Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: US President Donald Trump has told European leaders after his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin that he wants to arrange a trilateral summit with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as soon as August 22, US media reported. Zelensky said in an X post that he will meet Trump in Washington on August 18.
Trump also invited the European leaders to join August 18’s White House meeting, according to US online media outlet Axios. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that a trilateral summit is expected to follow in the meeting between Zelensky and Trump, Xinhua news agency reported.
So far, the Russian side has not publicly committed to a trilateral meeting. A US newspaper reported earlier, citing sources, that following his meeting with Putin, the US leader proposed negotiating a peace deal under which Ukraine would give up the rest of the Donbass region to Russia, including areas not liberated by Russian troops, in a phone call with European leaders, Russian news agency Tass reported. A ceasefire in the rest of Ukraine at present-day battlefronts and security guarantees, both for Kyiv and Europe, would be offered in return, Tass reported.
On August 15, Putin and Trump met at the Elmendorf-Richardson military base in Alaska. Their talks lasted nearly three hours, including a one-on-one conversation in the American leader’s limousine en route to the main negotiation venue, as well as a subsequent small-group discussion involving three participants on either side.
