Trump, Putin to discuss 'all accumulated issues' in Alaska, Russia says

MOSCOW/BERLIN — US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will discuss "all the accumulated issues "in bilateral relations when they meet in Alaska on Friday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexey Fadeev also said the consultations requested by European countries were "insignificant".

"We consider the consultations sought by the Europeans to be politically and practically insignificant," Fadeev said in a briefing.

"The Europeans verbally support the diplomatic efforts of Washington and Moscow to resolve the crisis around Ukraine, but in fact the European Union is sabotaging them," he said.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders held urgent talks with Trump on Wednesday. Trump and Vice-President JD Vance later joined the conversation, according to a source familiar with the situation.

The summit is so far planned to go ahead without Zelensky. This has fueled fears Kyiv could be forced into painful concessions, notably over land.

Zelensky has called for a full ceasefire, a proposal which Russia has rejected.

Ahead of a conference call with Trump and European leaders, Zelensky, who has spoken with more than 30 international leaders in the last few days, said "pressure must be exerted on Russia for the sake of fair peace".

EU leaders stressed on Tuesday "the inherent right of Ukraine to choose its own destiny" and that "international borders must not be changed by force".

But Fadeev on Wednesday said the EU rhetoric "about supposed support for finding peaceful solutions is just another attempt to stall the settlement process".

The unpredictability of the summit in Alaska has fueled Europeans' fears that the US and Russia could take far-reaching decisions over their heads and even seek to coerce Ukraine into an unfavorable deal.

European leaders, wary of angering Trump, have repeatedly said they welcome his efforts while stressing there should be no deal about Ukraine without Ukraine's participation.

The US administration tempered expectations on Tuesday for major progress toward a ceasefire, calling the meeting with Putin in Alaska a "listening exercise".

Trump's agreement last week for a summit with Putin was an abrupt shift after weeks of voicing frustration with Putin for resisting the US peace initiative. Trump said his envoy had made "great progress" at talks in Moscow.

European unity

Half a dozen senior European officials told Reuters they see a risk of a deal being struck that is unfavorable for Europe and Ukraine's security. They said European unity would be vital if that happened.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday the summit would be a "listening exercise" for Trump to hear what it would take to get to a deal.

After the meeting with Trump, the "coalition of the willing", a group of countries working on plans to support Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire, will also convene online.

A Gallup Poll released last week found that 69 percent of Ukrainians favor a negotiated end to the fighting as soon as possible. But polls also indicate Ukrainians do not want peace at any cost if that means crushing concessions.

Zelensky said it would be impossible for Kyiv to agree to a deal that would require it to withdraw its troops from the eastern Donbas region, a large swathe of which is already occupied by Russia.

That, he told reporters on Tuesday, would deprive Ukraine of a vast defensive network in the region, easing the way for a Russian push deeper into Ukraine in the future.

He said the territorial issues could only be discussed once a ceasefire was in place and Ukraine had received security guarantees.

On the battlefield, Ukraine's military said on Wednesday its drones hit the Unecha oil pumping station in Russia's Bryansk region overnight.

The Russian army made its biggest 24-hour advance into Ukraine in over a year on Tuesday just ahead of the summit, according to an AFP analysis of data from the US-based Institute for the Study of War.

Agencies Via Xinhua