Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will tomorrow hold talks designed to end the war in Ukraine which could see the pair carve up Ukrainian territory and energy infrastructure. Speaking in advance of an historic telephone call expected today, the US President said: “I think we’ll be talking about land. It’s a lot different than it was before the war, as you know. We’ll be talking about power plants, that’s a big question.
“But I think we have a lot of it already discussed very much by both sides, Ukraine and Russia. We’re already talking about that, dividing up certain assets and they’ve been working on that.” Mr Trump said there was “a very good chance” of bringing the war to an end as he spoke on Air Force One.
Meanwhile the UK and G7 allies are planning to ramp up pressure on Russia with a new array of sanctions designed to cripple the nation’s economy if it refuses to end the fighting. The plan was agreed at a meeting of G7 ministers in Canada over the weekend. Foreign Secretary David Lammy said Ukraine was “serious about peace” but said Russia paid “lip service to a ceasefire while still pummelling Ukraine”. He called on Russia to implement “a full and unconditional ceasefire now” but said there would be more sanctions targeting Russia’s energy and defence sectors if it refused.
Mr Lammy told the House of Commons: “If Putin does not deliver, and I currently see no sign yet that he is, the G7 meeting helped us ready the tools to get Russia to negotiate seriously.
“We are not waiting for the Kremlin. If they reject a ceasefire, we have more cards that we can play.”
He was backed by Emily Thornberry, the chair of the Commons Foreign Affair Committee, who welcomed proposals to seize £18bn of Russian assets in the UK which have currently been frozen.
Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel warned that Mr Putin would use talks to try to make gains his soldiers had failed to achieve on the battlefield. She said: “We must be robust, Britain must apply maximum pressure on the Kremlin”.
Mr Trump’s comments suggest Ukraine could be forced to give up some of the territory seized by Russia, but in a sign of the difficulties facing any potential peace deal one Ukrainian politician said his country would never agree to this. Oleksandr Merezhko, chair of the country’s foreign affairs committee, said: “it’s not negotiable. We will never agree to any territorial concessions.”
Today’s telephone call comes after talks in Moscow between Mr Putin and Steve Witkoff, the American special envoy.
Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha insisted his country would not agree to any deal that involved a ban on NATO membership. He said: “No country has a veto on the choice of the Ukrainian people, on the choice of Ukraine regarding participation in certain unions. Be it the European Union or NATO,”
He said that Ukraine would not accept any limits on the size of its military as part of a peace deal, or recognise Russian rule in territories currently occupied by Putin’s forces.
This directly contradicted the position of the Russians and Alexander Grushko, a Russian deputy foreign minister, said: “We will demand that ironclad security guarantees become part of this agreement. Part of these guarantees should be the neutral status of Ukraine, the refusal of NATO countries to accept it into the alliance.”
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov described the planned phone conversation as “an important step which sets the tone for reviving relations between the two countries.”
EU leaders warned that Mr Putin could not be relied upon to keep his word. Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said: “The understanding around the table is that Russia can’t really be trusted.”
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk meanwhile said an investigation into fires at shopping malls in Poland and Lithuania last year found that the Russian secret service was responsible.
Fighting continues despite the talk of peace and Russia launched 174 drones on Sunday night, the Ukrainian military said. Strikes hit the Odesa, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Kirovohrad, Sumy, Chernihiv and Kyiv regions.
Russia’s minister of defence claimed it was making military “progress” in Ukraine and said it had captured the village of Stepove in the Zaporizhzhia region.
Sir Keir Starmer has accused Mr Putin of seeking to “delay” a ceasefire, while French president Emmanuel Macron has said the Russian president “does not seem to be sincerely seeking peace.
But on Sunday, Mr Witkoff insisted that Mr Putin was making “a constructive effort” and that the upcoming call with Mr Trump showed there was “positive momentum”.