Trump backs Putin's Ukraine plan for Donbas control
Donald Trump, the U.S. president, is said to support a proposal that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, presented on Friday at their summit in Alaska.
The plan would give Russia full control of Ukraine's Donbas region and freeze the front line in other Ukrainian territories that the Russian army partially controls. The report comes from Agerpres, citing AFP, which in turn quotes a source with knowledge of the matter.
The anonymous source explained that Putin's proposal "is essentially a demand that Ukraine abandon Donbas," a territory comprising the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine. "Trump is inclined to support" the plan, the same source added.
On Saturday, he had phone calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and a group of European leaders to brief them on his meeting with Putin.
However, during his conversation with Trump, "the Ukrainian president refused to give up Donbas," the source added. Zelensky rejected any territorial concessions, arguing that the Ukrainian Constitution tied his hands. However, he did not rule out discussing the issue at a potential trilateral summit with Trump and Putin. The U.S. President hopes to organize this summit based on the outcome of his meeting with Zelenskyy at the White House on Monday.
For its part, the New York Times quotes two senior European officials who said Trump supports a Putin plan "to end the war in Ukraine by ceding territories that the Russian invaders still need to conquer, rather than attempting a truce."
The Financial Times also reports that Putin told Trump he is prepared to "freeze the rest of the front line if his key demands are accepted." Trump directly relayed this message during his phone call on Saturday morning with Zelensky and the group of European leaders, the same publication adds.
According to the AFP source, U.S. officials stressed that if Putin's demand for full control of Donbas is accepted, the Russian president has pledged not to continue the offensive in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.
Translation by Iurie Tataru
