Putin wins Ukraine concessions in Alaska but did not get all he wanted
In a few short hours in Alaska, Vladimir Putin managed to convince Donald Trump that a Ukraine ceasefire was not the way to go, stave off U.S. sanctions, and spectacularly shatter years of Western attempts to isolate the Russian president, Reuters reported.
Outside Russia, Putin was widely hailed as the victor of the Alaska summit while at home, Russian state media cast the U.S. president as a prudent statesman, even as critics in the West accused him of being out of his depth.
Russian state media made much of the fact that Putin was afforded a military fly-over, that Trump waited for him on the red carpet, and then let the Russian president ride with him in the back of the "Big Beast", the U.S. presidential limousine.
"Western media are in a state that could be described as derangement verging on complete insanity," said Maria Zakharova, Russia's foreign minister spokeswoman, according Reuters.
Zelenskiy braces for perilous Trump talks in Washington on Monday
Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskiy flies to Washington on Monday under heavy U.S. pressure to agree a swift end to Russia's war in Ukraine but determined to defend Kyiv's interests - without sparking a second Oval Office bust-up with Donald Trump, Reuters reported.
The U.S. president invited Zelenskiy to Washington after rolling out the red carpet for Vladimir Putin, Kyiv's arch foe, at a summit in Alaska that shocked many in Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands have died since Russia's 2022 invasion.
The Alaska talks failed to produce the ceasefire that Trump sought, and the U.S. leader said on Saturday that he now wanted a rapid, full-fledged peace deal and that Kyiv should accept because "Russia is a very big power, and they're not".
The blunt rhetoric throws the onus squarely back on Zelenskiy, putting him in a perilous position as he returns to Washington for the first time since his talks with Trump in the Oval Office in February descended into acrimony, according to Reuters.
Trump told Zelenskiy after summit that Putin wants more of Ukraine, source says
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday Ukraine should make a deal to end the war with Russia because "Russia is a very big power, and they're not", after hosting a summit where Vladimir Putin was reported to have demanded more Ukrainian land, Reuters reported.
In a subsequent briefing with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a source familiar with the discussion cited Trump as saying the Russian leader had offered to freeze most front lines if Kyiv's forces ceded all of Donetsk, the industrial region that is one of Moscow's main targets.
Zelenskiy rejected the demand, the source said. Russia already controls a fifth of Ukraine, including about three-quarters of Donetsk province, which it first entered in 2014.
Trump also said he had agreed with Putin that a peace deal should be sought without the prior ceasefire that Ukraine and its European allies, until now with U.S. support, have demanded, according to Reuters.
Trump's ceasefire pivot will have caused dismay in Kyiv and Europe
No deal in Alaska. It was always the most likely and, in the absence of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, perhaps the most desirable outcome, BBC reported.
But US President Donald Trump's pivot away from the need for an immediate ceasefire, which he said beforehand he wanted, will have caused profound dismay in Kyiv and around Europe.
Russia's position has long been that a ceasefire can only come in the context of a comprehensive settlement taking account of Russia's interests - and inevitably implies Ukraine's capitulation.
That's the position that Trump, once again, appears to have endorsed, according to BBC.
