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President Donald Trump dropped his demand for a ceasefire in Ukraine and told its president Saturday that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine’s eastern Donbas area in exchange for halting the war.
Hours after Trump and Putin met Friday in Alaska, Trump said Ukraine and Russia should go straight to negotiating a settlement, a split with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European allies that aligns the United States with Putin.
Zelensky has rejected Russian demands to cede Ukrainian land. The Ukrainian leader and his European partners, including the leaders of Britain, France and Germany, had lobbied the White House to pressure Moscow into a ceasefire before any negotiations....
After the summit, Trump told Zelensky and other European leaders in a phone call that in addition to land Russia has seized in the war, Putin wants Ukraine to cede all of Donbas in exchange for a promise to freeze the front line elsewhere, according to four people familiar with the discussion. All spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.
In years of fighting, Russia has been unable to seize all of Donbas. Russian forces occupy almost all of the Luhansk region of Donbas but do not control part of the strategic, fortified Donetsk region, where Russian forces have made an advance in recent days.
Trump conveyed that he was shifting away from the ceasefire demand and toward reaching a swift deal, which could make the Russian conditions the starting point for talks, two of the people said....