Trump set to meet Zelenskyy, Ukraine allies after Putin summit



President Donald Trump was set Monday for a crucial meeting with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and a united front of European allies after his Alaska summit with Vladimir Putin.

With Trump adopting Russian points that Ukraine should cede land for a peace deal, Zelenskyy was expected to seek to get the U.S. back on board with his own previous agreement with Western allies that a ceasefire is needed before any negotiations.

A high-powered delegation of European leaders, including the leaders of the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy, jetted into Washington in hopes of pulling Trump back into the fold after he suggested Ukraine could stop the war anytime by agreeing to Russia’s demands.

“(Zelenskyy) can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight,” Trump wrote late Sunday on his social media site.

Ukraine countered that the west needs to use its strength to stop Putin in his tracks before Russia uses any ceded territory as a “springboard” for further attacks.

“…Russia should not be rewarded for its participation in this war. The war must be ended,” Zelenskyy posted on X Monday. “And it is Moscow that must hear the word: ‘stop.’”

Zelenskyy and the European allies are hoping to avoid a repeat of the ugly clash at the White House in February when an angry Trump effectively branded him as the main obstacle to peace.

Since then, Trump shifted to demanding that both Russia and Ukraine agree to an immediate ceasefire. He threatened sanctions against Russian trading partners and even said the Friday summit would be a failure if he didn’t convince Putin to stop the fighting and end the punishing aerial attacks on Ukrainian civilians.

But at the summit in Anchorage, Trump caved to Putin’s hardline refusal to accept a ceasefire until Ukraine agrees to cede even more than the approximately 20% of the country it has already occupied during the brutal 3-1/2 year invasion.

He explicitly supports the Russian demands for recognition of its control over the occupied province of Crimea and a guarantee that Ukraine won’t ever join NATO. The president also suggested he agrees with the idea of Ukraine handing over parts of the Donbas region that it has defended at the cost of tens of thousands of lives.

Ukraine does not want to agree to any recognition of Russian dominion over occupied lands, but might accept a freezing of the effective border along the current military front lines running through four southeastern provinces.

It also wants some kind of ironclad Western security guarantees to prevent Russia from launching new attacks in the future to seize even more of the country.

The European political heavy-hitters are scrambling to safeguard Ukraine’s future and protect the continent from any widening aggression from Moscow.

The remarkable show of unity is a sign of their concern over coming over the results of the Alaska summit, which many see as a clear win for Putin because he won Trump over without making any concessions.

French President Emmanuel Macron described Ukraine as an “outpost of our collective defense.”

“If we are weak with Russia today, we’ll be preparing the conflicts of tomorrow and they will impact the Ukrainians and — make no mistake — they can impact us, too.” Macron said.

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