TRUMP AGREES ON UKRAINE RED LINESWITH EUROPE BEFORE PUTIN SUMMIT / THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Trump Agrees on Ukraine Red Lines With Europe Before Putin Summit

U.S. leader tells his European peers that he won’t negotiate territorial issues during Friday’s meeting but will seek an immediate cease-fire

By Bojan Pancevski

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz ahead of the meeting between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Photo: Omer Messinger/Getty Images

BERLIN—President Trump agreed with European leaders including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to red lines for the coming talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska and said he hoped to follow up quickly with a trilateral summit with the two warring leaders.

Trump also threatened Putin with “very severe consequences” if the Russian president refused a cease-fire in their coming meeting.

The Wednesday videoconference between Trump and European leaders was constructive, participants said after the call.

Trump told his European peers that he wouldn’t negotiate territorial issues, saying that Ukraine must discuss that directly with Russia, said German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who initiated the meeting.

The U.S. president had made it clear that any security guarantees offered to Ukraine as part of a potential peace deal with Russia wouldn’t involve the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, but he accepted that other guarantees would be given jointly by the U.S. and Europe, said Emmanuel Macron, the French president, who attended the meeting. Macron pointed to a potentially significant change in Trump’s position on the issue.

“President Trump was very clear that the American desire was to obtain a cease-fire at this meeting in Alaska,” Macron told reporters after the meeting.

President Trump spoke about Ukraine during a visit to the Kennedy Center in Washington on Wednesday. Photo: kevin lamarque/Reuters

Two other participants told The Wall Street Journal that Trump signaled that the U.S. would be willing to play a role in future security guarantees with Europe. 

They said Trump didn’t offer any details.

“We Europeans are doing everything in our power to set the right foundations for this meeting, for we want Donald Trump to have success in Anchorage on Friday,” Merz told a press conference with Zelensky after the meeting. 

“Fundamental interests of Ukraine and Europe must be secured in Alaska—this was the message we passed on to the president of the U.S.A.”

Both Trump and his European peers said it was the U.S. president’s threat of sanctions that persuaded Putin to seek negotiations, according to participants. 

The Ukrainian delegation was so relieved by the success of the talks that they gave a loud applause after the conference ended, these people said.

Immediately after the meeting, Trump warned of “very severe consequences” if Putin didn’t agree to stop the war after the Alaska meeting. 

But if the Friday meeting with Putin went well, Trump said in a speech at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., he would like to hold a trilateral meeting to kick-start peace talks.

“I would like to do it almost immediately, and we’ll have a quick second meeting between President Putin and President Zelensky and myself, if they would like to have me there,” Trump said.

Shortly before the Wednesday meeting was set to begin, the Russian government reiterated that its conditions for ending the war remain unchanged. 

Among them is a demand that Ukraine withdraw from territories that Russia hasn’t conquered. 

The statement appeared to roll back an earlier offer Putin made to Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, who told European officials last week that Moscow might agree to freeze the front line in southern Ukraine in exchange for Kyiv’s ceding territory in the east.

Vice President JD Vance addresses U.S. troops stationed in Britain on Wednesday. Photo: tolga akmen/epa/shutterstock

The conference was called to forge a common U.S.-European position ahead of what officials describe as the most significant negotiation between the West and Russia since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. 

Vice President JD Vance, Witkoff and Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, joined Trump in talks with the leaders of Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Poland, Finland, the European Union and NATO.

Merz convened the meeting in the midst of concern that Trump and Putin—a Soviet-trained former intelligence officer—could strike a deal that would be harmful to Ukrainian and European interests, according to senior German and EU officials.

Merz said Zelensky demonstrated in the meeting that Ukraine is ready to discuss territory, but Zelensky also said that the starting point for any negotiations must be the current battle line.

Zelensky, who traveled to Berlin to attend the conference with Merz, said the meeting showed how all leaders were on the same page regarding the talks with Russia.

“Anything to do with Ukraine can only be negotiated with Ukraine,” Zelensky said.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, who attended the virtual meeting, said it was great and showed that everyone was united in pushing to end the war.

“The ball is now in Putin’s court,” Rutte posted on X. 

In the meeting, Rutte told Trump that Putin’s proposal to Witkoff—for Ukraine to give up fortified areas in the Donetsk region in exchange for a cease-fire—would mean opening a “highway” for the Russian army to advance to Kyiv, according to two participants.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s image and a target in Ukraine. Photo: Serhii Korovayny for WSJ

While Trump’s decision last week to meet Putin on American soil worried Europeans, trans-Atlantic relations have since warmed. 

In a flurry of calls and meetings, senior U.S. officials, including Trump, Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, signaled their readiness to coordinate closely with Europe on securing a cease-fire and a “fair deal” to end the war, according to participants and briefed officials.

European diplomats said they were particularly impressed by Vance, who met with them in England on Saturday. 

He showed a strong interest in aligning trans-Atlantic positions ahead of the Putin talks and had a detailed understanding of the situation, participants said.

“They are great people who want to see a deal done,” Trump said of his European partners on Truth Social Wednesday.

European leaders and Zelensky presented Trump with five succinct red lines to carry into the Alaska summit: a cease-fire as a prerequisite for further talks; any territorial discussions to start from the current front lines; binding Western security guarantees that Russia must accept; Ukraine’s participation in the talks; and support from both the U.S. and Europe, including Ukraine, for any deal.

They relayed to Trump that there would be no legal recognition of occupied territories by Ukraine or Europe, but that a recognition of the situation on the ground could be part of a future deal, several participants said.

European officials initially sought direct representation at the Alaska meeting, which will include Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, proposing Rutte or another European leader, as well as Zelensky.

After calls between Merz and Trump, Europeans dropped that demand, while publicly calling for Zelensky to be part of any talks with Putin. 

Trump expressed concern that Zelensky’s presence at the outset could derail the discussions, according to people familiar with the call.

Trump agreed that after meeting Putin he would first brief Zelensky, and then the European leaders who participated in the meeting on Wednesday, according to German officials who organized the conference.

“At this point Trump really owns this. 

He is the one negotiating with Putin, and he wants a deal,” said Fiona Hill, who advised Trump on Russia in his first term and attended his last meeting with the Russian president in 2019. 

Trump has repeatedly said that he wants to stop the killing on the battlefield, and his actions are often motivated by such a desire, Hill said.

“What Trump doesn’t get is Putin doesn’t have the same empathy toward loss of life like he does: Putin wants maximal objectives to secure his legacy as Vladimir the Great and is willing to engage in mass slaughter, while Trump wants to stop the war and win the Nobel Prize for peace,” Hill said.

On Wednesday, Russian deputy Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexei Fadeev confirmed that Moscow’s position remains unchanged: Ukraine must cede the four regions it claims—Donetsk and Luhansk in the east, and Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in the south.

“The territorial integrity of the Russian Federation is enshrined in our constitution, and that says it all,” Fadeev said when asked if Moscow would drop its claims.

Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign-policy adviser and one of his closest aides, told reporters that a second meeting, following Alaska, is expected to take place on Russian soil.