Trump will talk with Zelensky and European leaders before meeting with Putin
Donald Trump, President of the United States, is preparing the ground for his summit with Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, next Friday in Alaska to discuss the long-awaited ceasefire in Ukraine.
As part of these preparations, pending confirmation of whether Zelensky will be present at the summit with the Russian leader, although many indications suggest that he will not due to Russian reluctance in principle, Donald Trump will hold telephone conversations with the Ukrainian president himself and leaders such as Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, António Costa, President of the European Council, and Mark Rutte, Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
In this way, European leaders are seeking to remain involved in the issues that will be addressed or negotiated in an attempt to reach a ceasefire in Ukraine and want to talk, even if not in person, with the US president, who will meet face to face with the Russian president in Alaska.
The Kremlin confirmed that there will be a personal meeting between Trump and Putin after the visit to Moscow by the US president's special envoy for international policy, Steve Witkoff, who reached a friendly agreement with the Russian leader, but without reaching an agreement to halt hostilities in Ukrainian territory due to Vladimir Putin's refusal to budge on his position.
The European Union (EU), which has been supporting Ukraine in all aspects since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022, considering it an illegal aggression and an attack on Ukrainian sovereignty, sharing the position of former US President Joe Biden, is demanding an end to the war in Ukraine that protects Europe and Ukraine itself. Thus, all European countries, except Viktor Orban's Hungary, which is closer to Putin, have called for a ‘just’ peace for Kiev with security guarantees. This involves respecting Ukrainian sovereignty, which is totally threatened by Russia's attempts to annex territories that are considered Russian due to a kind of historical claim defended by Vladimir Putin's postulates, which, in this case, are the enclaves of Kherson, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, Luhansk and the Crimean peninsula, which was already annexed in 2014.
The EU will not have a significant presence at the upcoming summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska, but will try to influence negotiations on a hypothetical peace plan for Ukraine. Thus, 26 of the 27 EU member states have signed a statement asking the US president to take their views into account, thanking him for his ‘efforts’ to end the war, but also calling for a solution to the conflict that protects ‘the vital security interests of Europe’. ‘The Ukrainian people must be free to decide their future. The path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine,’ said the signatories of the text, supported by all member states except Hungary's Orban, who is close to Vladimir Putin's regime.
The EU may try to exert this influence at the virtual meeting between Donald Trump, European and NATO leaders, and Ukrainian President Zelensky.