Zelenskyy says Trump-Putin summit will achieve nothing, vows Ukraine will not give up land

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected the planned summit between US President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, warning that any peace agreement excluding Kyiv would lead to “dead solutions”.

In a press release published in Telegram, Zelenskyy said that the territorial integrity of Ukraine, consecrated in its constitution, must be non -negotiable and stressed that sustainable peace must include the voice of Ukraine at the table.

Zelenskyy said that Ukraine “will not give Russia a reward for what it has done” and that “the Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier”.

By approaching the Ukrainian anxieties according to which a direct meeting between Mr. Trump and Putin could marginalize kyiv and European interests, Zelenskyy said: “All the decisions which are without Ukraine are at the same time decisions against peace. They will bring nothing. These are dead decisions. They will never work.”

Mr. Trump and Putin plan to meet Alaska Friday August 15 – A summit considered a potential breakthrough.

A senior White House official told CBS News that the summit planning is fluid and it is always possible that Zelenskyy can end up being involved in one way or another.

The White House said earlier this week that Trump was open to meeting his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts, but Trump suggested on Friday that he could start by meeting Putin. He told journalists that he planned to “start with Russia”. Trump also said that he thought that “we have a chance to” organize a trilateral meeting with Ukrainian and Russian leaders.

In his comments to journalists, Trump also suggested that any agreement would probably imply “an exchange of territories”, but he has given no details.

His announcement that he planned to welcome one of the American opponents on American soil broke with the expectations that they would meet in a third country. The gesture gives Putin validation after the United States and its allies have long sought to make him a pariah during his war against Ukraine.

US vice-president JD Vance meets European national security advisers in the United Kingdom to discuss the Russian-Ukraine war, sources told CBS News. The meeting will take place at Cheventing in Kent, where Vance is on vacation with his family.

The meeting, indicated at the request of the United States, will include discussions on the next stages of Mr. Trump’s Pusé de la Paix in Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials had previously declared to the Associated Press in private that kyiv would be ready for a peace agreement which would de facto recognize the inability of Ukraine to regain the lost territories militarily.

The summit would be the first face -to -face meeting between Putin and an American leader since former president Joe Biden met his Russian counterpart in Switzerland in Switzerland June 2021Eight months before the launch of its large -scale invasion of Ukraine.

“It seems completely logical that our delegation simply flies through the Bering Strait, and for such a important and anticipated summit of the leaders of the two countries to be held in Alaska,” Putin’s state press release on Saturday.

Such a summit can be essential in a war that started more than three years ago when Russia has invaded its Western neighbor and has led to tens of thousands of deaths, although there is no guarantee that this will prevent fights since Moscow and kyiv remain far from their peace conditions.

Two people died and 16 were injured on Saturday when a Russian drone struck a minibus in the suburbs of the Ukrainian city in Kherson, said regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin. According to Governor Ivan Fedorov, two others died after a Russian drone hit his car in the Zaporizhzhia region.

Ukraine said on Saturday that it had intercepted 16 of the 47 Russian drones launched overnight, while 31 drones have reached targets in 15 different places. He also said that he had shot down one of the two missiles that Russia has deployed.

Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry said its air defenses had shot down 97 Ukrainian drones on Russia and the Black Sea during the night after Saturday, and 21 others on Saturday morning.