On October 17, U.S. President Donald Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine met to discuss cease-fires between Ukraine and Russia and to discuss territorial disputes between the two countries. However, little changed due to the many conflicting opinions of different officials.
President Vladimir Putin of Russia continues to demand that Ukraine surrender the rest of the Luhansk and Donetsk that Russian troops don’t occupy. According to the New York Times, “that represents almost 2 percent of Ukraine’s territory, twice the amount that Russia has been able to gain for itself in the last two years of war.”
Zelensky refuses to surrender that territory, which he repeated at his meeting with Trump.
According to CNN, Trump stated on Air Force One, “what they should do is just stop at the lines where they are, the battle lines. The rest is very tough to negotiate if you’re going to say, ‘You take this, we take that.’”
After the meeting, Zelensky told European officials that at first, Trump demanded territorial concessions, as he had done at the Alaska summit in August with Putin, but eventually stopped insisting. He also stated that since Russia was a larger country, it might defeat Ukraine if there was no settlement made between the two countries.
According to the New York Times, “Trump described the meeting as cordial and denied that he had demanded territorial concessions from Ukraine.”
No settlements on land or ceasefires were decided upon during the meeting, as Trump is demanding a cease-fire before any political settlement, while Putin is demanding a settlement first, said Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London.
Overall, no decisions were made. The only result of the meeting was a suggestion of another meeting between Trump and Putin at some point in Budapest. This meeting would be put together by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov. The date has yet to be set though, due to Lavrov stating that they would need time to prepare. According to the New York Times, Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Putin and Lavrov, “We need preparation, serious preparation … This may take time. That’s why, in fact, no exact dates were initially set”.
