Putin and Zelensky set up conditions for truce, talks

Vladimir Putin is demanding that Ukraine give up all of the eastern Donbas region, renounce ambitions to join Nato, remain neutral and keep Western troops out of the country, three sources familiar with top-level Kremlin thinking told reporters.

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The Russian president met Donald Trump in Alaska on Friday for the first Russia-US summit in more than four years and spent almost all of their three-hour closed meeting discussing what a compromise on Ukraine might look like, according to the sources who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Speaking afterwards beside Trump, Putin said the meeting would hopefully open up the road to peace in Ukraine - but neither leader gave specifics about what they discussed.

In his new proposal, the Russian president has stuck to his demand that Ukraine completely withdraw from the parts of the Donbas it still controls, according to the three sources. In return, though, Moscow would halt the current front lines in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, they added.

Russia controls about 888 of the Donbas and 738 of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, according to US estimates and open-source data.

Moscow is also willing to hand over the small parts of the Kharkiv, Sumy, and Dnipropetrovsk regions of Ukraine it controls as part of a possible deal, the sources said.