Putin-Trump summit: US ready to be part of Ukraine security guarantees, says Merz, as Zelenskyy prepares to fly to Washington – live
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the developments after the Alaska summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
Here is a look at where things stand:
The United States is ready to be part of security guarantees for Ukraine, the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said on Saturday after a summit in Alaska between the US president, Donald Trump, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, ended without a ceasefire deal. Merz was speaking to the German public broadcaster ZDF after being briefed together with other European leaders by Trump on his talks with Putin.
Putin told Trump that he would freeze the frontline in the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in exchange for the Donetsk region of Ukraine, the Financial Times reports. The Russian leader made the request during his meeting with Trump in Alaska on Friday, the FT said, citing four people with direct knowledge of the talks.
European leaders are invited to attend a Monday meeting with Trump and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, at the White House, the New York Times reported on Saturday, citing two senior European officials. The meeting comes after a summit between Trump and Putin in Alaska on Friday, which Washington said resulted in “great progress” but no deal to end the conflict in Ukraine.
Two people, a 52-year-old man and his 13-year-old son, were killed in a Ukrainian drone strike on Russia’s Kursk region, the local governor said on Saturday. In a statement published on Telegram, the Kursk governor, Alexander Khinshtein, said that the two had been killed when their car caught fire as a result of a drone strike.
The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said in a post on X that strong security guarantees for Ukraine and Europe were “essential” in any peace deal to end the war in Ukraine. “The EU is working closely with Zelenskyy and the United States to reach a just and lasting peace. Strong security guarantees that protect Ukrainian and European vital security interests are essential,” von der Leyen posted on Saturday.
In a statement posted on the social media platform X, Zelenskyy said: “Security must be guaranteed reliably and in the long term, with the involvement of both Europe and the US. “All issues important to Ukraine must be discussed with Ukraine’s participation, and no issue, particularly territorial ones, can be decided without Ukraine.”
The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, has released an official statement on Ukraine after the Alaska summit held between Trump and Putin. The statement said: “President Trump’s efforts have brought us closer than ever before to ending Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine. His leadership in pursuit of an end to the killing should be commended.”