DONETSK, August 17. /TASS/. The Kiev regime and European leaders may hinder peace settlement in Ukraine due to lobbying by weapons companies that are profiteering on hostilities there, head of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) Denis Pushilin said.

"What can hamper peace settlement? It can be the position held by the leadership of the remaining part of Ukraine and its European partners. They have been fanning the situation, seeking to rearm. I understand there is a lobby of weapons companies, which manufactures armaments. And, naturally, they are not happy with such peace settlement. They’d want the conflict to continue as long as possible," he said in a viseo address on his Telegram channel, commenting on the Russia-US summit in Alaska.

On August 15, a meeting between Russian and US Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump took place at a military base in Alaska. The rendezvous lasted about three hours: there was a one-on-one discussion in the American leader's limousine on the way to the main venue for the talks and a narrow "three-on-three" meeting. In a statement to the press following the talks, Putin said that the settlement of the Ukrainian conflict was the main topic of the summit. For his part, the US president announced the progress made in the talks, but noted that the parties had not managed to reach agreement.

Following the summit, Trump held phone calls with Vladimir Zelensky, EU leaders, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. After the summit and these calls, Trump said that he best way to end the conflict in Ukraine is to reach a peace agreement, not merely a ceasefire, and that all his interlocutors shared this view.