Trump and Putin cannot decide on land swaps, say Ukraine and EU

Ukraine and its backers in Europe insist that the United States and Russia cannot decide on land swaps behind their backs at a summit this week, but the Europeans concede that Moscow is unlikely to give up control of Ukrainian land it holds.

Ahead of the summit in Alaska on Friday, US President Donald Trump suggested that a peace deal could include “some swapping of territories”, but the Europeans see no sign that Russia will offer anything to swap.

Europeans and Ukrainians, so far, are not invited to the summit.

European Union foreign ministers are meeting on Monday following talks on Ukraine among US and European security advisers over the weekend.

They are wary that President Vladimir Putin will try to claim a political victory by portraying Ukraine as inflexible.

Concerns have mounted in Europe and Ukraine that Kyiv may be pressed to give up land or accept other curbs on its sovereignty.

Ukraine and its European allies reject the notion that Mr Putin should lay claim to any territory even before agreeing to a ceasefire.

“As we work towards a sustainable and just peace, international law is clear: all temporarily occupied territories belong to Ukraine”, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said ahead of the ministerial meeting.

“A sustainable peace also means that aggression cannot be rewarded,” Ms Kallas said.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said “it must be obvious to Poland and our European partners – and I hope to all of Nato – that state borders cannot be changed by force”.

Any land swaps or peace terms “must be agreed upon with Ukraine’s participation,” he said, according to Polish news agency PAP.

On Sunday, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Germany would not accept that territorial issues be discussed or decided by Russia and the United States “over the heads” of Europeans or Ukrainians.

In 2022, Russia illegally annexed the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in Ukraine’s east, and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south, even though it does not fully control them.

It also occupies the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized in 2014.

On the 620-mile front line, Russia’s bigger army has made slow but costly progress with its summer offensive.

The relentless pounding of urban areas has killed more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians, according to UN estimates.

“In the end, the issue of the fact that the Russians are controlling at this moment, factually, a part of Ukraine has to be on the table” in any peace talks after the Alaska summit, Nato secretary general Mark Rutte said on CBS on Sunday.

Giving up any territory, especially without a ceasefire agreement first, would be almost impossible for Mr Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to sell at home after thousands of troops have died defending their land.

Ultimately, Putin is seen as being not so much interested in land itself, but rather in a more “Russia-friendly” Ukraine with a malleable government that would be unlikely to try to join Nato, just as pro-Russian regions in Georgia stymied that country’s hopes of becoming a member.

Mr Zelensky insists that a halt to fighting on the front line should be the starting point for negotiations, and the Europeans back him. They say that any future land swaps should be for Ukraine to decide and not be a precondition for a ceasefire.