US President Donald Trump said on Monday that the peace deal between Russia and Ukraine would include “land swapping” and that his talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday would be aimed at gauging the temperature.
“This is really a feel-out meeting, a little bit,” Trump told reporters, adding that he would be able to predict probably in the “first two minutes” whether it was possible to reach the peace deal to end Europe’s largest war.
"Russia has occupied a big portion of Ukraine. They've occupied some very prime territory. We're going to try and get some of that territory back for Ukraine," Trump said. “So I’m going to speak to Vladimir Putin, and I’m going to be telling him, you’ve got to end this war. You’ve got to end it,” he added.
Trump said the future meetings would also include Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and could be a three-way session that would include himself if the two sides wanted it. The meeting on Friday is going to be the first face-to-face meeting between Trump and Putin since 2019.
Zelenskiy on Saturday expressed concerns over his exclusion from the upcoming Putin-Trump talks in Alaska, stressing that any decisions that are made without Ukraine “will not bring peace.” Commenting on Trump’s remarks about possible land swap, Zelenskiy rejected ceding any territories to Russia. Ukraine’s European allies are also concerned that Kyiv might be forced into major territorial concessions under US-brokered peace talks to end the nearly four-year war. Bloomberg news agency reported last week that the US and Russia were preparing for a peace deal that would cement Russia’s territorial gains in Ukraine - freezing the frontline in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions and ceding of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region to Russia.
