WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump said Monday that he expects to have a "constructive conversation" with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and was unhappy with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky for ruling out territorial concessions.

 

"I'm going to speak to Vladimir Putin and I'm going to be telling him 'you've got to end this war,'" Trump said at a White House press conference, adding he'd "like to see a ceasefire very, very quickly."

 

Trump said he would call Zelensky and other European leaders right after the meeting with Putin, set for Friday in the far northern US state of Alaska.

 

"The next meeting will be with Zelensky and Putin, or Zelensky, Putin and me. I'll be there if they need," he said.

 

Trump said he was a "little bothered" by Zelensky saying he needed constitutional approval for any territorial concessions.

 

"I mean, he's got approval to go into war and kill everybody. But he needs approval to do a land swap?" he said. "Because there'll be some land swapping going on."

 

Vice President JD Vance said that the United States was working to "schedule" a meeting between Trump and his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts.

 

"One of the most important logjams is that Vladimir Putin said that he would never sit down with [Volodymyr] Zelensky, the head of Ukraine, and the president has now got that to change," Vance said during an interview on Fox News program "Sunday Morning Futures."

 

"We're at a point now where we're trying to figure out, frankly, scheduling and things like that around when these three leaders could sit down and discuss an end to this conflict," Vance said when asked about his expectations for the Alaska summit on August 15.

 

The vice president, in an interview conducted ahead of last week's announcement that the US and Russian presidents would meet this Friday, said the United States was going to "try to find some negotiated settlement that the Ukrainians and Russians can live with."

 

Vance added: "It's not going to make anybody super happy, both the Russians and the Ukrainians probably at the end of the day are going to be unhappy with it."

 

The planned US-Russia summit in Alaska without Zelensky had raised concerns that a deal would require Kyiv to cede territory, which the European Union has rejected.

 

US Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker suggested on CNN that Zelensky could attend the summit.

 

He was asked whether Zelensky might join Trump and Putin on Friday.

 

"Yes, I certainly think it's possible," he said. "Certainly, there can't be a deal that everybody that's involved in it doesn't agree to. And, I mean, obviously, it's a high priority to get this war to end."

 

In a flurry of diplomacy, Zelensky held calls with 13 counterparts over three days including Kyiv's main backers Germany, Britain and France.

 

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Sunday he hoped and assumed that Zelensky would attend the summit.

 

Whitaker said the decision would ultimately be Trump's to make.

 

"If he thinks that that is the best scenario to invite Zelensky, then he will do that," he said, adding that "no decision has been made to this point."

 

Tens of thousands of people have been killed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with millions forced to flee their homes.