Steve Witkoff, an envoy for U.S. President Donald Trump, said Moscow has offered "some concessions" on five Ukrainian regions—Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Crimea—during last week’s Trump-Putin talks in Alaska. While describing the session as a step toward peace, Witkoff stressed that any discussion of potential land swaps was deferred to follow-up meetings scheduled for Monday. Trump echoed the upbeat tone, posting that “great progress” had been made with Russia. The remarks come ahead of the Ukrainian leader’s visit to Washington on 18 August, where Zelensky will be joined by several European heads of government for talks with the U.S. president on a U.S.-backed peace framework. In Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and President Volodymyr Zelensky rejected territorial concessions outright. “International borders cannot be changed by force,” von der Leyen said, pledging open-ended EU support and additional sanctions on Moscow if necessary. Zelensky reiterated that Ukraine’s constitution bars ceding land and that any decision on borders rests solely with Kyiv. European leaders meeting by videoconference as the so-called “coalition of volunteers” aimed to align their positions before the White House talks. French President Emmanuel Macron, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte backed Kyiv’s stance on territorial integrity while signalling willingness to explore security guarantees for Ukraine in any eventual agreement.