But during the talks with Zelenskyy, according to the person familiar with the matter quoted above, the \u201cAmericans said that Putin wants to keep fighting, and he has a strong war machine.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen [U.S. special envoy Steve] Witkoff entered the conversation, and said that the Russians aim to take the entire Donbas [region in eastern Ukraine] \u2026 And there was a feeling in the room that the Americans were testing the Ukrainians and what they [would] agree on,\u201d the person said.<\/p>\n
Giving up the well-fortified Donbas region is a no-go for Ukraine<\/a>, which fears that doing so would open a clear route for Russia to take further territory more easily. It\u2019s not the first time<\/a> the Trump administration has suggested land swapping that could favor Russian strategic aims, though the U.S. president has more recently talked up<\/a> Kyiv\u2019s prospects in the war.<\/p>\n \u201cZelenskyy did not agree that Ukraine has to give up land that Russia did not manage to occupy. In the end, Trump ended the meeting, saying: \u2018OK, let\u2019s try to end this on the current line,’\u201d the person mentioned quoted above said.<\/p>\n The U.S. president\u2019s seemingly renewed credulity regarding Putin\u2019s take on the war will frustrate European leaders, who have been working to convince Trump that Russia\u2019s public declarations of willingness to end the conflict it started are a charade.<\/p>\n \u201cWith a single phone call, Putin appears to have changed President Trump\u2019s mind on Ukraine once again,\u201d a second person familiar with the negotiations told POLITICO\u2019s Brussels Playbook.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But during the talks with Zelenskyy, according to the person familiar with the matter quoted above, the \u201cAmericans…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":317389,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[113,69,25820,3350,3097,374,2852,50,65936,18610,257,273,67,132,68,274,3656,131],"class_list":{"0":"post-317388","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-conflict","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-donald-tusk","12":"tag-foreign-policy","13":"tag-middle-east","14":"tag-missiles","15":"tag-negotiations","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-playbook","18":"tag-roads","19":"tag-russia","20":"tag-ukraine","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-us","24":"tag-vladimir-putin","25":"tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy","26":"tag-war"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115403949550439616","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}