Panic in eastern Ukraine as Trump entertains idea of giving parts of it to Russia

We are just three days away from the potentially critical summit between US President Donald Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin in Alaska. President Trump says he wants to see what Putin has in mind for Ukraine, but he's already casting doubt on what, if anything, this meeting could accomplish, saying, quote, it's not up to me to make a deal. Trump also claims he'll know in the first two minutes

if a deal can be made. This is what he says that deal could include.

There'll be some swapping, there'll be some changes in land and the word that they will use is, you know, they make changes. We're gonna change the lines, the battle lines. Russia's occupied a big portion of Ukraine. They've occupied some very prime territory. We're going to try and

get some of that territory back for Ukraine.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz says he will host a virtual meeting with European leaders on Wednesday to discuss options to put pressure on Russia to end the war. Donald Trump is expected to attend that meeting. So is Ukraine's president, who's still not invited to the talks in Alaska. Volodymyr Zelensky is warning the US

that Putin has no plans for peace.

He is definitely not preparing for a ceasefire or an end

to the war.

Putin is determined only to present a meeting with America as his personal victory, and then continue acting exactly as before.

Donald Trump's casual comments about possible land swaps are striking fear in those living in eastern Ukraine, with the prospect of their cities and towns being traded away to the man who started this war in the first place. CNN's Nick Paton-Walsh speaks to some of the Ukrainians who could lose everything after

already losing so much.

When President Trump talks about what parts of Ukraine to quote swap with Russia, this is ground zero. Real towns where bomb shelters loom over beaches.

I feel like I just float away from this reality.

Here in Donetsk region, diplomacy has turned dark and surreal and threatens local journalist Mikhailo's medicinal swim. What do you think about the idea of Trump and Putin meeting so far away in Alaska and deciding

the fate of a place like this. We all, people I know, will have to leave. But, frankly speaking, I don't think it's gonna happen. What Trump did wrong, he just pulled him out of the bog. Putin was just drowning in the bog. And

he took him out and said, Vladimir, I want to talk to you. I like you. He didn't care that every day Ukrainians die.

Beaches, births and deaths, they all persist in ravaged Slovyansk. They have dug the fences around it to stop a Russian military advance, but never imagined high-level diplomacy might just give their town and future away. Taisiya gave birth to Azul yesterday. The calm of her maternity ward bed now riddled

with complications she never saw coming.

Staying here has been for many an act of defiance and bravery. But for Sviatoslav and Natalia, it did not spare them pain. This is their daughter, Sofia, with her husband, Mikita, and the grandson, Lev. They moved to Kiev for safety. But 11 days ago, a horrific dawn Russian airstrike killed them and 28 others in Kiev.

Their three bodies found together in the rubble. I am here in Slavyansk, and the war reached them there. It is impossible to cope with this, you know, in a human way.

It is impossible to cope with the loss of children.

They had been due to visit days later, bringing news that Sofia was three months pregnant. Do you remember the last time you spoke?

Yes, it was at half past nine.

She was going with Lvov, she was getting ready for Slavyansk. time you spoke? to be buried on the town's outskirts, where the war permits no calm for grief. A Ukrainian jet roars overhead. At the nearest train station, Krematorsk, as many are coming as are going. Serhii was allowed two days off from his tank unit to see Tatiana, his wife. Sirens greet the Kiev train.

It's like the fourth year of the war.

What do you think?

It's hard.

It's better if she didn't come.

Calm down.

I just want my husband to come home. I don't care about the territory. I just want him to come home. I want him to be alive and come home.

Soldiers worried if they'll see their loved ones again. Families torn apart by this war. Imagine scenes like this to the thousand in the event of what seems to so many people here to be the surreal idea that a deal on Friday on the other side of the earth, almost as far away as you could possibly imagine in Alaska between an American president and a Russian

president without a Ukrainian there, could potentially give this bustling town over to the Russians after them fighting for it for so many years and failing to take it. So many lives lost here and those traumas borne out on this platform every time a train comes lives lost here and those traumas borne out on this platform every time a train comes in.