U.S. President Donald Trump is set to meet with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on August 15 in Alaska in a bid to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, Trump said on Friday, reports Reuters.
Trump made the announcement on social media following his earlier, controversial suggestion to reporters at the White House on Friday that the agreement would involve some exchange of lands.
"There'll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both," Trump said.
The Kremlin subsequently confirmed the summit in an online statement.
The two leaders will "focus on discussing options for achieving a long-term peaceful resolution to the Ukrainian crisis," Putin aide Yuri Ushakov said.
"This will evidently be a challenging process, but we will engage in it actively and energetically," Ushakov added.
In his evening address to the nation on Friday, Zelenskiy said it was possible to achieve a ceasefire as long as adequate pressure was applied to Russia.
He said he had held more than a dozen conversations with leaders of different countries, and his team was in constant contact with the United States.
Putin claims four Ukrainian regions – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – as well as the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which he annexed in 2014. His forces do not fully control all the territory in the four regions.
Earlier, Bloomberg News reported that U.S. and Russian officials were working towards an agreement that would lock in Moscow's occupation of territory seized during its military invasion.
A White House official said the Bloomberg story was speculation. A Kremlin spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Reuters was unable to confirm aspects of the Bloomberg report.
Ukraine has previously signalled a willingness to be flexible in the search for an end to a war that has ravaged its towns and cities and killed large numbers of its soldiers and citizens.
But accepting the loss of around a fifth of Ukraine's territory would be painful and politically challenging for Zelenskiy and his government.
Tyson Barker, the U.S. State Department's former deputy special representative for Ukraine's economic recovery, said the peace proposal as outlined in the Bloomberg report would be immediately rejected by the Ukrainians.
"The best the Ukrainians can do is remain firm in their objections and their conditions for a negotiated settlement, while demonstrating their gratitude for American support," said Barker, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council.
Under the putative deal, according to Bloomberg, Russia would halt its offensive in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions along current battle lines.
Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has moved to mend relations with Russia and sought to end the war. In his public comments, he has veered between admiration and sharp criticism of Putin.
In a sign of his growing frustration with Putin's refusal to halt Russia's military offensive, Trump had threatened to impose new sanctions and tariffs from Friday against Moscow and countries that buy its exports unless the Russian leader agreed to end the conflict, the deadliest in Europe since World War Two.
It was unclear by Friday evening whether those sanctions would take effect or be delayed, or be cancelled.
The administration took a step toward punishing Moscow's oil customers on Wednesday, imposing an additional 25% tariff on goods from India over its imports of Russian oil, marking the first financial penalty aimed at Russia in Trump's second term.
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