Trump may persuade Zelensky to make concessions at the NATO summit meeting in Ankara

The outcome of the meeting between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky at the NATO summit in Turkey will largely be determined by the situation on the front line.

That view was expressed in an exclusive comment to aif.ru by Konstantin Blokhin, a leading research fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Center for Security Studies and an American politics expert.

According to him, Trump’s meeting with Zelensky will be one of the last on the American leader’s agenda during his visit to Ankara. The key factor that will shape the nature of the talks, the political analyst says, is the dynamics of the fighting.

“Trump will proceed from the situation developing in the combat zone. If the battlefield situation changes rapidly, if our forces advance actively, then Zelensky himself will want negotiations with Russia, because the situation will be deteriorating for him. Recently our forces took Kostiantynivka, which coincided with the time of Putin and Trump’s conversation. These successes could become the main driver of negotiations,” Blokhin said.

At the same time, the political analyst allows for a different scenario. If the advance of Russian forces in the combat zone proves insufficiently active, Trump, in his assessment, is unlikely to exert serious pressure on Zelensky.

“The entire Western elite is anti-Russian. And moreover, Europe is ready to keep paying… Everything will depend on the situation on the line of contact,” Blokhin added.