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Daily Record
22 minutes ago
- Daily Record
Police Scotland ‘planning' for US vice president visit as he holidays in UK
Mr Vance and his family are thought to be planning a visit to Ayrshire but would not stay at Mr Trump's Turnberry resort. Scottish police are thought to be on notice for a visit by the US vice president, who is on holiday in the UK with his family. JD Vance's unconfirmed appearance north of the border would follow president Donald Trump's five-day trip last month, when he hosted Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer at his golf resorts at Turnberry in South Ayrshire and Menie in Aberdeenshire. Mr Vance is holidaying in the Cotswolds but travelled to the Foreign Secretary's Chevening House retreat in Kent on Friday, where the Republican joined David Lammy carp fishing at the countryside estate. A Police Scotland spokesperson said: 'Planning is under way for a potential visit to Scotland by the vice president of the United States. 'Details of any visit would be for the White House to comment on, however, it is important that we prepare in advance for what would be a significant policing operation.' Mr Vance and his family are thought to be planning a visit to Ayrshire but would not stay at Mr Trump's Turnberry resort, according to Sky News. In Kent, Mr Vance said he had a 'love' for the UK but joked he had committed a diplomatic faux pas as he began his holiday. 'Unfortunately, the one strain on the special relationship is that all of my kids caught fish, but the Foreign Secretary did not,' he said. He described Mr Lammy as a 'very, very gracious host'. Mr Trump's visit to Scotland ended less than two weeks ago, after he met with both Sir Keir and First Minister John Swinney.


Times
22 minutes ago
- Times
Ukraine may have to swap some territories with Russia, Trump says
Ukraine must accept some 'swapping' of territory, President Trump has said after President Putin demanded the eastern region of Donetsk as the price for ending the war. The US president told President Zelensky to 'get ready to sign something' as he piled pressure on Ukraine to cede land. Speaking at the White House, where he announced a truce between Azerbaijan and Armenia, Trump confirmed he would meet Putin in the coming days and said the venue for the summit would be announced 'very soon'. 'There'll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both,' he said. Trump's comments came after Putin relaxed his initial demand to annex the five eastern-Ukrainian provinces of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea. During a meeting in Moscow this week, the Russian president told Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy, that he would settle for Donetsk in addition to the captured provinces of Crimea and Luhansk, officials briefed on the call told the Wall Street Journal. Ukraine would have to withdraw its troops from Donetsk, and Crimea would be recognised as sovereign Russian territory, according to the report. In exchange, Russia would commit to a full ceasefire. Ukraine still controls about one quarter of Donetsk, a coal-rich province that has been the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of the war. Under Putin's proposal, Zelensky would have to withdraw his troops entirely from Donetsk, abandoning Ukraine's layered defences and potentially leaving Kyiv vulnerable to further attacks. Trump said the two sides were 'close' to a deal. 'Putin, I believe, wants to see peace,' he said. Flanked by Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, and Nikol Pashinyan, the prime minister of Armenia, Trump announced a separate peace deal ending the protracted conflict between the two ex-Soviet neighbours. The two countries have been locked in a dispute over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Historically, Nagorno-Karabakh had a majority ethnic Armenian population despite being located within Azerbaijan's borders. But in 2023, Azerbaijan effectively annexed Nagorno-Karabakh after a blitzkrieg offensive, expelling more than 100,000 Armenians. Armenia, which is predominantly Christian, has accused Azerbaijan, which is largely Muslim, of ethnic cleansing. The US peace proposal includes a 27-mile-long road — dubbed the 'Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity'— to connect Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan, its enclave in southern Armenia. At a White House signing ceremony, Trump claimed victory not only in resolving the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, but also in negotiating an end to fighting between India and Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, Thailand and Cambodia, and Serbia and Kosovo. Asked whether he was hoping to win the Nobel peace prize, Trump said: 'I'm not doing it for that … I want to save lives.'

South Wales Argus
an hour ago
- South Wales Argus
Trump says he will meet with Putin ‘very shortly' to discuss the war in Ukraine
'We're going to be announcing later, and we're going to have a meeting with Russia,' Mr Trump told reporters at the White House. Those comments came as Ukrainian soldiers on the battlefield expressed little hope for a diplomatic solution to the war and Mr Trump's deadline arrived on Friday for the Kremlin to make peace. Exasperated that Mr Putin did not heed his calls to stop bombing Ukrainian cities, Mr Trump almost two weeks ago moved up his ultimatum to impose additional sanctions on Russia and introduce secondary tariffs targeting countries that buy Russian oil if the Kremlin did not move toward a settlement. President Donald Trump (Mark Schiefelbein/AP) Mr Trump's efforts to pressure Mr Putin into stopping the fighting have so far delivered no progress. Russia's bigger army is slowly advancing deeper into Ukraine at great cost in troops and armour while it relentlessly bombards Ukrainian cities. Russia and Ukraine are far apart on their terms for peace. Ukrainian forces are locked in intense battles along the 620-mile front line that snakes from north-east to south-east Ukraine. The Pokrovsk area of the eastern Donetsk region is taking the brunt of punishment as Russia seeks to break out into the neighbouring Dnipropetrovsk region. Ukraine has significant manpower shortages. Intense fighting is also taking place in Ukraine's northern Sumy border region, where Ukrainian forces are engaging Russian soldiers to prevent reinforcements being sent from there to Donetsk. Russian president Vladimir Putin (Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP) In the Pokrovsk area of Donetsk, a commander said he believes Moscow is not interested in peace. 'It is impossible to negotiate with them. The only option is to defeat them,' Buda, a commander of a drone unit in the Spartan Brigade, told The Associated Press. He used only his call sign, in keeping with the rules of the Ukrainian military. 'I would like them to agree and for all this to stop, but Russia will not agree to that. It does not want to negotiate. So the only option is to defeat them,' he said. In the southern Zaporizhzhia region, a howitzer commander using the call sign Warsaw, said troops are determined to thwart Russia's invasion. 'We are on our land, we have no way out,' he said. 'So we stand our ground, we have no choice.' The Kremlin said that Mr Putin had a phone call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, during which the Russian leader informed Mr Xi about the results of his meeting earlier this week with Trump envoy Steve Witkoff. Kremlin officials said Mr Xi 'expressed support for the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis on a long-term basis.' Mr Putin is due to visit China next month. China, along with North Korea and Iran, have provided military support for Russia's war effort, the US says. Indian prime minister Narendra Modi said on X that he also had a call with Mr Putin to speak about the latest Ukraine developments. Mr Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday to place an additional 25% tariff on India for its purchases of Russian oil, which the American president says is helping to finance Russia's war. Mr Putin's calls followed his phone conversations with the leaders of South Africa, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Belarus, the Kremlin said.