The United States is working to “schedule” a meeting between Donald Trump and his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts, Vice President JD Vance said, as Ukraine’s European allies push for Kyiv’s presence at the US-Russia summit in Alaska this week.
“One of the most important logjams is that Vladimir Putin said that he would never sit down with (Volodymyr) Zelensky, the head of Ukraine, and the president has now got that to change,” Vance said during an interview on Fox News program “Sunday Morning Futures.”
“We’re at a point now where we’re trying to figure out, frankly, scheduling and things like that around when these three leaders could sit down and discuss an end to this conflict,” Vance said when asked about his expectations for the Alaska summit on August 15.
The vice president said the United States was going to “try to find some negotiated settlement that the Ukrainians and Russians can live with.”
Vance added: “It’s not going to make anybody super happy, both the Russians and the Ukrainians, probably at the end of the day, are going to be unhappy with it.”
The planned US-Russia summit in Alaska without Zelensky had raised concerns that a deal would require Kyiv to cede swaths of territory, which the European Union has rejected.
US Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker suggested on CNN that Zelensky could attend the summit.
He was asked whether Zelensky might join Trump and Putin on August 8.
“Yes, I certainly think it’s possible,” he said. “Certainly, there can’t be a deal that everybody that’s involved in it doesn’t agree to. And, I mean, obviously, it’s a high priority to get this war to end.”
In a flurry of diplomacy, Zelensky held calls with 13 counterparts over three days including Kyiv’s main backers Germany, Britain and France.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said August 10 he hoped and assumed that Zelensky would attend the summit.
Whitaker said the decision would ultimately be Trump’s to make.
“If he thinks that that is the best scenario to invite Zelensky, then he will do that,” he said, adding that “no decision has been made to this point.”
Tens of thousands of people have been killed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with millions forced to flee their homes.
