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Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday warned against capitulating to the demands of president Vladimir Putin ahead of talks Friday between the Russian leader and US president Donald Trump.

The US-Russia summit — so far planned without Zelensky — will be the first between a sitting US and Russian president since 2021.

Kyiv is concerned that Trump and Putin could strike a deal requiring Ukraine to cede territory to Russia.

‘Russia refuses to stop the killings, and therefore must not receive any rewards or benefits. And this is not just a moral position — it is a rational one,’ Zelensky wrote in a statement published on social media.

‘Concessions do not persuade a killer,’ he added.

EU foreign ministers are to hold talks on Monday to discuss Friday’s summit with many fearing any deal made without Ukraine could force unacceptable compromises.

Russia, which invaded Ukraine in early 2022, has been making costly but steady advances across the sprawling front line, and claimed to have captured the village of Fedorivka in the eastern Donetsk region.

Both sides have meanwhile stepped up aerial assaults, with Ukraine claiming to have hit a facility that produces missile components in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region. Local authorities said one person was killed in the attack and two were wounded.

Meanwhile, the United States was working to ‘schedule’ a meeting between Trump and his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts, vice president JD Vance said in comments broadcast Sunday, as Ukraine’s European allies pushed for Kyiv’s presence at the US-Russia summit in Alaska this week.

‘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 programme ‘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.