Trump and Putin meet face-to-face over Ukraine in Alaska: a land swap between Moscow and Kiev is on the table.

Not Rome, but distant Alaska . It will be on the territory that the United States purchased from Russia in 1867 that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will meet in person for the first time since the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine .

The meeting on August 15th will be the first between Putin and a US president since June 2021, before the invasion, when Joe Biden met with the Russian president in Switzerland. It will also be the first meeting between Putin and Trump since June 2019, when they met at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan.

Obviously, the Ukrainian issue is on the table, the possibility of reaching an agreement to end the conflict that broke out in February 2022 following the invasion of the country by Russian troops.

A country that, according to what Trump anticipated, could be dismembered to end the war: “We will take some back, and we will exchange some,” said Trump, anticipating his intention to convince Ukraine to cede some territories to Russia , in particular Donbass , already partially occupied by the Russian army.

This point is unacceptable for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky . The Kiev leader has already made it clear that he opposes any peace agreement that involves a territorial transfer, which is expressly prohibited by the country's own Constitution: " Ukrainians will not hand over their land to the invader ," he said in a video, adding that any decision made without involving Ukraine will lead nowhere.

Neither Zelensky nor any Ukrainian delegation attended the Alaska meeting. There is still some hope that the Ukrainian president might be involved: a senior White House official told CBS that planning for the August 15 summit in Alaska between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin "is still fluid" and that it is still possible that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky "could be involved in some way."