Putin is reported to have told Trump he would be willing to end the war if Ukraine handed over the areas of Donetsk region it still controls, but many Ukrainians believe Russia’s leader has other plans.

Col Pavlo Palisa, deputy head of the presidential office in Kyiv, warned reporters in the US in June that the Kremlin wanted to occupy all of Ukraine east of the Dnipro river, which cuts Ukraine in half.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, also warned that handing Ukrainian territory to Russia as part of a peace deal was “a trap”. “We are forgetting that Russia has not made one single concession and they are the ones who are the aggressor here,” she told the BBC.

After meeting Putin in Alaska and then Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington, Trump said last week he had begun arrangements for a summit between the two leaders.

By the end of last week hopes of a breakthrough had dimmed.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted the “agenda [for a summit] is not ready at all” and no meeting was planned.

He also said any discussion on future security guarantees without Russian involvement was “pointless”, even though that would be a non-starter for the West.

President Zelensky has meanwhile urged his Western allies to intensify efforts aimed at agreeing future security guarantees in the event of a deal.

He met the head of Britain’s armed forces, Adm Sir Tony Radakin, in Kyiv on Tuesday and the UK prime minister’s spokesman said the UK would be ready to put troops on the ground once hostilities had ended.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Tuesday that security guarantees for Ukraine would first and foremost enable the Ukrainian army to defend their country in the long term.

Merz said Zelensky had made clear he was ready to sit down with Putin and now it was Moscow’s turn: “If the Russian president is serious about putting an end to the killing, then he’ll accept the offer.”

Ukraine meanwhile has announced that men aged 18 to 22 can travel abroad, in an easing of a law that has required all up to the age of 60 to gain authorisation.

Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said the change also included those currently in other countries – meaning they could now return to Ukraine and leave again if they wished.

A growing number of Ukrainian parents are sending teenage boys abroad before they reach 18. “We want Ukrainians to maintain their links with Ukraine as much as possible,” Svyrydenko said. Men aged 18 to 22 are not subject to military conscription, which has a minimum age of 25 after it was lowered last year.

An estimated 5.6 million Ukrainian men currently live abroad.

[BBC]