U.S. President Donald Trump told Ukraine’s leader on Saturday that Russia’s Vladimir Putin offered to freeze the frontlines elsewhere if Kyiv agreed to withdraw from the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Reuters news agency reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.
Trump and U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff told Ukraine’s Zelenskiy that Putin said there could be no ceasefire before that happened, and that Putin could pledge not to launch any new aggression against Ukraine as part of an arrangement.
Trump met with Putin for nearly three hours in Alaska on Friday at the first U.S.-Russia summit since the war began in 2022.
The US president said Ukraine should make a deal to end the war with Russia because “Russia is a very big power, and they’re not”, adding that he had agreed with Putin that negotiators should go straight to a peace settlement – not via a ceasefire, as Ukraine and its European allies have been demanding.
“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.
Zelenskiy has underlined the need for security guarantees for Kyiv, to deter Russia from invading again in the future. He said he and Trump had discussed “positive signals from the American side” on taking part, and that Ukraine needed a lasting peace, not “just another pause” between Russian invasions.
