European leaders push to secure seat for Ukraine at Trump-Putin talks - Europe live
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Polish prime minister Donald Tusk is speaking right now, briefing the Polish media after this weekend’s consultations among European leaders, as he says they “remain united in their approach.”
He says that “for Poland and our European partners, it must be clear that you cannot change borders with force,” and Russia must not be allowed to benefit from its invasion on Ukraine.
“The West, including European countries, will not accept Russian demands which simply amount to the seizure of Ukrainian territory,” Tusk says.
He warns against Russia getting the idea it can challenge other countries’ borders “with impunity.”
Tusk also draws on Polish history to repeat the principle of “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.”
“From history we know — and Poland has often been a victim of this — that when the great powers decided about other countries without the participation of those countries in negotiations, the consequences were grave.”
It is unlikely that Vladimir Putin will arrive in Alaska on Friday to present Donald Trump with a territorial demand for the 49th state, sold by Tsar Alexander II to the US for $7.2m (£5.4m) in 1867.
US President Donald Trump (L) and Russia's President Vladimir Putin pose ahead a meeting in Helsinki in 2018. Photograph: Alexey Nikolsky/AFP/Getty Images
The Russian president, after all, has another land deal on his mind – to persuade Trump of the merits of swapping parts of Ukrainian territory in return for him perhaps agreeing to the ceasefire the US president so desperately wants, but does not know how to get.
Putin’s influential foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said Alaska was an “entirely logical” location for the summit, as if the hop across the Bering Strait that divides the countries is a simple trip.
The gap between the US and Russian mainlands may be 55 miles, but it is roughly a nine-hour flight from Moscow to Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city. Even for Trump, travelling from Washington DC on Air Force One, it will be not much less than eight hours. Alaska is a location of mutual inconvenience, which indicates that other factors are at play.
The remote state is a long way from Ukraine and its European allies, and risks pushing both into the distant background. Though Trump seems open, in theory, to letting Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, attend, it is hard to imagine Putin being so welcoming. His prize, after all, are private talks with the occupant of the White House about sanctions, trade, the reach of Nato in Europe – negotiating tracks far beyond his latest proposals for dominating Ukraine.
Above all, Alaska is a safe place for the Russian leader to visit. Putin is still wanted by the international criminal court, accused of war crimes in relation to the forced deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia in March 2023. There is an arrest warrant out, but neither Russia nor crucially the US recognise the court.
Nor are there any unfriendly countries to overfly. A trip around the top of the globe is unlikely to run into unexpected difficulties that might make travelling over the Black Sea to Istanbul in Turkey unattractive.
The Alaska meeting is only the fourth US-Russia summit since 2010 and, while it remains possible that the discussions will lead to a ceasefire in Ukraine, there are few grounds for optimism when the war continues to be fought so bitterly on the frontlines and in the rear, with Russia repeatedly bombing Ukrainian cities, trying to force its democratic neighbour into submission.
The offer to thrash out a Ukrainian peace deal at a bilateral summit with Trump representsexactly the sort of great-power deal-making Putin has always craved. It will be his first trip to the US since 2007, with the exception of visits to the UN.
US President Donald Trump and Russia's President Vladimir Putin talk during the family photo session at the APEC Summit in Danang, Vietnam in 2017. Photograph: Jorge Silva/Reuters
Exactly how the Alaska summit will look is still unclear, with a particularly Trumpian kind of confusion and chaos accompanying its announcement. Kyiv, European capitals and even Trump’s own staff have been trying to understand what exactly was agreed in the Kremlin.
As worrying for Kyiv as the planned format of the talks is the apparent Russian deal now on the table. The plan, as it has been reported after filtering through the Trump administration and then to European capitals, is that the Ukrainian army should unilaterally withdraw from the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk it still controls, which would presumably include the fortified military stronghold of Kramatorsk. In exchange, the Kremlin would agree to freeze the lines in other places.
Zelenskyy’s public posture that Ukraine will never cede land is true up to a point. Kyiv is unlikely to renounce legal claims to its own territory, but the Ukrainian elite and much of Ukrainian society is increasingly ready for a deal that would recognise Russian de facto control, perhaps for a set period of time, in exchange for ending the fighting.
The main problem with such a deal has always been what kind of guarantees Ukraine would receive that Russia would not simply use a ceasefire as time to regroup before attacking again. Brief discussions earlier this year about a European peacekeeping force to police a ceasefire were quickly scaled back to a “reassurance force” stationed far from the frontlines. Ukrainians would therefore have not much to rely on but Putin’s word, which they have learned from experience not to trust.
Over the past few days, Zelenskyy and his team have been rallying support among European leaders and trying to put together an alternative, European plan. Unfortunately for Kyiv, previous experience suggests Trump is unwilling or unable to exert real pressure on Putin.
“If Putin and Trump reach an agreement directly, Europe will be faced with a fait accompli. Kyiv – even more so,” said Roman Alekhin, a Russian war blogger, on Sunday.
It is exactly that prospect Ukraine’s leadership will be doing their utmost to prevent in the days before Friday’s summit.
A group of European leaders insisted over the weekend that “the path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine” amid growing concerns about the US president Donald Trump’s plans to strike a deal with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, when the pair meets in Alaska on Friday.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin Photograph: UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE/SPUTNIK/AFP/Getty Images
A hastily arranged statement signed by the leaders of Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, the UK, and the European Union reiterated that “a diplomatic solution must protect Ukraine’s and Europe’s vital security interests.”
Speaking to the German broadcaster ARD, German chancellor Friedrich Merz said he hoped and assumed that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, would also be involved in Friday’s summit in Alaska and that he made representations to Trump on this issue.
“We cannot accept in any case that territorial questions are discussed or even decided between Russia and America over the heads of Europeans and Ukrainians,” he said. “I assume that the American government sees it the same way.”
EU foreign ministers are meeting virtually for an emergency meeting today to discuss the next steps.
On Sunday, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed the support, saying on X: “The end of the war must be fair, and I am grateful to everyone who stands with Ukraine and our people today for the sake of peace in Ukraine, which is defending the vital security interests of our European nations.
But there are still no guarantees as to what will happen next and what concessions Trump might be willing to agree to, leaving Kyiv and most European capitals deeply uncomfortable ahead of the summit on Friday, and they will want to use every minute to influence the US position.
Let’s see what the day brings.
Elsewhere, I will be also keeping an eye on another extreme heatwave in parts of Europe, with Spain and France among countries expecting to see temperatures close to or above 40 degrees Celsius once again.
I will bring you all the key updates here.
It’s Monday, 11 August 2025, it’s Jakub Krupa here, and this is Europe Live.
