Trump and Putin to meet to discuss Ukraine peace deal in Alaska

By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate an end of the war in Ukraine on August 15 in Alaska, Trump said on Friday.

Trump made the announcement on social media after he said that the parties, including Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, were close to a ceasefire deal that could resolve the three-year conflict.

Addressing reporters at the White House earlier on Friday, Trump suggested an agreement would involve some exchange of land.

"There'll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both," Trump said.

In his evening address to the nation, Zelenskiy said it was possible to achieve a ceasefire as long as adequate pressure was applied to Russia. He said he had held more than a dozen conversations with leaders of different countries and his team was in constant contact with the United States.

Putin claims four Ukrainian regions – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – as well as the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which he annexed in 2014. His forces do not fully control all the territory in the four regions.

Ukraine has previously signalled a willingness to be flexible in the search for an end to a war that has ravaged its towns and cities and killed large numbers of its soldiers and citizens.

But accepting the loss of around a fifth of Ukraine's territory would be painful and politically challenging for Zelenskiy and his government.

The U.S. and Russia were aiming to reach a deal to halt the war in Ukraine that would lock in Moscow's occupation of territory seized during its military invasion, Bloomberg News reported earlier on Friday.

Tyson Barker, the U.S. State Department's former deputy special representative for Ukraine's economic recovery, said the peace proposal, as outlined in the Bloomberg report, would be immediately rejected by the Ukrainians.

"The best the Ukrainians can do is remain firm in their objections and their conditions for a negotiated settlement, while demonstrating their gratitude for American support," said Barker, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council.

Under the putative deal, according to Bloomberg, Russia would halt its offensive in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions along current battle lines.

TRUMP AND PUTIN

The last time Alaska hosted a high-stakes diplomatic gathering was in March 2021, when senior officials from the administration of Democratic former president Joe Biden met with top Chinese officials in Anchorage.

The get-together involving Biden's top diplomat Antony Blinken and his then Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi quickly turned into a stunning public clash in front of the cameras, with both sides leveling sharp rebukes of the others’ policies that reflected the high tension in bilateral ties.

Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has moved to mend relations with Russia and sought to end the war. In his public comments he has veered between admiration and sharp criticism of Putin.

In a sign of his growing frustration with Putin's refusal to halt Russia's military offensive, Trump had threatened to impose new sanctions and tariffs from Friday against Moscow and countries that buy its exports unless the Russian leader agreed to end the 3-1/2 year conflict, the deadliest in Europe since World War Two.

It was unclear by Friday evening whether those sanctions would take effect or will be delayed or cancelled.

The administration took a step toward punishing Moscow's oil customers on Wednesday, imposing an additional 25% tariff on goods from India over its imports of Russian oil, marking the first financial penalty aimed at Russia in Trump's second term.

Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff held three hours of talks with Putin in Moscow on Wednesday that both sides described as constructive.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland, a close ally of Ukraine, said earlier on Friday that a pause in the conflict could be close. He was speaking after talks with Zelenskiy.

"There are certain signals, and we also have an intuition, that perhaps a freeze in the conflict – I don't want to say the end, but a freeze in the conflict – is closer than it is further away," Tusk told a news conference. "There are hopes for this."

Tusk also said Zelenskiy was "very cautious but optimistic" and that Ukraine was keen that Poland and other European countries play a role in planning for a ceasefire and an eventual peace settlement.

(Reporting by Dheeraj Kumar in Bengaluru and Andrea Shalal in WashingtonAdditional reporting by Moscow bureauWriting by Gareth Jones, Jonathan Allen and James OliphantEditing by Don Durfee, Frances Kerry and Rosalba O'Brien)