War in Ukraine: Ahead of the Trump-Putin summit, Europeans want to maintain pressure on Russia

The Russian and American presidents are scheduled to meet on August 15 in Alaska , USA, as part of the US president's efforts to find a solution to the conflict that Russia triggered in February 2022. This highly anticipated meeting will take place without Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky , who has continued to demand to be involved. "Any decision that would be taken against us, any decision that would be taken without Ukraine, would be a decision against peace," Volodymyr Zelensky warned on social media , adding that "Ukrainians will not give up their land to the occupiers."

"There must be an honest end to this war, and it is up to Russia to end the war it started," the Ukrainian president insisted Saturday evening in his daily address to the public. The Russian military currently controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory. During a telephone conversation with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Saturday, Volodymyr Zelensky also urged his European allies to take "clear steps" to define a common approach, while they are also excluded from the talks.

On Saturday night, the main European leaders expressed their conviction that "only an approach combining active diplomacy, support for Ukraine and pressure on the Russian Federation" could succeed.

"We welcome President Trump's work to stop the massacre in Ukraine" and "stand ready to support this work diplomatically as well as by maintaining our substantial military and financial support to Ukraine" and "by maintaining and imposing restrictive measures against the Russian Federation," said the leaders of France Emmanuel Macron , Italy Giorgia Meloni , Germany Friedrich Merz , Poland Donald Tusk, Britain's Keir Starmer and Finland's Alex Stubb, as well as European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen .

"The path to peace in Ukraine cannot be traced without Ukraine," they added, recalling their attachment "to the principle that international borders should not be changed by force" and specifying that "the current line of contact (front line) should be the starting point for negotiations."

Donald Trump 's initiative has sparked intense diplomatic activity. The Ukrainian president held telephone conversations with Emmanuel Macron and the head of the Spanish government, Pedro Sanchez. British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, for his part, received US Vice President JD Vance , the head of the Ukrainian presidential administration, Andrii Yermak, and former Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, as well as European national security advisers in London on Saturday to "discuss the next steps towards peace in Ukraine." Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, for his part, held a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin .

A settlement of the conflict will include territorial swaps "to the benefit of everyone," Donald Trump assured Friday, without giving further details. "We're talking about territory over which fighting has raged for more than three and a half years (...), it's complicated," he said at the White House.

The US president, who has repeatedly promised to end the war in Ukraine, has spoken to his Russian counterpart several times by phone in recent months but has not yet met him in person since returning to office on January 20. The announced one-on-one meeting will be the first between the two men since June 2019 in Japan, a year after a summit in Helsinki where Donald Trump took a resolutely conciliatory tone with Vladimir Putin. The latter, for his part, has not set foot on American soil since 2015, under the presidency of Barack Obama .

Since the United States does not recognize the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin for the "illegal" transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia, Vladimir Putin has no fear of being arrested in this territory in the far northwest of the American continent, purchased from Russia in 1867.

After more than three years of fighting, the Ukrainian and Russian positions remain irreconcilable. Moscow is demanding that Ukraine cede four partially occupied regions (Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson), in addition to Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, and that it renounce Western arms supplies and any NATO membership.

These demands are unacceptable to kyiv, which wants the withdrawal of Russian troops from its territory and Western security guarantees, including continued arms deliveries and the deployment of a European contingent, which Russia opposes.