WASHINGTON—President Trump is dispatching Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to Ukraine to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky, as Trump tries to end the nearly three-year-old war. “This War MUST and WILL END SOON — Too much Death and Destruction,

US President Donald Trump suggested that Ukraine “may be Russian someday,” throwing into question the future independence of a sovereign country that, with Western backing, has defended itself against Moscow’s full-scale invasion for nearly three years.

The Ukrainian president's comment come after Russia freed an American prisoner, which US president Donald Trump described as a gesture of goodwill in a bid to end the war.

Russia will never discuss any exchanges of its territories, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday, rebuffing a proposal by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that excluding his country from talks between the U.S. and Russia about the war in Ukraine would be “very dangerous.”