NATO chief sees Ukraine’s land in play ahead of Russia meeting

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said this week’s U.S.-Russian summit may open the door to negotiations about Ukrainian territory, even as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has continued to reject ceding land occupied by Russia.

Bridging the gap between Zelenskyy’s stance and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demands on locking in gains in eastern Ukraine is among the most sensitive points as President Donald Trump prepares to meet Putin on Friday in Alaska in search of a deal to end the war.

European leaders, who have repeatedly said they’re committed to Ukraine’s “territorial integrity,” are seeking to talk to Trump before the planned meeting, according to people familiar with the discussions.

If the peace process moves forward, territory would “have to be on the table,” alongside security guarantees for Ukraine, Rutte said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” He suggested that could involve Ukraine acknowledging that it has lost control of some of its territory without formally giving up sovereignty over those regions.

“When it comes to this whole issue of territory, when it comes to acknowledging in a future deal that Russia is controlling de facto some of the territory of Ukraine, it has to be a factual recognition – not a political, de jure recognition,” Rutte said.

Zelenskyy and European leaders have been conducting frenetic rounds of virtual meetings to devise a strategy ahead of Trump’s summit with Putin to avoid an outcome where Ukraine would be pressured into accepting significant losses of its territory in the east.

Putin has demanded that Ukraine cede Crimea, which Kremlin forces illegally annexed in 2014, as well as its entire eastern Donbas area. Such an outcome would require Zelenskyy to withdraw troops from parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions still held by Kyiv.

An EU official said the U.S. has been closely involved with the ongoing diplomacy and has shown an interest in being aligned with Europe.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance said in comments recorded earlier that he expects the eventual outcome to be “very simple.”

“If you take where the current line of contact between Russia and Ukraine is, we’re going to try to find some negotiated settlement that the Ukrainians and the Russians can live with, where they can live in relative peace, where the killing stops,” he said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” “It’s not going to make anybody super happy.”

EU foreign ministers will hold an extraordinary meeting Monday by video conference to discuss the next steps regarding Ukraine.

“International law is clear: All temporarily occupied territories belong to Ukraine,” Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said in a statement. “A sustainable peace also means that aggression cannot be rewarded,” she said.

Rutte said Zelenskyy will have to be involved in any detailed peace talks even if he doesn’t attend the meeting in Alaska.

“On Friday, it will be important to see how serious Putin is,” Rutte said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “And the only one who can do that is President Trump.”

Vance met in England over the weekend with European officials and senior aides to Zelenskyy. An EU official said the U.S. has been closely involved with the ongoing diplomacy and has shown an interest in being aligned with Europe.

Under the terms of the deal that U.S. and Russian officials have been discussing, Moscow would halt its offensive in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine along the current battle lines.

Zelenskyy said over the weekend that Kyiv won’t – and constitutionally can’t – cede territory, and European officials warned later against ratifying Russia’s battlefield gains.

“We remain committed to the principle that international borders must not be changed by force,” they said in a joint statement Saturday. “The current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations.”

The statement was backed by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Finland.

Zelenskyy warned against accepting Russia’s spin on possible outcomes of a negotiation, saying that Putin was solely responsible for blocking an end to the war.

“His only card is the ability to kill, and he is trying to sell the cessation of killings at the highest possible price,” the Ukrainian leader said in a later post on X. “It is important that this does not mislead anyone.”