Washington/Brussels — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky won diplomatic backing from Europe and the Nato alliance at the weekend ahead of a Russia-US summit this week where Kyiv fears Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump may try to dictate terms for ending the three-and-a-half year war.
Trump, who for weeks had been threatening new sanctions against Russia for failing to halt the conflict, announced instead last Friday that he would hold an August 15 summit with the Russian president in Alaska.
A White House official said on Saturday that Trump was open to Zelensky attending, but that preparations were for a bilateral meeting with Putin.
The Kremlin leader last week ruled out meeting Zelensky at this point, saying the conditions for such an encounter were “unfortunately still far” from being met.
Trump said a potential deal would involve “some swapping of territories to the betterment of both (sides)”, a statement that compounded Ukrainian alarm that it may face pressure to surrender more land.
Zelensky said any decisions taken without Ukraine will be “stillborn” and unworkable. On Saturday the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Finland and the European Commission said in a joint statement that any diplomatic solution must protect the vital security interests of Ukraine and Europe.
Territorial integrity
“The path to peace cannot be decided without Ukraine,” they said, demanding “robust and credible security guarantees” to allow Ukraine to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Zelensky said on Sunday: “The end of the war must be fair, and I am grateful to everyone who stands with Ukraine and our people today for the sake of peace in Ukraine, which is defending the vital security interests of our European nations.”
A European official said Europe had come up with a counterproposal to Trump’s, but declined to provide details. Russian officials accused Europe of trying to thwart Trump’s efforts to end the war.
Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte told US network ABC News that Friday’s summit “will be about testing Putin, how serious he is on bringing this terrible war to an end”.
“It will be, of course, about security guarantees, but also about the absolute need to acknowledge that Ukraine decides on its own future, that Ukraine has to be a sovereign nation, deciding on its own geopolitical future.”
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Sunday: “The US has the power to force Russia to negotiate seriously. Any deal between the US and Russia must have Ukraine and the EU included, for it is a matter of Ukraine’s and the whole of Europe’s security.”
EU foreign ministers will meet on Monday to discuss next steps, she said.
“The Euro-imbeciles are trying to prevent American efforts to help resolve the Ukrainian conflict,” former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev posted on social media on Sunday.
Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in a vituperative statement that the relationship between Ukraine and the EU resembled “necrophilia”.
Roman Alekhin, a Russian war blogger, said Europe had been reduced to the role of a spectator.
“If Putin and Trump reach an agreement directly, Europe will be faced with a fait accompli. Kyiv — even more so,” he said.
No details of the proposed territorial swap that Trump alluded to have been officially announced.
Russia, which mounted a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, holds about a fifth of the country and has claimed the regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia as its own, though it controls only about 70% of the last three.
Russia has also taken pockets of territory in the Sumy and Kharkiv regions and said in recent weeks it has captured villages in the Dnipropetrovsk region. Ukraine said it holds a sliver of the Kursk region in western Russia.
Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin analyst, said a swap could entail Russia handing over 1,500km2 to Ukraine and obtaining 7,000km2, which he said Russia would capture anyway within about six months.
He provided no evidence to back any of those figures. Russia took only about 500km2 of territory in July, according to Western military analysts who said its grinding advances have come at the cost of very high casualties.
Pivot to Putin
Ukraine and its European allies have been haunted for months by the fear that Trump, keen to claim credit for making peace and hoping to seal lucrative joint business deals between the US and Russia, could align with Putin to cut a deal that would be deeply disadvantageous to Kyiv.
They had drawn some encouragement lately as Trump, having piled heavy pressure on Zelensky and berated him publicly in the Oval Office in February, began criticising Putin and expressing disgust as Russia pounded Kyiv and other cities with its heaviest air attacks of the war.
But the impending Putin-Trump summit, agreed during a trip to Moscow by Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff last week, has revived fears that Kyiv and Europe could be sidelined.
“What we will see emerge from Alaska will almost certainly be a catastrophe for Ukraine and Europe,” wrote Phillips P O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.
“And Ukraine will face the most terrible dilemma. Do they accept this humiliating and destructive deal? Or do they go it alone, unsure of the backing of European states?”
Reuters
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