Under the proposal being floated by the Trump administration, Russia would agree to a freeze of the war along the contact line in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, where Moscow controls less land than in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, a person familiar with the matter told POLITICO.
In return, Russia would be allowed to keep the Donbas, said the person, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, as others in this article.
U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff returned from a meeting with Putin earlier this week and told Trump that the Russian president had presented the terms under which the Kremlin would agree to stop hostilities in Ukraine, a White House official told POLITICO.
The official declined to describe Russia’s terms, but Trump said land swaps between Russia and Ukraine are under discussion.
“It’s complicated,” Trump said Friday in the Oval Office. “There’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both, but we’ll be talking about that.”
Trump is planning to meet Putin in Alaska on Aug. 15. A senior European official attributed Putin’s willingness to meet Trump to joint pressure from Washington and its allies.
