A meeting at the top, to obtain uncertain results. The long expected meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will take place this Friday, August 15 from 9:30 pm (French time) on a military base near Anchorage in Alaska. The two presidents will try to find an exit to the conflict in Ukraine, more than three and a half years after the beginning of the Russian invasion.
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This is the second bilateral summit between the two men after Helsinki’s in 2018. The interview is planned face to face, with the only presence of artists. Neither the Ukrainian president nor any European leader were invited. Negotiations released, Volodymyr Zelensky sees this summit in this “victory” of Vladimir Putin. He fears that Russian President and Donald Trump will be undertaken on Friday to draw the Ukraine map without their agreement.
The US president told him to wait for a “constructive” discussion and estimated in “25%” the risk of failure of his meeting with Vladimir Putin. The Russian president and his Ukrainian counterpart “are ready for peace,” he added.
· Did a fire end up?
Ukraine, with the support of Europeans, Donald Trump press so that Vladimir Putin has a high fire on the Ukrainian front. Until now, the Russian President has been rejected there, preferring to resolve the “deep causes” of the conflict beforehand.
After a series of meetings with kyiv and the US administration, European leaders showed prudent optimism, British prime minister Keir Starmer, which refers to a “real” possibility of high fire. On the American side, the head of American diplomacy Marco Rubio also considered “crucial” to obtain a high fire.
“It will be necessary to discuss, among other things, territorial disputes, statements and reasons that motivate the fighting. All these elements will be part of a global whole, but I think the president hopes to obtain a stop of the fight so that these discussions can take place,” said the head of US diplomacy.
· Towards an “exchange of territories”?
Donald Trump insists that negotiations to end the conflict will be based on an “exchange of territories” between Russia and Ukraine “, for the benefit of each one” according to him.
“I don’t want to use the term ‘to share things’, but in a way, it’s not a bad term. There will be donations as far as borders, territories,” he said Thursday.
The notion of “exchange” questions. The Ukrainian army does not control any Russian territory. In Ukraine, where occupied territories are definitely concerned in the Russian fold or that others, even under kyiv control, are assigned to Moscow. Currently, the Russian army controls 20% of Ukraine, that is, the Oblast of Lougansk and a large part of the Oblasts of Donetsk, Zaporijia and Kherson, in addition to the Crimean Peninsula Annexa in 2014.
According to him Wall Street JournalVladimir Putin would accept a high fire if Ukraine agreed to withdraw his troops from the eastern region of Donetsk. Russia would then control the entire Donbass region, where Moscow’s favorable separatists have been fighting since 2014.
But Volodymyr Zelensky has already rejected a withdrawal of his troops. “Any decision that would be made against us, which would be taken without Ukraine, would be a decision against peace,” he warned. “The territorial questions (…) will only be negotiated by the Ukrainian president,” said Emmanuel Macron, for whom “there are no serious, in a serious way, territorial exchange patterns that are on the table.”
· What “security guarantees” for Ukraine?
Ukraine has been claiming them for months in Washington, who refuses to grant them. The “security guarantees”, which would allow Kyiv to be sure that Russia would not relaunch their war once a peace agreement has been concluded, they are still subject to uncertainties.
The members of the European states of the “volunteer coalition” proposed to provide peace maintenance troops as part of a high fire in Ukraine. But Donald Trump, who rejects the entry of Ukraine into NATO, offered nothing like him. The US President considers that the economic agreement concluded in May with kyiv is sufficient support for Ukrainian sovereignty.
However, this Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio seemed to put the issue on the table. “To achieve peace, I think we all recognize that we will have to discuss security guarantees,” he said.
A second summit with Volodymyr Zelensky?
If Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly proposed to meet with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president has always rejected this offer, conditioning any summit of this type to the previous obtaining of “results” in the negotiations.
But on the eve of his tête-à-tête with Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump emphasized that only a tripartite summit that also includes Volodymyr Zelensky could seal a peace agreement in Ukraine.
“This meeting will open the way to another,” said the US president on Radio Fox News. “The second meeting will be very, very important, because it will be the one that will conclude an agreement.”
“I don’t know where this second meeting will take place,” he added. “We think of three different places, as well as the possibility, because it would be, with much, the easiest, remain in Alaska.”
Sanctions to the key?
The announcement of the Alaska Summit intervened on the same day of the expiration of an Ultimatum launched the US president in the Kremlin to end the conflict. “Without a” peace, customs duties “will be 100 %” for Russia’s allies, promised in mid -July. On Wednesday, Donald Trump recalled that Russia was exposed to “very serious consequences” if he did not agree to end war in Ukraine.
Since his return to power, the Republican has regularly worked threats to sanctions against Moscow, but have always remained dead. Already last May, the Europeans and Americans had He summoned Russia to accept a high fire of 30 days in Ukraineunder penalty of “massive” sanctions. But in the face of Russian inflexibility, Donald Trump had not made his threats and, after a new call with Vladimir Putin, announced a new cycle of negotiations.
In the United States, the influential American senator Lindsey Graham put a drastic sanctions parquet floor against Moscow. His law, also backed by the Democrats, “would give President Trump the ability to impose 500% customs duties in any country that helps Russia and supports the Putin war machine,” he said. Donald Trump said in July “studying this proposal very close.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky claims to strengthen sanctions against Ukraine and ask Westerners to “use all frozen Russian assets.” The European Union has adopted a new sanctions in July, the 18th since the beginning of the conflict, and “one of the most severe against Russia to date” according to the head of European diplomacy Kaja Kallas.
Source: BFM TV
