*ISW entry added a day late due to it’s extensive review of the Russian postion for any cease-fire agreement….
See below….
The Russian Leader will step foot on American property for the first time in years….
That place will be Alaska…..
Far from Washington DC, the American capital….
One could guess what Trump wants to offer Putin….
Not the Ukraine President ‘s ‘Deal’ ….
I’d guess the Russian leader isn’t gonna want anything short of keeping what his military has gained since 2014, which includes Crimea, Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and getting back the land that the Ukraine hold’s of Russia….
This IS gonna be the critical issue….
NATO and European troop deployments INTO Ukraine….
Putin is NOT gonna want THAT….
Zelensky MUST have it……
Trump is just gonna want a ”DEAL’…
That so he can crow like Rooster that he got a ‘Deal’ in his foreign policy and the spotlight can come off his Epstein spotlight….
President Trump on Friday said he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a week in Alaskaand that swapping territories will be discussed in potential peace talks between the Kremlin and Ukraine.
“I think we’re getting very close, and we’re going to be announcing later on — we’re going to have a meeting with Russia, start off with Russia,” Trump said at the White House on Friday. “And we’ll announce the location; I think the location will be a very popular one for a lot of reasons. But we’ll be announcing that a little bit later; I just don’t want to do it now because of the importance of what we just did.”…
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Trump elaborated on what a peace deal with Russia and Ukraine could look like after Putin reportedly presented the administration with a ceasefire proposal that involved Ukraine making territorial concessions.
“You’re looking at territory that’s been fought over for three and a half years. A lot of Russians have died, a lot of Ukrainians. So we’re looking at that, but we’re actually to get some back and some swapping. It’s complicated. It’s actually — nothing easy. It’s very complicated. But we’re going to get some back. And we’re going to get some switched,” Trump said. “They’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both, but we’ll be talking about that either later or tomorrow or whatever.”
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Trump met Putin six times during his first term. In 2018, the two leaders met in Finland and held a joint press conference, during which they discussed Russian interference in the 2016 election, North Korea and nuclear proliferation.
Putin and Biden met once during the last presidency, holding talks in Geneva in 2021….
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Donald Trump has said any peace deal between Ukraine and Russia would involve territory swaps, as he named a date and location for talks with Vladimir Putin. The US president said: “But we’re gonna get some [territory] back. We’re gonna get some switched. There’ll be some swapping of territories, to the betterment of both.” He did not provide further details. Kyiv did not immediately comment on the talks or the possibility of territorial exchanges.
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Trump said he planned to meet the Russian president next Friday in Alaska. He announced the location in a brief post on his Truth Social site. Russian state media agency Tass confirmed the date and location of the meeting, citing Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov. Putin said earlier he was not ready to meet Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy, after the proposal of a three-way meeting by US envoy Steve Witkoff. “I have nothing against it in general, it is possible, but certain conditions must be created for this,” Putin said of a meeting with Zelenskyy. “But unfortunately, we are still far from creating such conditions.”
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Ushakov said another summit with the US president could be held in Moscow, and said an invite had already been extended. The White House has not commented yet on the remarks.
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The US president’s remarks on Ukraine came after Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, said a “freeze” in the conflict could be close, after speaking with Zelenskyy, who has communicated with Trump and European leaders in recent days. “There are certain signals, and we also have an intuition, that perhaps a freeze in the conflict – I don’t want to say the end, but a freeze in the conflict – is closer than it is further away,” Tusk said during a news conference.
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Ukraine’s president said late on Friday that Kyiv was in “constant communication with the American side” as the deadline for a Russian ceasefire passed. Zelenskyy said “No orders to stop have been given to the Russian army” and that the day had seen more than 100 drone strikes on Ukraine, as well as frontline assaults and other airstrikes. He added that all Ukraine’s allies were “united in the understanding that there is a chance to achieve at least a ceasefire, and that everything depends on the right pressure on Russia”.
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Viktoriia Roshchyna, the Ukrainian journalist who died in Russian captivity last year, has been buried in Kyiv, in a ceremony attended by relatives and colleagues who paid tribute to her singular professional courage and the importance of her work. Roshchyna was reporting on Russia’s systematic policy of extrajudicial detention and torture in occupied parts of Ukraine before falling victim to it herself. She died at the age of 27 last year in murky circumstances, after more than a year in Russian captivity. Her body was returned earlier this year with some of the internal organs missing…
Another Trump effort to pressure the Ukraine to make a ‘Deal’….
CNN: “A memo written by the Pentagon’s policy chief last month gives the Defense Department the option to divert certain weapons and equipment intended for Ukraine back into US stockpiles… a dramatic shift that could see billions of dollars previously earmarked for the war-torn country go toward replenishing dwindling American supplies.”
- Kremlin officials are reportedly demanding that Ukraine cede to Russia strategically vital unoccupied territory in Donetsk Oblast and freeze the frontline in other areas as part of a ceasefire agreement.
- The surrender of the rest of Donetsk Oblast as the prerequisite of a ceasefire with no commitment to a final peace settlement ending the war would position Russian forces extremely well to renew their attacks on much more favorable terms, having avoided a long and bloody struggle for the ground. Conceding such a demand would force Ukraine to abandon its “fortress belt,” the main fortified defensive line in Donetsk Oblast since 2014 — with no guarantee that fighting will not resume.
- Russia’s failure to seize Slovyansk in 2022 and ongoing struggles to envelop the fortress belt underscore the success of Ukraine’s long-term efforts to reinforce the fortress belt cities.
- Russian forces are currently still attempting to envelop the fortress belt from the southwest and are engaged in an effort to seize it that would likely take several years to complete.
- Ceding Ukrainian-held parts of Donetsk Oblast will place Russian forces on the borders of Donetsk Oblast, a position that is significantly less defensible than the current line.
- Russian positions along the Donetsk-Kharkiv and Donetsk-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border areas would provide a more advantageous launching point for a future Russian offensive into nearby areas of Kharkiv or Dnipropetrovsk oblasts. ISW continues to assess that Russian forces will almost certainly violate any future ceasefire or peace agreement and renew military aggression against Ukraine in the future unless a peace agreement includes robust monitoring mechanisms and security guarantees for Ukraine.
- Putin’s reported proposal once again underscores that he maintains his uncompromising demands for Ukraine’s capitulation and remains disinterested in good-faith negotiations.
- The Kremlin does not appear to be setting the domestic information conditions necessary for the Russian people to accept a settlement short of full victory in Ukraine.
- Ukrainian forces advanced near Kupyansk and Toretsk. Russian forces advanced near Lyman, Toretsk, and Pokrovsk.
Yup….
Ole Donald and his ex-Putin will sit down together up in Alaska…..
NATO I would think IS gonna be the problem…..
Trump IS bound to try to muscle Zelensky….FOR Putin