Ukraine, left out in Trump-Putin summit, fears setbacks on key peace issues

LONDON — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that the Friday meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin “will not achieve anything” if peace talks exclude Ukraine.

Decisions taken without Kyiv’s input will be “stillborn decisions,” Zelenskyy continued. “They are unworkable decisions. And we all need real and genuine peace,” the president said in an address to the nation last weekend.

Ukrainian expectations for the summit in Alaska are low, amid fears in Kyiv that the American and Russian leaders will seek to dictate Ukraine’s future without its participation.

Zelenskyy’s talks with European leaders and Trump on Wednesday, though, did appear to find consensus on key Ukrainian demands according to subsequent statements from Zelenskyy and his European counterparts, including that Kyiv will be the one to decide on any territorial concessions and that no such concessions can occur without binding security guarantees.

“We must learn from the experience of Ukraine, [and] our partners, to prevent deception by Russia,” Zelenskyy said in a statement posted to social media on Wednesday.

“There is no sign now that the Russians are preparing to end the war,” he added. “Our coordinated efforts and joint steps — of Ukraine, the United States, Europe, all countries that want peace — can definitely force Russia to make peace.”

Trump said Wednesday after the virtual meeting with Zelenskyy and European leaders that there will be “severe consequences” against Russia if Putin did not agree to stop his war on Ukraine.

Oleksandr Merezhko — a member of the Ukrainian parliament and chair of the body’s foreign affairs committee — likened the coming Alaska summit to the 1938 Munich Agreement — a pre-World War II accord by which European powers allowed Nazi Germany to annex part of Czechoslovakia without Prague’s consent.

“Putin secured a one-on-one meeting with Trump, providing an opportunity to influence U.S. policy and push for abandonment of Ukraine and European allies,” Merezhko told ABC News.

“Putin would like to use the summit to persuade Trump to blame Ukraine for the lack of progress on a ceasefire and give him a pretext to walk away from the negotiations,” Merezhko said.

“Putin is a very masterful manipulator and he will go into Friday’s meeting well prepared,” Merezhko added. “He will go in with well-prepared, planned and rehearsed talking points.”

John E. Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine now working at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, said Putin “wants a deal with Trump that will be presented to Kyiv and other European capitals as a fait accompli.”

The Kremlin’s goals remain the “elimination of Ukraine as a state and as a culture, elimination of NATO and undermining of the U.S. global positions,” Pavel Luzin, a Russian political analyst at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts, told ABC News.

There are several key — and thorny — issues for the two leaders to discuss.

Territory

Territory has been a main source of conflict between the two countries since Russia’s annexation of Crimea and fomentation of separatist revolt in eastern Ukraine in 2014.

Putin has remained firm in his demands. Any peace settlement, Moscow has said, must include “international legal recognition” of its 2014 annexation of Crimea and four regions it has occupied to varying degrees since launching its full-scale invasion in 2022.

Russia demanded that Ukrainian troops withdraw entirely from the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions — including areas that Russian troops do not control. The Kremlin claimed to have annexed all four regions in September 2022. Moscow also wants Kyiv to give up on any designs on taking back occupied Crimea.

Ahead of Friday’s meeting, Trump suggested that a “swapping of territories” could lead to a peace deal. However, Ukrainian officials quickly rejected that idea.

Zelenskyy held that the country would not give up any of its land, saying in a Saturday statement, “Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupiers.” The president has since said that any decisions on territorial concessions must be made by Ukraine, and that no such concessions can occur without Ukraine receiving binding security guarantees that include the U.S.

NATO ambitions

Russian officials are also looking for their own “security guarantees” regarding NATO, by which Ukraine would be permanently excluded from the alliance, which has a mutual defense agreement among members.

Putin has regularly expressed concern over NATO’s eastward expansion, framing the alliance’s growth as an existential security threat to Russia. He has repeatedly warned the alliance against accepting Ukraine as a member, accusing the organization of trying to turn the country into a launch pad for aggression.

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Alexander Grushko, said in March that Moscow is seeking “the neutral status of Ukraine, the refusal of NATO countries to accept it into the alliance.”

Ukrainian officials have continued in their bid to join NATO — an ambition that has the backing of the vast majority of Ukrainians and is enshrined in the national constitution.

During a news conference earlier this year, Zelenskyy offered to step down from the presidency in exchange for admission to NATO. “If to achieve peace you really need me to give up my post — I’m ready. I can trade it for NATO membership, if there are such conditions.”

NATO nations, while backing Ukraine in its defensive war, have refused to allow Kyiv’s accession to the alliance. The alliance agreed at a 2008 summit that Ukraine “will become a member of NATO,” but the leaders of key allied nations — including the U.S. — have said Kyiv cannot accede while it is at war.

Limits to Ukraine’s military

Russian officials have demanded limits to the size of Ukraine’s military, which Moscow has framed as necessary to ensure its own security — a claim dismissed by Kyiv as false.

During peace negotiations in the opening days of the full-scale invasion, Moscow demanded that Ukraine reduce its military size to 50,000.

Zelenskyy, however, has expressed concern that any reductions to Ukraine’s military could allow Russia to secure more Ukrainian land, even with Western support. “The best thing is a strong army, a large army, the largest army in Europe. We simply have no right to limit the strength of our army in any case,” he said in December.

Russia is also demanding limits on Ukraine’s weapons arsenals and the sophistication of its military technology.

In the days leading up to Friday’s meeting between Trump and Putin, Ukraine has increased its long-range drone strikes into Russia. Ukrainian officials have said such attacks are part of its strategy to force the Kremlin into genuine peace talks.

Sanctions

The lifting of international sanctions on Russia may also be discussed during Friday’s meeting.

Russia is currently the world’s most sanctioned country with “50,000 or so measures,” according to The Center for European Policy Analysis. Russian officials have stated that a peace treaty should include lifting sanctions imposed since 2022.

The European Union has refused requests to reduce sanctions against Russia before a peace deal is secured, and Zelenskyy has called Putin’s suggestion that reductions could lead to lasting peace “manipulative.”

Trump has threatened to impose further sanctions on Russia and its top trading partners if Putin fails to commit to a ceasefire. Earlier this month, the U.S. announced additional tariffs on India related to its purchases of Russian oil.

“Everyone sees that there has been no real step from Russia toward peace, no action on the ground or in the air that could save lives,” Zelenskyy said earlier this week. “That is why sanctions are needed, pressure is needed.”

ABC News’ Patrick Reevell contributed to this report.