US, Russia plan truce deal to cement Putin’s gains in Ukraine: Bloomberg

By Diyar Guldogan

WASHINGTON (AA) - The US and Russia are aiming to reach a deal to halt the war in Ukraine that would lock in Russia’s occupation of territory seized during its war, Bloomberg News reported on Friday.

Citing people familiar with the matter, it said US and Russian officials are working toward an agreement on territories for a planned summit meeting between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, "as early as next week."

The US is working to get buy-in from Ukraine and its European allies on the deal, which is far from certain, they said.

Putin is demanding that Ukraine cede its entire eastern Donbas area to Russia as well as Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014. It would require Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to order a withdrawal of troops from parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions still held by Kyiv, handing Russia a victory that its army could not achieve militarily since the start of the war in February 2022, according to the report.

Russia would halt its offensive in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine along the current battle lines as part of the deal, the people said, cautioning that the terms and plans of the accord were "still in flux and could still change."

The agreement aims to freeze the war and pave the way for a ceasefire and technical talks on a definitive peace settlement, the people said.

According to the report, it is still unclear if Putin would agree to take part in a trilateral meeting with Trump and Zelenskyy next week.

With regard to a trilateral meeting, Putin said on Thursday that he has nothing against that meeting but reaffirmed the need to create the necessary conditions for the talks.

Trump said on Thursday that a meeting between Zelenskyy and Putin was not a condition for him to meet with the Russian president in what would be their first in-person encounter of Trump’s second term.

"They would like to meet with me, and I'll do whatever I can to stop the killing," Trump told the reporters.