Uninvited to the summit and unwilling to cede Donbas, Ukraine’s leader worries that Putin has “postponed sanctions” with the US visit and could be coming back into Trump’s good graces.
President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday said that Kremlin strongman Vladimir Putin scored a “personal victory” by getting invited to talks with American president Donald Trump in the US, and promised that the Ukrainian Armed Forces will not retreat from the Russian-occupied Donbas region, as Trump suggested.
Speaking to reporters in Kyiv, Zelensky said, “First, [Putin] will meet on US territory, which I consider his personal victory. Second, he is coming out of isolation because he is meeting on US territory. Third, with this meeting, he has somehow postponed sanctions,” Zelensky said.