Putin demands full control of Donetsk and Luhansk as condition for ending Ukraine war – live | Ukraine
Published: 2025-08-16 18:29:50 | Views: 6
Putin demands Ukraine withdraw from Donetsk and Luhansk as a condition for ending the war
Pjotr Sauer
At the Alaska summit, Putin demanded Ukraine withdraw from Donetsk and Luhansk as a condition for ending the war, but offered Trump a freeze along the remaining frontline, two sources with direct knowledge of the talks told the Guardian.
Although Luhansk is almost entirely under Russian control, Ukraine still holds key parts of Donetsk, including the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk and heavily fortified positions whose defence has cost tens of thousands of lives.
Putin told Trump that in exchange for Donetsk and Luhansk, he would halt further advances and freeze the frontline in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, where Russian forces occupy significant areas.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has consistently rejected giving up territory, and on Saturday, European allies reaffirmed that Ukraine’s borders must not be altered through force.
Key events
Edward Helmore
Donald Trump hand-delivered a personal letter from first lady Melania Trump to Russian leader Vladimir Putin raising the plight of Ukrainian and Russian children caught in the middle of the ongoing war between the two European countries, it was reported on Saturday.
The contents of the letter were unknown – but two Trump administration officials told Reuters that it mentioned the abductions of children resulting from the war that broke out after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Putin was indicted by the international criminal court in 2023, and still faces arrest in 125 countries, for his alleged role in the war crime of abducting those children and transferring them from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.
Slovenian-born Melania Trump did not attend the peace summit between Trump and Putin at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday.
But she has previously said that her ambition as US first lady was to be akin to Eleanor Roosevelt, who was known for her work advocating for children’s rights and welfare during Franklin D Roosevelt’s presidency.
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Dan Sabbagh
Ukraine’s president has said he will fly to Washington on Monday to meet Donald Trump following the Alaska summit amid speculation that the US president will ask him to cede territory to end the war.
Next week’s meeting will mark the first return to the White House for Volodymyr Zelenskyy since his infamous row with Trump and the vice-president, JD Vance, in the Oval Office in February.
“President Trump informed [me] about his meeting with the Russian leader and the main points of their discussion,” Zelenskyy wrote, following an hourlong, one-to-one phone call after Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin.
Zelenskyy did not spell out the key points of discussion between Trump and Putin. Later, the president’s chief communications adviser said they “haven’t heard anything” about a possible air ceasefire before a trilateral summit, a proposal posted on social media by a journalist.
Trump told Fox News after the summit that the swapping of territory in Ukraine was discussed with Putin – something Zelenskyy has repeatedly ruled out.
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European leaders have been invited to Monday’s meeting with Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House although it remains to be seen who would attend, Reuters reports, citing a source familiar with the matter.
Following Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska, Trump briefed Zelenskyy on his conversation with the Russian president. Trump’s call with Zelenskyy lasted over an hour and a half and European and Nato leaders also joined.
“The impression is he wants a fast deal at any price,” a source familiar with the conversation told Reuters.
The source added that Trump told Zelenskyy that Putin had offered to halt fighting on the frontlines elsewhere as part of a peace deal if Ukraine fully withdrew its troops from eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions – which Zelenskyy said was not possible.
Reuters further reports that Trump and US special envoy Steve Witkoff told Zelenskyy that Putin said there could be no ceasefire before that happened and that Putin could pledge not to launch any new attacks against Ukraine as part of a peace agreement.
Putin demands Ukraine withdraw from Donetsk and Luhansk as a condition for ending the war
Pjotr Sauer
At the Alaska summit, Putin demanded Ukraine withdraw from Donetsk and Luhansk as a condition for ending the war, but offered Trump a freeze along the remaining frontline, two sources with direct knowledge of the talks told the Guardian.
Although Luhansk is almost entirely under Russian control, Ukraine still holds key parts of Donetsk, including the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk and heavily fortified positions whose defence has cost tens of thousands of lives.
Putin told Trump that in exchange for Donetsk and Luhansk, he would halt further advances and freeze the frontline in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, where Russian forces occupy significant areas.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has consistently rejected giving up territory, and on Saturday, European allies reaffirmed that Ukraine’s borders must not be altered through force.
Trump supports Ukrainian land cession as part of peace plan – report
Following his meeting with Vladimir Putin on Friday, Donald Trump told European leaders that he supported a plan to end the Ukraine-Russia war by ceding unconquered land to Russia, the New York Times reported, citing two senior European officials.
The officials said Trump will discuss the plan with Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday when the Ukrainian president visits the White House, adding that European leaders have been invited to join.
Reports of Trump supporting a potential land cession marks a shift in Trump’s previous demands of an immediate ceasefire.
According to the New York Times, Trump believes a peace deal can be swiftly negotiated, “so long as Mr Zelenskyy agrees to cede the rest of the Donbas region to Russia, even those areas not occupied by Russian troops”.
Speaking to the outlet, senior officials said that Putin in return offered a ceasefire across the rest of Ukraine at current battle lines and a written promise to not attack Ukraine or any other European country again.
Pjotr Sauer
Russia’s reaction to Donald Trump’s summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska has been nothing short of jubilant, with Moscow celebrating the fact that the Russian leader met his US counterpart without making concessions and now faces no sanctions despite rejecting Trump’s ceasefire demands.
“The meeting proved that negotiations are possible without preconditions,” wrote former president Dmitry Medvedev on Telegram. He added that the summit showed that talks could continue as Russia wages war in Ukraine.
Trump entered the high-stakes summit warning, “I won’t be happy if I walk away without some form of a ceasefire,” and threatening “severe consequences” if Moscow refused to cooperate.
But after a three-hour meeting with the Russian side that yielded no tangible results, Trump shelved his threats and instead insisted that the meeting was “extremely productive”, even as Putin clung to his maximalist demands for ending the war and announced no concessions on the battlefield, where Russian forces are consolidating key gains in eastern Ukraine.
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Putin: Alaska visit was 'useful and timely'
Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has said that his visit to Alaska was “useful and timely,” the Russian news agency TASS reported on Saturday.
Putin also added that his conversation with Trump was “sincere and substantive”, adding that Russia respects the position of the US and also wants to settle the Ukrainian conflict peacefully.
Donald Trump greets Vladimir Putin at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, on 15 August 2025. Photograph: Kremlin/UPI/Shutterstock
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.”
