Europe counters Putin ahead of Trump summit

Russian President Vladimir Putin hosts U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff — Putin hosts US envoy Steve Witkoff

(Image credit: Gavriil Grigorov / Pool / AFP via Getty Images)

What happened

European leaders over the weekend presented top U.S. officials with a unified framework for President Donald Trump's scheduled Ukraine peace talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday. Putin told Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff at the Kremlin last week that Russia would agree to a ceasefire if Kyiv withdrew from Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region. Ukraine's European allies said Russia needed to halt its fighting before any discussions of reciprocal land swaps.

The European governments and Ukraine "scrambled" to "draw a common red line" after Putin's offer was clarified and Trump "let lapse his self-imposed deadline" to punish Moscow's intransigence, The Wall Street Journal said. Russian officials and commentators "crowed about landing" the Alaska summit, The Washington Post said. Trump handed Putin his first invitation to the U.S. since 2007, "apparently without the Kremlin having made any clear concessions over its war in Ukraine."

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said it was unacceptable for any agreements to be reached "over the heads of the Europeans, over the heads of the Ukrainians." Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reiterated that his country would not cede any land to the Russian invaders.

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