Don't Expect Putin to Sign Peace Deal on Friday, Angela Stent

Angela Stent, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute, discusses what to expect from the Trump-Putin summit this week.

European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will hold a call with Donald Trump on Wednesday ahead of the US president’s meeting Friday in Alaska with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, will also join the call, scheduled for 3 p.m. in Berlin, Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s chief spokesman, Stefan Kornelius, said by email. As well as Merz, European leaders due to take part include French President Emmanuel Macron, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the prime ministers of Italy, Poland and Finland, Kornelius added.

He said the talks will “address further options for exerting pressure on Russia,” as well as “the preparation of possible peace negotiations and related issues of territorial claims and security.”

As diplomatic efforts continue to end the Kremlin’s war on its western neighbor, Ukraine and its European allies have been pushing for a ceasefire freezing the current frontline as a first step ahead of talks on a more enduring settlement.

Putin is demanding that Ukraine cede its entire eastern Donbas area as well as Crimea, which his forces illegally annexed in 2014, as a condition to unlock a ceasefire and enter negotiations over a longer-term accord.

Zelenskiy has said that his government won’t cede territory and European leaders have pledged their continued support for Ukraine’s sovereignty. At the same time, they’re increasingly concerned that Trump and Putin could strike a deal that ignores some of their key demands.

President Donald Trump downplayed expectations for his upcoming meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin as he seeks to end the war in Ukraine, casting it as a “feel-out meeting” and saying he would confer with Ukrainian and European leaders after the sitdown.

“I’m going to be telling him, ‘You got to end this war. You got to end it,’” Trump said Monday at a White House press conference. As he previewed the Aug. 15 summit with Putin in Alaska — the Russian leader’s first visit to US soil in nearly a decade — Trump added that it wasn’t “up to me to make a deal.”

“I’m going to go and see the parameters,” Trump added. “I may leave and say, ‘Good luck,’ and that’ll be the end. I may say this is not going to be settled.”

He indicated he did not plan to invite Volodymyr Zelenskiy to the summit, saying the next step after the Alaska meeting would be for Putin and the Ukrainian president to meet directly. Trump said he would mediate that conversation, if necessary.

“I would say he could go, but he’s gone to a lot of meetings,” Trump said of Zelenskiy. “You know, he’s been there for three-and-a-half years, nothing happened.”

Trump’s effort to moderate expectations for the summit follows Zelenskiy ruling out Putin’s demand for territory that Moscow doesn’t control as a pre-condition for a ceasefire, with the Ukrainian leader citing the need for constitutional approval. Trump on Monday slammed that excuse, adding that he was “a little bothered” by it.

As diplomatic efforts continue to end the Kremlin’s war on its neighbor, Ukraine and its European allies have been pushing for a halt to the fighting, freezing the current frontline as a first step before talks on a more enduring settlement.

Putin is demanding that Ukraine cede its entire eastern Donbas area as well as Crimea, which his forces illegally annexed in 2014, as a condition to unlock a ceasefire and enter negotiations over a longer-term accord.

Trump said he expected to confer with Zelenskiy and European allies by phone immediately after his meeting with Putin. The president said he expected to either outline to them the contours of a deal that included land swaps negotiated with Putin, or that he did not believe a peace deal could be brokered.

“I think we’ll have constructive conversations, then after that meeting, immediately, maybe as I’m flying out, maybe, as I’m leaving the room, I’ll be calling the European leaders,” Trump said.

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