Russian President Vladimir Putin made concessions on his demand for Ukrainian “land swaps” during his summit with US President Donald Trump in Alaska on Friday, Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff said.
He declined to offer specifics, but suggested the Kremlin now sees “land swapping” occurring at the current front lines, rather than the administrative boundaries of at least some of the five regions long in Putin’s sights.
“The Russians made some concessions at the table with regard to all five of those regions,” Witkoff said, adding that the issue would be up for discussion with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky during his visit to the Oval Office tomorrow.
“Hopefully we can cut through and make some decisions right then and there,” he said.
He said Russia’s stance was a shift from previous talks, but still not enough for a full peace deal.
Russian President Vladimir Putin also agreed to allow “robust security guarantees” for Ukraine from the United States as part of a potential peace deal.
“We agreed to robust security guarantees that I would describe as game changing,” Witkoff told Jake Tapper on “State of the Union,” describing the security guarantee as an “Article 5” type protection against further Russian invasion.
He said Putin also agreed to “legislative enshrinement” by Russia to not go into any other territory, in Ukraine or elsewhere in Europe, as part of a potential peace deal.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has pushed for a ceasefire before a peace deal can be reached with Russia, ahead of today’s meeting with US President Donald Trump in Washington, DC.
“First we have to stop the killings. Putin has many demands, but we do not know all of them, and if there are really as many as we heard, then it will take time to go through them all,” Zelensky said alongside European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
“It’s impossible to do this under the pressure of weapons. So it’s necessary to cease fire and work quickly on a final deal. We’ll talk about it in Washington,” he added.
Credit: cnn.com
