(AFP) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said ahead of talks with Donald Trump on Monday that Russia should not be “rewarded” for its invasion, after the US leader pressed Ukraine to make concessions in exchange for peace. The talks, in which European leaders will also take part, follows a Friday summit between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska that failed to produce a ceasefire in the nearly three-and-a-half-year war.
Trump, who dropped his insistence on a ceasefire in favor of a final peace deal after meeting Putin, said Sunday that Zelensky could end the war “almost immediately, if he wants to” but that, for Ukraine, there was “no getting back” Crimea and “NO GOING INTO NATO.” Kyiv and European leaders have warned against making political and territorial concessions to Russia, whose assault on Ukraine since February 2022 has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths. “Russia should not be rewarded for its participation in this war…. And it is Moscow that must hear the word: Stop,” Zelensky said in a Facebook post early Monday.
Trump and Zelensky are expected to meet one-on-one before being joined by the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Finland, as well as NATO chief Mark Rutte and European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, according to the White House. The European leaders will also hold a preparatory meeting with Zelensky ahead of talks with Trump, the European Union said.
Ahead of Monday’s meeting, China called for “all parties” to agree to peace “as soon as possible.” It will be the first visit by Zelensky to Washington since a February bust-up with Trump and Vice President JD Vance, when the two men berated the Ukrainian leader for being “ungrateful.” Russia kept up its attacks on Ukraine ahead of the new talks, firing at least 140 drones and four ballistic missiles at the country between late Sunday and early Monday, the Ukrainian air force said. A Russian drone attack on a five-storey apartment block in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv just before dawn killed at least seven people, including a one-and-a-half-year-old girl, authorities said. Zelensky called the strikes an attempt to “humiliate diplomatic efforts.” Ukrainian shelling attacks in the Russian-occupied parts of the Kherson and Donetsk regions meanwhile killed two people, Moscow-installed authorities said.
– Territories at stake –
Russia currently occupies a fifth of Ukraine. It annexed Crimea in 2014 following a referendum denounced as a sham by Kyiv and the West, and did the same in 2022 in four Ukrainian regions — Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk, and Zaporizhzhia — even though its forces have not fully captured them. Russia controls Crimea and is largely in control of the Lugansk region, but not the other three regions. Russia has suggested it might “freeze” the front line in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in exchange for getting control of land not already captured in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. A source briefed on a phone call between Trump and European leaders on Saturday told AFP that the US leader was “inclined to support” this proposal.
But Zelensky has repeatedly shot down the notion of ceding territory to Moscow and says he is constitutionally bound not to give away Crimea. Yevgeniy Sosnovsky, a photographer from the captured Ukrainian city of Mariupol, said he “cannot understand” how Ukraine would cede land already under its control. “Ukraine cannot give up any territories, not even those occupied by Russia,” he told AFP. Trump envoy Steve Witkoff said Moscow had made “some concessions” on territory, and that there was an “important discussion with regard to Donetsk and what would happen there.” “That discussion is going to specifically be detailed on Monday,” he told CNN, without giving details.
Washington has not placed extra sanctions on Moscow, and the lavish welcome offered to Putin in Alaska on his first visit to the West since he invaded Ukraine in 2022 was seen as a diplomatic coup for Russia. But Trump has raised the possibility of a collective defense guarantee for Ukraine similar to the one in place for NATO members, once the war is over. The promise would be outside the framework of the Western military alliance that Ukraine wants to join and which is seen as an existential threat by Russia.
Speaking in Brussels on the eve of his visit to the United States, Zelensky said he was keen to hear more about what Putin and Trump discussed in Alaska. He also hailed Washington’s offer of security guarantees to Ukraine as “historic.”
© 2024 AFP
