US President Donald Trump has announced plans to hold a three-way meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin, right after his summit with Putin in Alaska, which is focused on bringing an end to the three-year war in Ukraine.
Trump spoke after what he described as a “very good” call with European leaders, including Zelenskyy – even as Russian forces made their biggest advance into his country in more than a year.
“If the first one goes okay, we’ll have a quick second one,” Trump told reporters as he was questioned about the face-to-face in Anchorage with his Russian counterpart, set for Friday (Saturday NZT).
“I would like to do it almost immediately, and we’ll have a quick second meeting between President Putin and President Zelenskyy and myself, if they’d like to have me there.”
The high-stakes summit comes with Trump struggling to broker an end to the conflict, and Zelenskyy and his European allies earlier urged the Republican to push for a ceasefire.
The stepped-up Russian offensive, and the fact Zelenskyy has not been invited to Anchorage, have heightened fears that Trump and Putin could strike a deal that forces painful concessions from Ukraine.
The US leader promised dozens of times during his 2024 election campaign to end the conflict on his first day in office but has made scant progress towards securing a peace deal.
He threatened “secondary sanctions” on Russia’s trading partners over its invasion of Ukraine but his deadline for action came and went last week with no measures announced.
According to an AFP analysis of battlefield data from the US-based Institute for the Study of War, Russian forces made big advances into Ukraine this week.
As the war rages on in eastern Ukraine, Zelenskyy flew to Berlin and joined Chancellor Friedrich Merz on an online call with other European leaders, and the Nato and EU chiefs, in which they talked to Trump and urged a united stance against Russia.
