Zelenskyy: Trilateral meeting with Trump is almost impossible without a truce and agreements with Putin

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy believes that for a trilateral summit with the US leader Donald Trump there should be certain agreements and a ceasefire following the meeting with the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. This opinion was expressed by the president of Ukraine during a conversation with journalists on August 20.

Zelenskyy was asked whether Kyiv would still insist on a ceasefire before negotiations begin.

"We can enter the format that is currently supported by Ukraine, Europeans, and the United States. This unification is important to us. The format that has been proposed probably has some compromise. This is exactly what it is. We are entering the bilateral format and then the trilateral format. I believe that without agreements in the bilateral format and without some kind of ceasefire format, the trilateral format is almost impossible. Because the United States needs to be present at the moment of the end of the war or at some point that signals that the war is over. Otherwise, there will be no success," the president said.

According to Zelenskyy, he told Trump that Ukraine would need a truce in any case to work out the entire plan for ending the war if "we really want this plan to be serious."

Zelenskyy added that European partners "fully on the Ukrainian side in this matter".

The head of state also noted: "The issue of territories is the issue of a man who wants to occupy our territories and a man who, with his army and people, is defending his territories. That is, this is Putin's issue and mine. And I don't think we need to talk about it at other different levels."

• After his talks with Putin in Alaska on August 15, Trump abandoned the ceasefire demand, saying that it needed to move immediately to the peace agreement. Earlier, the US president promised Moscow "very serious consequences", if there is no ceasefire after this summit.
• During the same press conference, Zelenskyy said that his possible meeting with Putin should be in a neutral country in Europe.
• According to the president, Putin knows that Ukraine will not agree to withdraw its troops from Donbas, but he is deliberately demanding it, because he does not want peace.