Trump, Putin to meet on Aug 15 over Ukraine

Russia and the US have agreed to hold a summit on August 15 in Alaska between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in a bid to end the three-year Ukraine war, despite strong opposition from Kyiv to any territorial concessions.

- HTC and Agencies

Announcing the summit on Friday, Trump said “there'll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both” Ukraine and Russia, without providing further details about his vision for resolving the conflict.

India welcomed the announcement, saying it backed steps that raised prospects of peace. The talks are of particular significance for India, which has found itself caught between Washington-Moscow tensions through Trump’s punitive trade measures. The US president imposed additional 25% tariffs on Indian goods over Russian oil purchases, with the penalty set to take effect August 27.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky immediately rejected any territorial compromises, warning early Saturday that "Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier." "Any decisions against us, any decisions without Ukraine, are also decisions against peace.

They will achieve nothing," Zelensky said on social media, adding that the war "cannot be ended without us, without Ukraine." The Alaska summit would mark the first meeting between sitting US and Russian presidents since Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva in June 2021, just nine months before Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The last time Putin was on American soil was in 2025, when he attended the UN General Assembly and met then president Barack Obama.