No return of Crimea and no NATO accession. Trump on Zelenskyʼs ability to “instantly” end the war

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky can almost instantly end the war with Russia if he wants, or he can continue to fight.

The US President Donald Trump wrote about this on his social networks.

"No getting back Obama given Crimea (12 years ago, without a shot being fired!), and NO GOING INTO NATO BY UKRAINE," he wrote, adding that "some things never change".

Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelensky has already arrived in Washington and commented on territorial issues.

"All of us equally want to end this war quickly and reliably. And the peace must be lasting. Not like it was years ago, when Ukraine was forced to give up Crimea and part of our East — part of Donbas — and Putin simply used it as a springboard for a new attack. Or when Ukraine was given supposedly ʼsecurity guaranteesʼ in 1994, but it didnʼt work. Of course, it wasnʼt worth giving up Crimea then, just as Ukrainians didnʼt give up Kyiv, Odesa, or Kharkiv after 2022," the President of Ukraine wrote.

Preliminary, the bilateral meeting between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky will begin at 8:15 PM Kyiv time and will last an hour. And at 10:00 PM, the multilateral meeting between the US president and European leaders will begin.

On the eve of the talks in Washington, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, French President Emmanuel Macron, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer confirmed their participation in the talks.

Results of the Putin-Trump meeting

Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump held talks in a "three-on-three" format on August 15. The meeting lasted about three hours, after which the US president and the Kremlin leader made brief statements, but did not answer journalistsʼ questions. The leaders did not make any significant statements about the ceasefire in Ukraine and related issues, but both spoke positively about the talks. There were also no agreements on a trilateral summit with Zelenskyʼs participation.

Trump, after a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, European leaders and a meeting with Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin, said that "all together" decided that it was necessary to immediately move to a peace agreement, and not talk about a temporary ceasefire. Zelensky has previously repeatedly stressed the need for a ceasefire, after which all the conditions for a lasting peace should be discussed.

Reuters, citing sources, published a list of Putinʼs demands for an end to the war. These include the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Donbas, a ban on joining NATO, the lifting of sanctions against Russia, and "formal recognition" of Russian sovereignty over Crimea.

In return, Russia allegedly agrees to return the occupied parts of Sumy and Kharkiv regions and agree to certain security guarantees for Ukraine.

• Axios writes that in a conversation with European leaders following the summit in Alaska, Trump said that he wants to organize a trilateral meeting with the participation of Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as early as Friday, August 22.
• Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said that Trump supported the Italian idea of security guarantees for Ukraine based on NATOʼs Article 5.

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