By Andrew Osborn and Lili Bayer
MOSCOW/BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Small bands of Russian soldiers thrust deeper into eastern Ukraine on Tuesday before a summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump, which European leaders fear could end in peace terms imposed on an unlawfully shrunken Ukraine.
In one of the most extensive incursions so far this year, Russian troops advanced near the coal-mining town of Dobropillia, part of Putin’s campaign to take full control of Ukraine’s Donetsk region. Ukraine’s military dispatched reserve troops, saying they were in difficult combat against Russian soldiers.
Trump has said any peace deal would involve “some swapping of territories to the betterment of both” Russia and Ukraine, which has up to now depended on the U.S. as its main arms supplier.
But because all the areas being contested lie within Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his European Union allies fear that he will face pressure to give up far more than Russia does.
Trump’s administration tempered expectations on Tuesday for major progress toward a ceasefire, calling his meeting on Friday with Putin in Alaska a “listening exercise.”
Zelenskiy and most of his European counterparts have said a lasting peace cannot be secured without Ukraine at the negotiating table, and a deal must comply with international law, Ukraine’s sovereignty and its territorial integrity.
They will hold a virtual meeting with Trump on Wednesday to underscore those concerns before the Putin summit, the first U.S.-Russia summit since 2021.
“An imitated rather than genuine peace will not hold for long and will only encourage Russia to seize even more territory,” Zelenskiy said in a statement on Tuesday.
Zelenskiy said Russia must agree to a ceasefire before territorial issues are discussed. He would reject any Russian proposal that Ukraine pull its troops from the eastern Donbas region and cede its defensive lines.
Asked why Zelenskiy was not joining the U.S. and Russian leaders at the Alaska summit, a White House spokeswoman said on Tuesday that the bilateral meeting had been proposed by Putin, and that Trump accepted to get a “better understanding” of how to end the war.
“Only one party that’s involved in this war is going to be present, and so this is for the president to go and to get a more firm and better understanding of how we can hopefully bring this war to an end,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters. “You need both countries to agree to a deal.”
Trump is open to a trilateral meeting with Putin and Zelenskiy later, Leavitt said.
RUSSIA ADVANCES IN EASTERN UKRAINE
Ukraine faces a shortage of soldiers after Russia invaded more than three years ago, easing the path for the latest Russian advances.
“This breakthrough is like a gift to Putin and Trump during the negotiations,” said Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser, suggesting it could increase pressure on Ukraine to yield territory under any deal.
Ukraine’s military meanwhile said it had retaken two villages in the eastern region of Sumy on Monday, part of a small reversal in more than a year of slow, attritional Russian gains in the southeast.
Russia, which launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, has mounted a new offensive this year in Sumy after Putin demanded a “buffer zone” there.
Ukraine and its European allies fear that Trump, keen to claim credit for making peace and seal new business deals with Russia’s government, will end up rewarding Putin for his 11 years spent in efforts to seize Ukrainian territory, the last three in open warfare.
EUROPEANS LINK UKRAINE TO THEIR OWN SECURITY
European leaders have said Ukraine must be capable of defending itself if peace and security is to be guaranteed on the continent, and that they are ready to contribute further.
“Ukraine cannot lose this war and nobody has the right to pressure Ukraine into making territorial or other concessions, or making decisions that smack of capitulation,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said at a government meeting. “I hope we can convince President Trump about the European position.”
Zelenskiy has said he and European leaders “all support President Trump’s determination.”
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Putin’s principal ally in Europe, was the only leader not to join the EU’s statement of unity. He mocked his counterparts as “sidelined” and said Russia had already defeated Ukraine.
“The Ukrainians have lost the war. Russia has won this war,” Orban told the “Patriot” YouTube channel in an interview.
Trump had been recently hardening his stance towards Russia, agreeing to send more U.S. weapons to Ukraine and threatening hefty trade tariffs on buyers of Russian oil in an ultimatum that has now lapsed.
(Reporting by Lili Bayer in Brussels and Andrew Osborn in Moscow; Additional reporting by Alan Charlish, Sudip Kar-Gupta, Lidia Kelly, Krisztina Than and Pavel Polityuk; writing by Ingrid Melander and Jonathan Allen; editing by Kevin Liffey, Mark Heinrich, Alexandra Hudson and Cynthia Osterman)
