President Donald Trump supports a Russian proposal for Moscow to take total control of two Ukrainian regions and freeze the front line in two other than Moscow only partially controls, a source told AFP.
The source knowing the case said that Russian president Vladimir Putin “de facto” requires Ukraine to leave Donbas “, a region made up of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine.
“Trump is inclined to support him,” said the source.
Trump spoke on Saturday to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders from his interviews on Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“The Ukrainian President refused to leave the Donbas,” said the source.
Zelensky rejected territorial concessions, claiming that it is bound by the Constitution of Ukraine. But he did not exclude discussing the question at a trilateral meeting with Trump and Putin.
The New York Times also cited two senior European officials saying that Trump supported Putin’s plan “to put an end to the war in Ukraine by giving up an undefeated territory with the Russian invaders, rather than trying a cease-fire”.
The Financial Times reported that Putin had told Trump that he “could freeze the rest of the front line if his basic requests were satisfied” and the message had been relayed directly by Trump during his call on Saturday.
AFP’s source said that US officials said that if Russia requests were satisfied, “Putin would not continue the offensive in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, so there would be a kind of frost there.
“But de facto, everything will depend on Putin’s word of honor,” said the source.
Several months after its invasion of Ukraine, Russia in September 2022 said it had annexed the four Ukrainian regions even if its troops still control none.
Russian forces now occupy almost the entire Luhansk region and most of the Donetsk region, including their regional capitals.
This is not the case for Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, where the main hubs are still under Ukrainian control.
Russia previously annexed the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine in 2014.
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