NEITHER putin or drumpf / trump can be trusted to do the right thing, they never have been and never will be because they are both narcissistic, sociopathic psychopaths only out for themselves, the rest of the world be damned...So sad for Ukraine. Please take the time to e mail your representative and senators telling them to support increased military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine and to support stronger, additional sanctions on Russia to bring an end to this war. Also tell them the American government can not offer and provide sanctuary or protection for any Russian facing charges for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in their illegal and immoral war against Ukraine. God Bless and deliver Ukraine from the evil of putin and his kremlin thugs. From the Washington Post.....My e mails will be at the end of this post.
Zelensky rejects Trump’s suggestion that Ukraine cede territory to Russia
President Donald Trump, who is due to meet President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, suggested Ukraine and Russia could swap some territory to achieve peace.
KYIV — Ukraine will reject any proposal that involves ceding territory to Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday, hours after U.S. President Donald Trump suggested “some swapping of territories” to end Russia’s war on Ukraine.
“The answer to the Ukrainian territorial question is already in the constitution of Ukraine,” Zelensky said in a video address Saturday morning. “No one will retreat from this, and no one can. Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier.”
Trump has suggested a territorial swap as he and Russian President Vladimir Putin finalized details for an in-person meeting Friday in Alaska — symbolic as a former part of the Russian Empire.
Trump did not say whether Zelensky was invited to the meeting. An official briefed on the negotiations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely about sensitive political talks, said Zelensky had not yet been invited.
Russia has proposed that Kyiv relinquish the Donbas area of eastern Ukraine for a ceasefire without offering anything in return, according to a second person briefed on the negotiations.
European and Ukrainian officials were scrambling to respond to Trump’s reversal. Days before he and Putin announced the meeting Friday, he was threatening to impose tougher sanctions on Russia.
Britain on Saturday hosted a meeting of national security advisers from Europe, Ukraine and the United States led by Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Vice President JD Vance.
The Europeans agreed with Ukraine’s demand for a ceasefire before any negotiations could start, according to a person briefed on the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks.
The Europeans were forwarding the idea that any withdrawal of forces from Ukrainian territory should occur on an inch-for-inch basis, the person said. A Ukrainian withdrawal from Donbas, for example, would be matched by a Russian withdrawal from the same amount of territory in Zaporizhzhia or Kherson.
A U.S. official described the conversations as productive.
“Today’s hours-long meetings produced significant progress toward President Trump’s goal of bringing an end to the war in Ukraine, ahead of President Trump and President Putin’s upcoming meeting in Alaska,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Zelensky described the conversations in Britain as “constructive.”
“All our messages were conveyed,” he said in a statement. “Our arguments are being heard. The risks are being taken into account. The path to peace for Ukraine must be determined together — and only together — with Ukraine.”
The discussion followed days of confusion over a meeting in Moscow between Putin and U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff. Putin’s suggestion that he was willing to halt the Russian attack on the key regions of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson was understood by the Americans as an offer to withdraw, according to the second person briefed.
But Moscow, having secured its prized land bridge from Russian territory to illegally annexed Crimea, clarified on Friday that it was not willing to pull back its troops, the person said. Russia had since offered to give back a “sliver of land” it holds in the regions of Sumy and Kharkiv, the person said, but the territory was not significant.
Russia initially proposed meeting in the United Arab Emirates or in Saudi Arabia, the official said, and the United States then proposed Europe, which the Kremlin rejected, before the two countries settled on Alaska. Putin’s travel is restricted because the International Criminal Court in 2023 issued a warrant for Putin’s arrest on allegations of involvement in the abduction of children from Ukraine during the war. Like the UAE and Saudi Arabia, the U.S. is not a party to the court.
A trip to Alaska may give Putin the chance to make an important domestic visit to the nearby Kamchatka Peninsula, where there was a recent earthquake and volcanic eruption.
The planned meeting is a win for Putin, who gets an official visit to the U.S. despite failing to agree to Trump’s longtime demands for a ceasefire.
There are growing fears in Ukraine and many European countries that this meeting will only further solidify Putin’s gains in his deadly war on Ukraine. Kyiv has long insisted that decisions about Ukraine cannot be made without Ukraine. Russia attacked Ukraine again with drones and missiles in the past day, killing at least eight people, including civilians on a bus near Kherson.
European supporters appeared to rally behind Kyiv and Zelensky on Saturday. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer spoke with Zelensky by phone on Saturday morning and “agreed that we must keep up the pressure on Putin to end his illegal war,” the British government said in a statement.
Zelensky said he spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron, another key ally, and said that he was “grateful for the support.” He added: “It is truly important that the Russians do not succeed in deceiving anyone again.”
Trump’s suggestion that Ukraine and Russia might swap territory had caused confusion, the official who was briefed on the negotiations said, adding, “What exactly can be swapped?”
Ukraine controls only a small toehold in Russia’s western Kursk region. Russia, meanwhile, controls about a fifth of Ukraine’s sovereign territory. Russia has repeatedly demanded that Kyiv withdraw from several of the Ukrainian regions that Russia only partially controls — a demand that Ukraine categorically refuses.
Putin, the official said, is acting “like Hitler who received some lands and wanted more.” Some U.S. officials appear ready to agree to his proposal to seize more Ukrainian land in exchange for weak words on peace, the official said.
Trump, who has in the past blamed Ukraine for Russia’s invasion, has recently softened his rhetoric on Kyiv and toughened up on Russia. But he agreed to host Putin after his special envoy Steve Witkoff visited Moscow this week for a meeting with the Russian president, stirring fears that he could be leaning toward a decision that will compromise Ukraine and ultimately prolong the war.
Zelensky, who has worked hard to recover his relationship with Trump after a disastrous Oval Office meeting early this year, appeared to direct some of his comments solidifying Ukraine’s position Saturday directly at Washington. His firm stance is likely to be celebrated at home but could risk potential blowback from an unpredictable Trump.
“The Ukrainian people deserve peace. But all partners must understand what a worthy peace is. This war must be ended, and Russia must end it. Russia started it and is dragging it out, ignoring all deadlines, and that is the problem, not anything else,” Zelensky said. “Any decisions against us, any decisions without Ukraine, are simultaneously decisions against peace. They will bring nothing. These are dead decisions; they will never work.”
He added: “We are ready, together with President Trump, together with all partners, to work for a real and, most importantly, lasting peace — a peace that will not collapse because of Moscow’s desires.”
Reaching any territorial agreement between Russia and Ukraine will be extremely complicated. Ukraine does not want to reward Russia for its invasion and Russia expects Ukraine to readily give up even territory that Ukraine still controls.
Russia invaded and illegally annexed Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula, in 2014. It has since seized all of the Luhansk region, much of the Donetsk region and parts of the Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv regions. It is also pushing over the border into Ukraine’s Sumy region, which borders Kursk, the Russian region where Ukraine seized 500 square miles last year. Kyiv has since retreated from all but about four square miles of that land.
Russia has already laid claim to the regional capitals in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, cities it does not control. Ukraine retook Kherson in 2022, and Russia never reached the city of Zaporizhzhia.
With a Ukrainian military victory increasingly unlikely, Ukrainians are growing more open to a deal to end the war. But any real decisions that cede territory will still be deeply unpopular in Ukraine, where millions of people have been displaced and at least tens of thousands of troops have been killed in ground fighting.
Natalie Allison contributed to this report from Chevening, England.
President Donald Trump, who recently threatened Russia with sanctions over its war in Ukraine, is set to meet Vladimir Putin in Alaska next week.
President Donald Trump’s announcement that he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska next week represents a win for Putin, who has secured an official visit to the United States without agreeing to Trump’s longtime demands for a ceasefire.
Trump has long cast himself as a peacemaker who wants to end the fighting in Ukraine. However, his positions toward Russia and Ukraine have shifted regularly over the past few years and alarmed Ukraine and its Western allies.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Trump, for a long time, avoided directly criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin. He went so far as to praise Putin’s moves as “genius” and “savvy” and echoed the Kremlin’s narratives on the start of the war. At campaign rallies, he also repeatedly pledged to end the war within 24 hours of becoming president.
He also blamed Ukraine for the war during a contentious meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office in February.
In recent months, Trump has expressed frustration over Moscow’s attacks on Ukraine and began threatening sanctions — causing some concern among Russia’s elite that Putin may have overplayed his hand.
Trump’s agreement to meet with Putin — and his suggestion that Ukraine could cede some territory to Russia for peace — gives the Kremlin the sense that it could have an advantage again.
Here’s how we got here.
2023 and 2024: Promises to end the war
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During the presidential campaign, Trump appears to blame Zelensky for the war and refuses to say whether he wants Ukraine to win.
Privately, he says he could end the war in Ukraine by putting pressure on Kyiv to give up territory, as The Washington Post reported. Publicly, he repeatedly pledges to stop the war within 24 hours of returning to the White House, without providing details of how he will do so. In March 2025, he says he was “a little bit sarcastic” when he said he could end the war in only 24 hours — although he had repeated the line several times at campaign rallies.
Feb. 18, 2025: Trump claims Ukraine was to blame
Trump angers Ukrainians by falsely claiming that Zelensky was to blame for the Russian invasion and describing him as “a Dictator without Elections” — an echo of statements made by the Kremlin, and a claim that overlooks the fact that widespread displacement and the deployment of many citizens to the front line makes voting nearly impossible in Ukraine.
Trump’s comments come after the U.S. and Russia hold talks on Ukraine in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia — without any Ukrainian or NATO officials — in a move that unsettled Ukrainians and that Russia portrayed as a step toward ending Moscow’s isolation.
“Today I heard, ‘Oh, we weren’t invited,’” Trump says. “Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it. … You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”
Feb. 28: Trump blasts Zelensky in Oval Office
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Zelensky’s visit to the White House descends into a shouting match, as Trump and Vice President JD Vance blast the Ukrainian leader.
“You’re right now not in a very good position,” Trump tells Zelensky. “You’ve allowed yourself to be in a very bad position. You don’t have the cards right now. With us, you start having cards.”
The public dispute had no modern precedent and was particularly striking after generations of U.S. presidents had presented staunch opposition to Kremlin aggression around the world. Following the meeting, a senior administration official says a policy review is underway, with large amounts of U.S. equipment at stake.
March 30: Trump says he is ‘angry’ at Putin
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Trump says he is “angry” at Putin for questioning Zelensky’s legitimacy and will consider more tariffs on Russian oil if he and the Russian president are unable to end “the bloodshed in Ukraine” and “if I think it was Russia’s fault.”
Trump, who has also attacked Zelensky’s credibility in the past, criticizes Zelensky as well, accusing him of trying to back out of a rare metals deal with the U.S. He says that while he is “disappointed” with Putin, he also trusts him, adding: “I don’t think he’s going to go back on his word.”
April 24: Trump tells Putin to stop attacks
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Trump again criticizes Putin following further Russian attacks on Ukraine.
“I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV,” Trump writes on Truth Social. “Not necessary, and very bad timing. Vladimir, STOP!”
April 26: Trump meets Zelensky at the Vatican
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Trump holds a private meeting with Zelensky at the Vatican, where the two leaders are attending Pope Francis’s funeral. It’s their first face-to-face meeting since Zelensky’s visit to the White House. The quiet, one-on-one meeting is described by Zelensky as a “very symbolic meeting that has potential to become historic, if we achieve joint results.”
Trump meanwhile criticizes Putin and Russian attacks on Ukraine on social media, saying the attacks made him “think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through ‘Banking’ or ‘Secondary Sanctions?’” He added: “Too many people are dying!!!”
April 30: U.S. and Ukraine sign minerals deal
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Washington signs a contentious minerals deal with Kyiv, which falls short of providing any concrete security guarantees to Ukraine but affirms a “long-term strategic alignment” between the two countries and U.S. “support for Ukraine’s security, prosperity, reconstruction, and integration into global economic frameworks.”
“This agreement signals clearly to Russia that the Trump Administration is committed to a peace process centered on a free, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine over the long term,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says.
May 19: Trump-Putin call
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In a phone call with Putin, Trump appears to accept Russia’s demand to postpone a ceasefire, opening the way for fighting to continue.
May 25: Trump calls Putin ‘CRAZY’
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Trump threatens new sanctions against Russia after the country launches another massive missile and drone attack against Ukraine.
“I’m not happy with what Putin is doing. He’s killing a lot of people,” he tells reporters. “I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin,” he continues. “I’ve known him a long time.”
Separately, Trump writes on Truth Social that Putin “has gone absolutely CRAZY!”
“Missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever. I’ve always said that he wants ALL of Ukraine, not just a piece of it, and maybe that’s proving to be right, but if he does, it will lead to the downfall of Russia!”
June 25: Trump and Zelensky have ‘nice’ meeting
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Trump and Zelensky meet at a NATO summit in The Hague.
Trump describes the meeting as “very nice,” saying of Zelensky: “Couldn’t have been nicer. I think he’d like to see an end to this.” He adds that he is “going to speak to Vladimir Putin and see if we can get it ended.”
Zelensky, meanwhile, says he and Trump discussed Ukraine’s wish to buy U.S. Patriot air defense systems.
July 8: Trump calls Putin promises ‘meaningless’
Trump steps up criticism of Putin and reiterates plans to send more weapons to Ukraine — days after the White House said that the Pentagon had halted deliveries of some key weapons.
“I’m not happy with Putin, I can tell you that much right now, because he’s killing a lot of people,” Trump says.
Trump continues: “You want to know the truth? He is very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”
July 13: Trump pledges more weapons for Ukraine
Trump, in his strongest shift in support of Ukraine during his presidency, says he will help Ukraine obtain advanced weapons including Patriot missiles, paid for by the European Union.
He says he is “disappointed” with Putin, telling reporters: “I thought he was somebody that meant what he said.”
The next day, he threatens tariffs on Russia if the war does not stop within 50 days and says Ukrainians “continue to fight with tremendous courage.”
Although Russian officials have downplayed the shift, stressing that a lot can happen on the battlefield within 50 days, the move nonetheless sparks anxiety among Russia’s elite, with and some fearing that Putin could have missed an opportunity.
Aug. 8: Trump announces meeting with Putin
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Trump says that he and Putin will meet in Alaska on Aug. 15, while suggesting that Ukraine may have to cede territory under a peace agreement, describing it as “some swapping of territories to the betterment of both.”
The announcement comes after a number of mixed signals. On Aug. 6, U.S. special envoy, Steve Witkoff, met with Putin for three hours in Moscow, and Trump praised the session as “highly productive.” However, hours later, Trump doubled tariffs on India to 50 percent, moving on his earlier threat to impose penalties on trading partners that have helped sustain the Russian economy.
Trump did not say whether Zelensky would be attending the meeting in Alaska. However, an official briefed on the negotiations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely about sensitive political talks, said Zelensky had not yet been invited.
Zelensky swiftly rejected any suggestion that Ukraine give up its territory, adding that peace deals reached without Ukraine were “stillborn” and “unworkable.”
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