Donald Trump on Saturday dropped his push for a ceasefire in Ukraine in favor of pursuing a full peace accord — a major shift announced hours after his summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin yielded no clear breakthrough.
Prior to the high-stakes meeting in Alaska, securing an immediate cessation of hostilities had been a core demand of Trump — who had threatened “severe consequences” on Russia — and European leaders, including Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, who will now visit Washington on Monday.
The shift away from ceasefire would seem to favor Putin, who has long argued for negotiations on a final peace deal — a strategy that Ukraine and its European allies have criticized as a way to buy time and press Russia’s battlefield advances.
Trump spoke with Zelensky and European leaders on his flight back to Washington, saying afterward that “it was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a peace agreement which would end the war.”
Ceasefire agreements “often times do not hold up,” Trump added on his Truth Social platform.
In the call, Trump expressed support for a proposal by Putin to take full control of two largely Russian-held Ukrainian regions in exchange for freezing the frontline in two others, an official briefed on the talks told AFP.
Putin “de facto demands that Ukraine leave Donbas,” an area consisting of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions in eastern Ukraine, the source said.
In exchange, Russian forces would halt their offensive in the Black Sea port region of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine, whose main cities are still under Ukrainian control.
Several months into its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia in September 2022 claimed to have annexed all four Ukrainian regions even though its troops still do not fully control any of them.
“The Ukrainian president refused to leave Donbas,” the source said.
Trump notably also said the United States was prepared to provide Ukraine security guarantees, an assurance German Chancellor Friedrich Merz hailed as “significant progress.”
But there was a scathing assessment of the summit outcome from the European Union’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas, who accused Putin of seeking to “drag out negotiations” with no commitment to end the bloodshed.
“The harsh reality is that Russia has no intention of ending this war any time soon,” Kallas said.
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