key concession to Moscow, and he repeated it en route to Alaska when he ruled out Ukraine’s membership in NATO. Asked what security guarantees Ukraine would receive, he said, “Not in the form of NATO, because, you know, there are things that will not happen.”
Ukraine and Europe agree to none of these concessions, and European leaders said they would accompany Zelenskyy to Washington for a follow-up summit on Monday.
Zelenskyy had begun to prepare for another meeting with Trump at least 10 days ago, when the Alaska summit was announced.
Last week he agreed five principles with European allies – that a ceasefire was a precondition for peace talks, that sanctions should be strengthened if Russia did not cooperate, that Russia could not have a veto over security guarantees for Ukraine, that the US had to be included as a security guarantor along with Europe, and that no deal concerning Ukraine could be made without Ukraine’s consent.
During Monday’s summit in the White House, European leaders appeared to have won only their last two points.
Trump has agreed to make no deals with Putin without Ukraine’s consent.
“It’s not a done deal at all. Ukraine has to agree,” he told Hannity on Friday.
On security guarantees, Trump told reporters ahead of talks, “They’re going to be our first line of defence because they’re there, they’re Europe, but we’re going to help them out also, we’ll be involved.”
“The fact that you [Trump] have said ‘I am willing to participate in security guarantees’ is a big step, is really a breakthrough, and thank you for that,” said NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, who was present at the summit.
On Tuesday, Trump clarified on the Fox News entertainment network that this did not mean sending US troops to Ukraine, but meant lending air defence support.
It was unclear if Trump had agreed to a collective defence with Ukraine, as Zelenskyy and EU leaders have asked. “We need security to work in practice, like Article 5 of NATO,” said Zelenskyy on Saturday after meeting with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen.
Certainly, a gulf continued to separate Trump from the leaders of Europe on the first three points.
“I can’t imagine that the next meeting would take place without a ceasefire. So let’s work on that, and let’s try to put pressure on Russia. Because the credibility of these efforts we’re undertaking today are depending on at least a ceasefire from the beginning of negotiations,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told Trump.
French President Emmanuel Macron told an NBC interviewer it would be “impossible” for Ukrainian officials to negotiate a peace deal as bombs were falling on their cities.
But Trump said a ceasefire was not a part of any of the “six wars” he claims to have settled.
Russia poured scorn on European security guarantees. “The brainless Gallic rooster can’t let go of the idea of sending troops to ‘Ukraine’,” wrote Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s National Security Council.
“We cannot agree with the current proposal to resolve issues of collective security without Russia,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in a press conference on Wednesday, calling the idea “utopian”.
Macron pointed out that Russia became a security guarantor of Ukraine when recognising its independence in 1991, and that led to the Russian invasion.
Russia also appeared to ignore the diplomatic path outlined by Trump and the Europeans, consisting of a bilateral meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy in the next two weeks, followed by a trilateral meeting that would include Trump.
Although White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday that Putin had agreed to the bilateral meeting, there was no Kremlin confirmation as of Thursday afternoon.
Instead, Lavrov offered merely to send more senior negotiators to an existing format of bilateral talks with Ukraine that doesn’t include the two presidents – an offer echoed by Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov.
This appeared to be what Putin had in mind when he expressed faith in Alaska that “moving along this path, we can reach the end of the conflict in Ukraine sooner rather than later”.
‘Land for peace’
Reuters reported that Putin had demanded the unoccupied parts of Ukraine’s eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk ahead of the Alaska summit, in return for a few pockets of land Russia has seized and a freezing of the front line in the southern regions of Zaporizhia and Kherson.
The sources were two unnamed White House officials.
There was no mention of what would happen in other parts of the front; Ukraine is also currently defending its northern regions of Kharkiv and Sumy.
Trump later told Hannity that he and Putin had “largely agreed” on a territorial deal in Alaska. “I think we’re pretty close to a deal,” he said, adding, “Ukraine has to agree to it. Maybe they’ll say ‘no’.”
According to Reuters, Zelenskyy did say no.
European leaders continue to stand on principle, saying no land can be won through aggression, and Ukraine shouldn’t be asked to cede any territory to Russia as part of a formula known as “land for peace”.
“Once we recognise part of Donbas [as Russian territory]… There is no more international order,” Macron said, using a term that refers to the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. “This isn’t compliant with the UN Charter. And the day after, our collective credibility, the US, Europeans, permanent members of the Security Council, will be totally zero.”
But Trump mentioned this month that any peace deal will involve a “land swap” between Russia and Ukraine.
Trump also appeared willing to concede large tracts of Ukrainian land to Russia.
Vladimir Zharikhin, a Kremlin-affiliated expert, suggested Trump had ruled out as impossible the return of Crimea to Ukraine, calling it de facto recognition of its possession by Russia.
Despite its ongoing war, Russia insists that “Neither Crimea, nor Donbas, nor Novorossiya as territories have ever been our goal,” Lavrov told the Rossiya-24 TV channel. “We never spoke about seizing any territories,” he said.
“Our goal was to protect the people, the Russian people, who had lived on these lands for centuries, who discovered these lands,” Lavrov said.
Yet Russia has never offered to give up occupied territories.
