US-Russia talks without Ukraine will lead to ‘dead solutions’: Zelenskyy

KYIV, Aug 9: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed the planned summit between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, warning that any peace deal excluding Kyiv would lead to “dead solutions.”
The Trump-Putin meeting, scheduled for Friday in Alaska, is seen as a potential breakthrough in the more than three-year war.
Trump had previously agreed to meet with Putin even if the Russian leader would not meet with Zelenskyy, stoking fears Ukraine could be sidelined in efforts to stop Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II. Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s territorial integrity must be nonnegotiable and that lasting peace must include Ukraine’s voice at the table.
Trump said he will meet with Putin to discuss ending the war in Ukraine. The summit may prove pivotal in a war that began when Russia invaded its western neighbor and has led to tens of thousands of deaths. However, there is no guarantee it will stop the fighting since Moscow and Kyiv remain far apart on their conditions for peace. Analysts, including some close to the Kremlin, have suggested that Russia could offer to give up territory it controls outside of the four regions it claims to have annexed.
Nigel Gould-Davies, an associate fellow of Chatham House, told The Associated Press that the “symbology” of holding the summit in Alaska was clear, and that the location “naturally favours Russia.” He compared attempts to understand Trump’s latest pivot toward Moscow to “Kremlinology,” the Cold War-era practice of deciphering opaque signals from Soviet leadership.
Prior to Trump announcing the meeting with Putin, his efforts to pressure Russia into stopping the fighting had delivered no progress. The Kremlin’s bigger army is slowly advancing deeper into Ukraine at great cost in troops and armour while it relentlessly bombards Ukrainian cities. (AP)