From the Telegraph / Yahoo!News:
"Trump tells Ukraine: Accept Putin’s demands ‘or be destroyed’
Donald Trump demanded that Ukraine submit to Vladimir Putin’s peace terms or face destruction in an angry meeting at the White House last week, it has emerged.
The US president, who spoke with his Russian counterpart shortly before hosting Volodymyr Zelensky, warned that Putin would “destroy” Ukraine unless a peace deal was in place.
Shouting and swearing, Mr Trump threw aside Ukrainian maps of the battlefield and pressured Mr Zelensky to surrender the Donetsk region to Russia.
But he went on to deny the reports overnight and called for a ceasefire along the current front line...
Kyiv still holds about a quarter of Donetsk province. The land makes up part of the so-called “fortress belt”, a string of heavily defended towns that blocks Russia from making rapid westward advances towards the capital.
In the White House meeting, Mr Trump echoed Putin’s talking points, despite them contradicting his own recent assessment that Moscow was a “paper tiger”, European officials briefed on the meeting told the Financial Times.
The US president told Mr Zelensky he was losing the war and said: “If [Putin] wants, he will destroy you.”
He was supported by Steve Witkoff, his envoy, who was among those most aggressively urging Ukraine to give up Donetsk, claiming that the region – as well as Luhansk – has a significant Russian-speaking population.
On his return to Washington on Sunday, Mr Trump told reporters on board Air Force One that the two sides “should just stop at the lines where they are, the battle lines”.
He denied that the meeting with Mr Zelensky descended into a shouting match, describing it as “cordial”..."
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More from Reuters, Oct 20, 2025:
"Trump urged Ukraine's Zelenskiy to make concessions to Russia in tense meeting, sources say
..."It was pretty bad," one of the sources said of the meeting. "The message was, 'Your country will freeze, and your country will be destroyed'" if Ukraine doesn't make a deal with Russia.
A separate source denied that Trump said Ukraine would be "destroyed."
Both sources said, however, that Trump resorted to profanity several times.
Two sources had the impression that Trump was influenced by a Thursday call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. During that call, according to The Washington Post, Putin proposed a territorial swap in which Ukraine would cede the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in return for small parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
One of the sources said that U.S. officials proposed precisely that swap to Zelenskiy on Friday.
Ukrainians see major strategic value in the portion of Donetsk and Luhansk that they still hold — they believe giving up that territory would make the rest of Ukraine much more vulnerable to Russian offensives, said one of the people briefed about the meeting. That source argued that giving up western Donetsk and Luhansk would amount to an act of "suicide."
Two of the sources said U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff was among those who most aggressively urged the Ukrainians to agree to Russia's swap proposal. Witkoff mentioned that Donetsk and Luhansk have significant Russian-speaking populations, one of the sources said, a point he has made publicly before..."
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By the same "logic", the USA should cede to Mexico the territories where many residents speak Spanish.
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