Zelenskyy rejects ceding land as key security officials meet

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv won’t cede territory to bring an end to war as European and American security advisers met in the U.K. in advance of a key U.S.-Russia summit.

President Donald Trump announced Friday that he’ll meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Aug. 15, with the apparent exclusion of Zelenskyy from talks aimed at ending Russia’s invasion of its neighbor, now halfway through a fourth year.

Zelenskyy’s comments were his first response to news of that meeting as well as reports that talks between Washington and Moscow center around a deal that would lock in Russia’s occupation of territory seized during its military invasion, according to people familiar.

That includes a demand by Putin that Ukraine cede Crimea, which Kremlin forces illegally annexed in 2014, as well as its entire eastern Donbas area. It would require Zelenskyy to withdraw troops from parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions still held by Kyiv.

National security advisers from Europe, Ukraine and the U.S. met in the U.K. and made significant progress toward the aim of ending the fighting during hours of talks on Saturday, according to a U.S. official who asked for anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations. The talks followed an earlier call between Zelenskyy and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and a flurry of diplomacy involving Zelenskyy and other European leaders.

U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy and U.S. Vice President JD Vance co-hosted the meeting at Chevening House in Kent. The talks were attended by some U.S. officials via video link, the Wall Street Journal reported, adding that European powers offered a counterproposal for talks with Russia that would in the first instance demand a ceasefire.

Any decisions taken without Ukraine “are at the same time decisions against peace. They will not achieve anything,” Zelenskyy said. “The answer to the Ukrainian territorial question is already in the Constitution of Ukraine. No one will and will not be able to deviate from this.”

The U.K. and Ukraine “share the same view on the need for a truly lasting peace for Ukraine and on the danger of Russia’s plan to reduce everything to discussing the impossible,” Zelenskyy said in a separate post after his call with Starmer.

Zelenskyy also had calls with French President Emmanuel Macron and Finnish President Alexander Stubb, as well the prime ministers of Spain, Denmark and Estonia, according to his posts.

Separately, Macron had phone discussions with Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the French president said on X.

“Ukraine’s future cannot be decided without the Ukrainians,” Macron said. “Europeans will also necessarily be part of the solution, as their own security is at stake.”

In turn, Putin spoke on Saturday with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the latest in the series of international calls by the Russian leader since he met with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff earlier this week.

Amid preparations for talks, Russia and Ukraine continued to trade air attacks overnight. Russia shot down a total of 224 Ukrainian drones over its territory from late Friday through 6 p.m. Moscow time on Saturday, according to nation’s defense ministry. Three UAVs targeting Moscow were downed before in the first half of the day, Russian capital’s mayor said in Telegram posts.

Ukrainian drones hit a UAV storage facility in Kzyl Yul in the Russian republic of Tatarstan, some 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) from Ukrainian territory, the Security Service of Ukraine said on Telegram.

Separately, Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov inspected facilities of the nation’s Baltic fleet in the Kaliningrad region, Russia’s exclave neighboring Lithuania and Poland. Belousov said the means of repelling drone attacks is among the fleet’s priorities, according to a ministry statement.

Ukraine’s air forces on Telegram reported 47 drones and two Iskander missiles fired by Russia overnight. According to preliminary data, as of 9:00 a.m. local time, air defenses had repelled one Iskander missile and 16 UAVs.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/0uHc4hq