{"id":1232,"date":"2025-08-16T02:03:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-16T02:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/1232\/"},"modified":"2025-08-16T02:03:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-16T02:03:12","slug":"ukraine-faces-another-nervous-night-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/1232\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine faces another nervous night \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ukrainians<\/a> are used to sleepless nights after nearly three-and-a-half years of all-out war with Russia<\/a>, but in the early hours of Saturday many will be waiting nervously for news from Alaska as well as the usual alerts warning of incoming missiles and drones.<\/p>\n

US president Donald Trump<\/a> has said he thinks Russian president Vladimir Putin <\/a>is ready to commit to ending the war in Ukraine at their summit in Anchorage. If he does, then Mr Trump said he would \u201cbe calling up\u201d Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy<\/a> to \u201cget him over to wherever we\u2019re going to meet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis [Alaska] meeting sets up the second meeting. The second meeting is going to be very, very important, because that\u2019s going to be a meeting where they make a deal,\u201d Trump added.<\/p>\n

It will be a nervous night for Zelenskiy, and for all Ukrainians who fear Trump and Putin will decide on their country\u2019s future and then present it to their leader as a done deal \u2013 and if he demurs, Trump will accuse him of not wanting to make peace and use it as an excuse to end military and other support for Kyiv.<\/p>\n

Trump has not offered details on what he is willing to offer Putin in exchange for peace, but has talked about some \u201cdivvying up\u201d of what Ukraine and Russia want and \u201csome swapping of territories, to the betterment of both.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Daniel McLaughlin: Russia tries to align stars for historic deal with Trump at Alaska summitOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Given that the only occupied territory in question is the nearly one-fifth of Ukraine now held by Russia\u2019s military, Trump\u2019s framing of the negotiations has alarmed Kyiv and European capitals that say borders cannot be changed by force.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe dictator\u2019s attempts to impose a discussion on \u2018territory swaps\u2019 will only harm the peace process. This is Putin\u2019s scenario, and we must not allow it to be implemented,\u201d said former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko.<\/p>\n

He negotiated the so-called Minsk agreements in 2014 and 2015 which aimed to end fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russian-led militants in eastern Ukraine. Those deals, agreed with Putin and brokered by Germany and France, never had much effect on the conflict, which Russia escalated into full-scale war in February 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cUkraine does not trade or sell its territories. This would be a gross violation of the entire post-war security system. Our goal is to preserve and protect internationally recognised borders and prevent Putin from dragging the process into endless and fruitless negotiations,\u201d Poroshenko wrote on social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember well the experience of 2015, when we held talks in Minsk for 19 hours in a row. That is why I am convinced: we need to start with an unconditional ceasefire,\u201d he added \u201cThe second principle condition: \u2018nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine\u2019 is a principle that we introduced back in 2014. This means that the United States, the European Union, and Ukraine must be at the negotiating table.\u201d<\/p>\n

Putin piled huge pressure on Poroshenko during the Minsk talks by pouring regular Russian troops into eastern Ukraine to surround and destroy large groups of government forces at Ilovaisk and then Debaltseve.<\/p>\n

Russia appears to have tried to repeat the tactic this month, surging troops into the Pokrovsk area to try to provoke a collapse in Ukrainian defences, which would have allowed Moscow to portray the summit as chance for Trump to rescue Ukraine from a bloody and humiliating defeat.<\/p>\n

Kyiv and military analysts say small groups of Russian troops breached the front line near the mining town of Dobropillia and pushed on about 10 kilometres into the rear \u2013 but no major breakthrough has occurred and reinforcements have helped stabilise the situation, at least for now.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite an upcoming meeting with Trump, Moscow has failed to engineer a major setback for Ukrainian forces \u2013 through encirclement or otherwise. And despite massed forces, Russia\u2019s capacity to exploit penetrations or deliver breakthroughs remains visibly limited,\u201d said a respected military analyst and former Ukrainian soldier who uses the name Tatarigami_UA on social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven without such radical advances, Putin could still frame the situation to President Trump as the encirclement of the entire Ukrainian army \u2013 something Trump might well believe,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s invasion force has been advancing slowly in the east for at least 18 months, however, and continues to have a big quantitative advantage over Kyiv in personnel, weapons systems and ammunition. Ukraine\u2019s army is struggling to attract new recruits, European states have been slow to deliver on pledges of increased arms production and a severe cut \u2013 or halt \u2013 in US military aid could be disastrous over time.<\/p>\n

\"RussianRussian president Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump in 2019. Photograph: Erin Schaff\/New York Times<\/p>\n

Recent polls show that a strong majority of Ukrainians support negotiations to end the war. But \u2013 echoing Zelenskiy\u2019s call for \u201cpeace through strength\u201d \u2013 most people also firmly reject Russian terms for a settlement, which would include handing over swathes of territory and abandoning the nation\u2019s bid to join Nato.<\/p>\n

\u201cBehind all this white noise, it is worth remembering the most important thing \u2013 words will never stop Putin, only pressure,\u201d said Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, the chairwoman of the committee for integration with the EU in Ukraine\u2019s parliament.<\/p>\n

\u201cUntil now, only we have been pressured … Instead of the whip, [Russia] has suddenly received a reward for nothing, in the form of an exit from international isolation in the West,\u201d she wrote on social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Russians have also managed to impose a discourse on revising borders, pushing the world further into chaos. Because exchanging territories of sovereign Ukraine … is the path to the defeat, not only of sovereign Ukraine but also of the entire world, including the USA.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some politicians in Kyiv publicly acknowledge that there is no prospect of Ukraine having sufficient military might to push Russian forces out of all occupied territory, including the Crimean peninsula that it seized in 2014.<\/p>\n

Consequently, they argue that Ukraine might have to live with Russia\u2019s de facto control over some of its territory, while never accepting it in law \u2013 just as western powers never formally acknowledged the Soviet Union\u2019s 1940-91 occupation of the Baltic countries.<\/p>\n

But Ukrainians fear Trump\u2019s desire for a fast deal that he could proclaim as a historic triumph while washing his hands of their country and its fight for survival.<\/p>\n

\u201cPutin will simply use this meeting to his advantage. On one hand, Putin is absolutely not interested in an unconditional ceasefire, and on the other hand, he will try to shift the blame to Ukraine,\u201d said Oleksandr Merezhko, chairman of Ukraine\u2019s parliamentary foreign affairs committee.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is, to make Trump accuse Ukraine of not wanting to \u2018compromise,\u2019 which, Putin hopes, may give Trump a reason to leave the negotiating process altogether.\u201d<\/p>\n

The venue for the summit has only sharpened Ukrainian fears that their country will be on the chopping board: the US bought Alaska from a cash-strapped Russia in 1867, a decade after its defeat in the Crimean war \u2013 a reminder that territories can indeed be traded away.<\/p>\n

Early signs from Alaska did nothing to soothe fears in Ukraine and Europe that Moscow wants to use the summit to turn back the clock \u2013 Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov arrived wearing a top emblazoned with the Cyrillic letters \u201cCCCP\u201d.<\/p>\n

As Olena Halushka, a board member at Ukraine\u2019s anti-corruption action centre, wrote: \u201cLavrov wearing the USSR T-shirt is such a strong and reassuring message that Russians are open for real and lasting peace.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AA woman lays flowers in preparation for the funeral of a Ukrainian soldier killed in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. Photograph: Finbarr O’Reilly\/New York Times <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ukrainians are used to sleepless nights after nearly three-and-a-half years of all-out war with Russia, but in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1233,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[1535,1536,9,10,356,1015,13,14,6,1537,11,12,15,16,1538,5,1539,1540,635,1541,550,1542,7,8,551,384,1543,1544,1545,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-1232","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-alaska","9":"tag-attack","10":"tag-breaking-news","11":"tag-breakingnews","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-europe","14":"tag-featured-news","15":"tag-featurednews","16":"tag-headlines","17":"tag-invasion","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-military","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-north-america","25":"tag-potus","26":"tag-president","27":"tag-putin","28":"tag-russia","29":"tag-summit","30":"tag-top-stories","31":"tag-topstories","32":"tag-ukraine","33":"tag-united-states","34":"tag-usa","35":"tag-vladimir","36":"tag-war","37":"tag-world","38":"tag-world-news","39":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}