Europe Demands Ukraine’s Presence At Trump-Putin Summit As Clashes Kill Many
By Stefan J. Bos, Worthy News Europe Bureau Chief
BERLIN/KYIV/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – European leaders have raised the pressure on U.S. President Donald J. Trump to involve Ukraine in a planned summit with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on ending the war in Ukraine, where officials said Russian shelling and drone attacks killed numerous people Sunday.
Speaking before a bilateral meeting between the U.S. and Russian leaders scheduled for Friday in Alaska, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he hoped and assumed Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would also be involved.
Merz told the German broadcaster ARD that Berlin was working closely with Washington to ensure Zelenskyy’s attendance at the talks.
“We cannot accept in any case that territorial questions are discussed or even decided between Russia and America over the heads of Europeans and Ukrainians,” he said. “I assume that the American government sees it the same way.”
The European Union’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas echoed that sentiment.
Announcing there would be an emergency meeting of EU ministers for Monday, she stressed: “President Trump is right that Russia has to end its war against Ukraine. The U.S. has the power to force Russia to negotiate seriously. Any deal between the U.S. and Russia must have Ukraine and the EU included, for it is a matter of Ukraine’s and the whole of Europe’s security.”
However, Trump already warned Friday that there will be “swapping of territories” between Russia and Ukraine as part of a deal to bring an end to Moscow’s long-running invasion of the neighboring country.
TRUMP ENVOY
Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, also recently met with Putin amid U.S. pressure to impose new sanctions and tariffs on countries buying Russian oil.
President Trump has publicly accused Putin of being disingenuous and throwing “a lot of bulls***” at the U.S.. Still, their upcoming summit has raised concerns in Europe that they will agree on a peace deal blueprint that may not be acceptable to Kyiv.
The diplomatic wrangling came as six people were killed in Russian air strikes across Ukraine’s eastern regions of Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, their authorities said. Additionally, a Russian strike on a bus station in the city of Zaporizhzhia wounded at least 19, according to Ukrainian officials.
Kyiv struck back at Russia, where two people reportedly died in the Tula region as a result of a Ukrainian drone attack that also targeted Moscow, the capital, and other Russian regions.
Two people have also been hospitalized following the attack on the Tula region that borders the Moscow region to its north, Tula Governor Dmitry Milyaev said on the social media platform Telegram.
Kyiv claimed it had hit two oil refineries deep inside Russia, one in the western Saratov region and one in the remote northern town of Ukhta in the Komi Republic.
MORE DESTRUCTION
The governor of Saratov, Roman Busargin, only gave a vague comment about it, saying that “one of the industrial enterprises was damaged” and adding that “one person had died” as a result of the drone strike.
The Komi governor confirmed in his Telegram channel that there had been a drone attack on the region, but didn’t mention the Ukhta refinery and said there “were no casualties.”
Ukraine’s military also said Sunday it had taken back a village in the Sumy region from the Russian army, which has made significant recent gains.
The village is on the frontline in the north of the country and about 20 kilometers (13 miles) west of the main fighting between the two armies in the northern region.
The war began in February 2022 when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and is believed to have killed and injured more than 1 million people, most of them soldiers, as well as civilians.
The secretary general of the NATO military alliance, Mark Rutte, said the summit would be about testing Putin on how serious he was about “bringing this terrible war to an end.”
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