Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy may be accompanied by European officials on a visit to Washington to meet Donald Trump on Monday. Photograph: Ebrahim Noroozi/AP
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Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia's refusal to accept a ceasefire was hindering efforts to end Moscow's more than three-year-long fight, following a summit between the US and Russian presidents that achieved no agreement on ending the war. "We see that Russia has rejected many requests for a ceasefire and has yet to decide when it will end the slaughter. "This complicates the situation," Zelenskyy wrote on social media late Saturday. "If they lack the will to carry out a simple order to stop the strikes, it may take a lot of effort to get Russia to have the will to implement far greater - peaceful coexistence with its neighbors for decades."
Trump has stated that he agreed with Putin that a peace accord should be pursued without the preceding ceasefire demanded by Ukraine and its European friends, who have previously received US assistance.
Ukrainian and European leaders are concerned that a straight-to-peace pact, without a preparatory ceasefire, will give Moscow an advantage in negotiations.
Following his meeting with Vladimir Putin on Friday, Donald Trump informed European leaders that he supported a plan to end the Ukraine-Russia war by giving the unoccupied area to Russia, the New York Times reported.
Citing two senior European officials. Officials said Trump will discuss the proposal with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday when he visits the White House, and European leaders have been invited to attend.
Trump previously stated that Kiev should strike a deal with Moscow because "Russia is a very big power, and they're not."
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said on Saturday that European officials will decide whether Zelenskyy will be accompanied on his journey to Washington this weekend.
European leaders, including Macron, Merz, and Starmer, will discuss the issues with Zelenskyy via video chat on Sunday before meeting with Trump, according to the French president's office.
European leaders released a unified statement stating that they were "ready to work with US President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy towards a trilateral summit with European support," but that it would be up to Ukraine to make territorial decisions.
International borders must not be modified through force."
The leaders of eight Nordic-Baltic nations said on Saturday that they continue to back Ukraine and Trump's efforts to put an end to Russia's aggression against Ukraine. The leaders of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Sweden said in a statement that achieving peace between Ukraine and Russia requires a cease-fire and security guarantees for Ukraine: "We welcome President Trump's statement that the United States is willing to participate in security guarantees."
"No restrictions should be placed on Ukraine's armed forces or its cooperation with other countries," the statement read.
At the Alaska summit, Putin insisted that Ukraine withdraw from Donetsk and Luhansk in exchange for an end to the war, but he also offered Trump a cease-fire along the remaining frontline, according to two sources familiar with the conversations.
Although Luhansk is nearly totally under Russian control, Ukraine continues to hold critical areas of Donetsk, including the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, as well as well-fortified strongholds whose defense has cost tens of thousands of lives.
NPR reported that eight pages of US government planning documents for Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin's summit meeting were left in a hotel printer in Anchorage before the meeting on Friday.
The records, which NPR published online, appear to have been created by Trump administration officials in charge of summit planning and list the exact locations and times of the scheduled meetings, as well as phone numbers for US government staff.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney praised what he described as the US willingness to provide security guarantees to Ukraine as part of a peace accord to stop Russia's war against Kiev.
"A just and enduring peace requires robust and credible security guarantees. "I appreciate the United States' willingness to provide security guarantees as part of the Coalition of the Willing's efforts," Carney said in a statement.
On Saturday, Donald Trump hand-delivered a handwritten letter from first lady Melania Trump to Russian President Vladimir Putin, emphasizing the situation of Ukrainian and Russian youngsters caught up in the ongoing conflict between the two European countries. The letter's contents were unknown, but two Trump administration sources told Reuters that it highlighted child abductions caused by the war that broke out after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
However, the letter's text, which Fox News obtained and put online on Saturday, is exceedingly opaque and makes no mention of kid abductions or transfers from Russian-occupied Ukraine to Russia.
According to the Russian news agency Tass, Vladimir Putin described his visit to Alaska as "useful and timely". Putin also stated that his chat with Trump was "sincere and substantive," noting that Russia respects the US position and wishes to resolve the Ukrainian problem amicably.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called his Turkish and Hungarian counterparts on Saturday, according to the Russian foreign ministry. The phone discussion between Lavrov and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan was initiated by Turkey, according to the Russian foreign ministry, and the two discussed the Russia-US summit without going into detail.
The Ukrainian military said it had driven Russian soldiers back around 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) along a section of the Sumy border in northern Ukraine. According to Ukraine's battlefield mapping organization DeepState, Russia has made no quick reply. Russia controls slightly more than 200 square kilometers in the region.
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