WASHINGTON \u2014 The White House is considering inviting Ukrainian President\u00a0Volodymyr Zelenskyy\u00a0to Alaska, where President\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0is scheduled to\u00a0meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin\u00a0next week, according to a senior U.S. official and three people briefed on the internal discussions.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s being discussed,\u201d one of the people briefed on the discussions said.<\/p>\n
The senior U.S. official and people briefed on the discussions said no visit has been finalized and that it\u2019s unclear whether Zelenskyy would ultimately be in Alaska for meetings.<\/p>\n
The senior administration official said it is \u201cabsolutely\u201d possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone is very hopeful that would happen,\u201d the official said.<\/p>\n
Asked whether the U.S. had officially invited Zelenskyy to Alaska, a senior White House official said: \u201cThe President remains open to a trilateral summit with both leaders. Right now, the White House is focusing on planning the bilateral meeting requested by President Putin.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Ukrainian government did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Trump announced Friday that he is\u00a0meeting with Putin\u00a0on Aug. 15 in Alaska as he tries to secure a ceasefire in Ukraine. The White House had initially made a Putin meeting with Zelenskyy a condition for a meeting between Trump and the Russian president to take place, but Trump later said that\u00a0was not a precondition.<\/p>\n
If Zelenskyy were to travel to Alaska, it is not clear whether he and Putin would ever be in the same room, one of the people briefed on the discussions said.<\/p>\n
The surge in diplomacy aimed at ending the war in Ukraine comes after Trump\u2019s special envoy\u00a0Steve Witkoff met with Putin\u00a0in Moscow ahead of a deadline on Friday that the president had set for the Russian leader to agree to a ceasefire or face new sanctions.<\/p>\n
Putin has not agreed to a ceasefire but proposed the outlines of an agreement to end the war that would allow Russia to keep large swaths of Ukrainian territory. Zelenskyy said defiantly on Saturday that Ukrainians \u201cwill not give their land to occupiers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump said Friday that between Russia and Ukraine, \u201cthere\u2019ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both.\u201d Zelenskyy and his European allies have said that ceding territory would only encourage Russian aggression.<\/p>\n
Administration officials were working on Saturday to try to gain support for a potential ceasefire from the Ukrainian government and European leaders.<\/p>\n
In a joint statement on Saturday, European leaders welcomed the Trump-Putin meeting but emphasized the need to keep pressure on Russia and protect the security interests of Ukraine and Europe as a whole.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe remain committed to the principle that international borders must not be changed by force,\u201d the statement said. \u201cThe current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations.\u201d<\/p>\n
The statement from the leaders of France, Britain, Italy, Germany, Poland and Finland, as well as European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen, said that meaningful negotiations could take place only in the context of a ceasefire or reduction of hostilities and that \u201cthe path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zelenskyy said Ukraine \u201cvalues and fully supports\u201d the European leaders\u2019 statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe end of the war must be fair, and I am grateful to everyone who stands with Ukraine and our people today for the sake of peace in Ukraine, which is defending the vital security interests of our European nations,\u201d he said Sunday in a\u00a0post on X.<\/p>\n
This article was originally published on\u00a0NBCNews.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON \u2014 The White House is considering inviting Ukrainian President\u00a0Volodymyr Zelenskyy\u00a0to Alaska, where President\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0is scheduled to\u00a0meet with<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1283,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1282"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1284,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1282\/revisions\/1284"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}