Donald Trump said on Saturday that Ukraine should make a deal with Russia to end the war as "Russia is a very big power, and they're not.
The US president was speaking after a summit where Russian President Vladimir Putin was reported to have demanded more Ukrainian land, reports Reuters.
After the two leaders 'meeting in Alaska on Friday, Trump told Ukrain President Volodomyr Zelenskiy that Putin had offered to freeze most front lines if Kyiv ceded all of Donetsk, the industrial region that is one of Moscow's main targets, the Reuters report quoted a source familiar with the matter as saying.
Zelenskiy rejected the demand, the source said.
Russia already controls a fifth of Ukraine, including about three-quarters of Donetsk province, which it first entered in 2014.
The meeting with Putin also apparently led to Trump changing his pre-summit position that he would not be happy unless a ceasefire was agreed upon. On Saturday, he said he agreed with Putin that a peace deal should be sought without the prior ceasefire that Ukraine and its European allies had demanded.
"It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up," Trump posted on Truth Social.
Zelenskiy said Russia's unwillingness to pause the fighting would complicate efforts to forge a lasting peace. "Stopping the killing is a key element of stopping the war," he said on X, formerly Twitter.
Nevertheless, Zelenskiy said he would meet Trump in Washington on Monday.
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