ANCHORAGE /Alaska/, August 16. /TASS/. The land dispute will be one of the most difficult to resolve in Ukraine, since Kiev will have to choose between territorial concessions and continuing the conflict, Forrest Nabors, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Political Science at the University of Alaska in Anchorage, told TASS.
"My best guess is that the fundamental difficulty will be overcoming the land dispute concerning the Donbas and Crimea, currently occupied by Russian forces. Ukraine will have to decide whether to continue the war or give up some land, which they might lose anyway with continued warfare," he said commenting on the results of the meeting of Russian and US Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in Anchorage.
"Unlike the Biden Administration, the Trump Administration is not interested in incorporating Ukraine into NATO. But Trump does want the war to end and he seems neutral on the question about the Donbas and Crimea," the expert went on.
Talks in Anchorage
On August 15, a summit between Russia and the US took place at a military base in Alaska. The talks lasted more than three hours and included several formats: one-on-one in the American leader's limousine en route to the main venue and in a small group of "three on three." The Russian delegation included Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, while the US delegation included Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff.
Following the talks, Putin told the press that the settlement of the Ukrainian conflict was the main topic of the summit. The Russian leader also called for a new beginning in bilateral relations and a return to cooperation. He invited Trump to Moscow. For his part, the US president announced the progress achieved in the talks but noted that the two sides had not reached an agreement on everything.
Later, in an interview with Fox News, Trump rated the Anchorage meeting "a 10 out of 10" and stressed that many positions were agreed upon there, and that what happens next depends on Kiev. The US President also expressed confidence in the possibility of working out a deal on Ukraine in the near future.