Peace deal must ensure its 'security', says Russia
But Russia warned that any solution of the war in Ukraine must respect "Russia's security interests", with its Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov adding that any meeting between the leaders "must be prepared very thoroughly". Face-to-face talks between Zelensky and Putin would be their first since Russia's brutal war three-and-a-half years ago. The Ukraine war, which has killed tens of thousands of people, has ground to a virtual stalemate despite a few recent Russian advances, defying Trump's push to end it.
Lavrov told state TV channel Rossiya 24 that any deal to end the conflict must ensure the rights of "Russian-speaking people who live in Ukraine." His comments came as France and Britain were co-hosting a virtual meeting of about 30 of Kyiv's allies known as the "coalition of the willing" to "keep them up to date on what was decided", President Emmanuel Macron told French news channel LCI. He added that work on setting the peace talks will start after that, hinting at Geneva as a possible location.
Macron also voiced wider European concern about Moscow's territorial ambitions, after suggestions that Ukraine could be forced to concede parts of the embattled Donbas region still under its control.
On the streets of Kyiv, there was scepticism about whether the latest talks could end the grinding conflict. "The main problem is Putin himself doesn't want it," Anton, 32, who works in a warehouse, said. "They can meet as many times as they want but Putin doesn't need it and Donald Trump doesn't really know what to do." But in Moscow, some people were more hopeful. "I hope we can agree on mutually beneficial terms," said Vyacheslav, 23, who works for the government. He added that it would have been better if the meeting between the presidents had happened "at the very beginning."
Trump, who last week held talks with Putin in Alaska, wrote on his Truth Social network after Monday's meetings that he called Putin to start planning peace talks with Zelensky. A three-way summit with both leaders would then be held, he added. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who was part of the European delegation, said Putin had agreed to the bilateral meeting within the next two weeks. Zelensky said he was "ready" to meet his bitter foe Putin and on Tuesday hailed the Washington talks as a "truly significant step toward ending the war and ensuring the security of Ukraine and our people".
In Moscow, where a Kremlin aide said that Putin was open to the "idea" of direct talks with Ukraine, Lavrov said the United States had now taken "a much deeper approach to resolving the crisis". Trump's summit with Putin last Friday failed to produce a ceasefire and, just before Monday's talks, a Russian drone strike on an apartment block in Kharkiv killed seven, including two children.
Trump, meanwhile, said he had discussed security guarantees for Ukraine and that Putin had agreed to them, despite ruling out Kyiv's long-held dream of joining the Nato alliance. The guarantees "would be provided by the various European Countries, with a coordination with the United States of America", he said.
The Financial Times said Ukraine had undertaken to buy $100 billion of US weapons financed by Europe in return for US guarantees for its security. Zelensky later spoke to reporters about a $90-billion package and said Ukraine and its allies would formalise the terms of the security guarantees within 10 days.
The presence of the European leaders, however, underscored continuing nervousness about whether Trump will pivot towards Putin as he has on a number of occasions. Trump had pushed Ukraine ahead of the meeting to give up Crimea and abandon its goal of joining Nato — both key demands made by Putin. — AFP
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Observer
19 hours ago
- Observer
Ukraine's security guarantees without Moscow 'road to nowhere'
MOSCOW: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that discussing any Western security guarantees for Ukraine without Russian involvement was a "road to nowhere". Lavrov warned that "seriously discussing security guarantees without the Russian Federation is a utopia, a road to nowhere. "We cannot agree that it is now suggested to solve collective security issues without the Russian Federation," he told reporters. President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and the ensuing conflict has killed tens of thousands of people and forced millions to flee their homes. US President Donald Trump, who spoke on Monday with his Russian counterpart, said Putin had agreed to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and accept some Western security guarantees for Ukraine. Lavrov said in their phone call, Putin had only told Trump he would "think about raising the level of" talks on Ukraine. Lavrov said any summit between Putin and Zelensky "must be prepared in the most meticulous way" so the meeting does not lead to a "deterioration" of the situation around the conflict. Lavrov also accused European leaders — some of whom also visited the White House on Monday — of making "clumsy attempts" to change the US president's position on Ukraine. "We have only seen aggressive escalation of the situation and rather clumsy attempts to change the position of the US president," he said, referring to Monday's meeting. "We did not hear any constructive ideas from the Europeans there," Lavrov added. Lavrov also said the West's "confrontational position, a position to continue the war, does not find understanding in the current US administration, which... seeks to help eliminate the root causes of the conflict". Post-war security is a key concern for Ukraine after more than three years of the Russian offensive. Moscow has long said it will not tolerate Kyiv joining Nato and has been hostile to the idea of Western troops being deployed to the war-torn country. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday informed his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin by phone that Türkiye would support a process involving "all parties" for peace in Ukraine, the Turkish presidency said. Erdogan told Putin that "Türkiye has sincerely strived for a just peace since the beginning of the war, and in this context, supports approaches aimed at establishing lasting peace with the participation of all parties," his office said in a statement. Türkiye, which enjoys friendly ties with both its Black Sea neighbours, has hosted three rounds of peace talks between Ukraine and Russia since May. Ankara has often insisted on the protection of Ukraine's territorial integrity while shying away from Western sanctions on Russia. The pair discussed "Türkiye's contribution to the peace process, as one of Nato's most important countries" and agreed to remain on close coordination, according to the presidency. They also exchanged views on feasible and sustainable security guarantees, the statement said, without further elaboration. Nato military chiefs were set to discuss the details of eventual security guarantees for Ukraine. But even as diplomatic efforts continued on Wednesday, Russian forces claimed fresh advances on the ground and Ukrainian officials reported more deaths from Moscow's missiles. Few details have leaked on the virtual meeting of military chiefs from Nato's 32 member countries, which is due to start at 2:30 pm. But on Tuesday evening, top US officer Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, held talks with European military chiefs on the "best options for a potential Ukraine peace deal," a US defence official said. Russia's defence ministry said on Wednesday that its troops had captured the villages of Sukhetske and Pankivka in the embattled Donetsk region. They are near a section of the front where the Russian army broke through Ukrainian defences last week, between the logistics hub of Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka. Russian glide bombs hit housing in the eastern Ukrainian town of Kostiantynivka overnight, trapping as many as four people under rubble, said the town's military administration chief Sergiy Gorbunov. Zelensky said these latest strikes showed "the need to put pressure on Moscow", including through sanctions. — AFP
Observer
a day ago
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Negotiation vs extortion
As anyone who caught even a bit of the day's news knows, President Donald Trump, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and the leaders of Nato, the European Union, Britain and several European countries spent Monday at the White House negotiating a possible land swap and security guarantees that could end the Russian-Ukrainian war. But did they really? Let's think about the word 'negotiating'. All wars end with it, according to the popular saying, but rarely does the aggressor come to the table demanding territory that it doesn't actually control. Usually, the belligerents discuss which military gains should be formalised and which should be reversed. Vladimir Putin, however, has consistently demanded more land than his military has been able to bring under its control in the three and a half years since Russia's full-scale war began. During his summit with Trump in Alaska on Friday, Putin appears to have made a small concession: He is still demanding more land than he has occupied, but not as much as he used to demand. But less is still more. So let's talk about 'land swap'. This phrase seems to refer to Putin's offer to take a piece of Ukraine in exchange for not threatening an even bigger piece of Ukraine. This is not what we normally think of as a swap. It's what we think of as extortion. Let's also talk about the word 'land', or 'territory', which the leaders gathered at the White House on Monday used a lot. Zelensky referred to a map Trump apparently provided to facilitate discussion of 'territory'. Trump promised to get him a copy. But 'territory' is not an outline on a map. It's cities and towns and villages where people still live — even near the front line, even now. Before the full-scale war, the populations of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the two Ukrainian cities on land Putin is demanding, were 200,000 and 100,000, respectively. We don't know how many people live there now — some people surely fled, some came from occupied territories, some died — but the number is almost certainly tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of people. To propose to cede the land to Russia is to propose either subjecting those residents to Russian occupation — which in other cities has involved summary executions, detentions and torture — or displacing them forcibly. Either would be a crime — a crime in which Trump is asking Zelensky to become an accomplice. This kind of negotiation-through-extortion is not unprecedented. In February 1945, the leaders of the Soviet Union, the United States and Britain met in Yalta — then a city in Soviet Ukraine, now a city in Russian-occupied Crimea — to negotiate the end of World War II. Among other things, Josef Stalin wanted the Kuril Islands, which stretched from Soviet Kamchatka to the coast of Japan. Franklin D Roosevelt and Winston Churchill agreed to let the Soviets have the Kurils. The islands weren't theirs to give — the Kurils belonged to Japan — but they were theirs to take. Six months later, Soviet troops, with significant support from the US military, took control of the islands and deported the Japanese residents. The Soviet troops had gone to Alaska to train for the operation. That military operation began on August 18, 1945, exactly 80 years before Trump met with Zelensky at the White House. Putin, who is a history buff and, more important, has for years been floating the idea of a second Yalta Conference, is certainly mindful of the date and the historical rhyme. More than 80 years after Yalta, no peace treaty exists between Japan and Russia. World War II never officially ended for these two countries, because Japan never ceded the Kuril Islands. All wars may end in negotiations, but not all negotiations end wars. The 20th century offers another example of extorting land. In 1938, Adolf Hitler demanded Sudetenland, a part of Czechoslovakia where ethnic Germans made up a significant percentage of the population. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain negotiated the surrender of the land, without involving Czechoslovakia. The higher purpose of those negotiations was security and peace for the rest of Europe. Less than a year after Czechoslovakia was forced to cede Sudetenland, however, Hitler attacked Poland and World War II began. That was the last war of aggression on the European continent until Putin attacked Ukraine. Hitler claimed that he, too, was fighting for peace and this was why he had no choice but to annex Sudetenland: 'I have made these tremendous efforts to further the peace, but I am not willing to stand any more attacks by Czechoslovakia'. In 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, Putin effectively reprised a speech Hitler made before annexing Sudetenland, saying that his hand, too, was forced and 'Most importantly, we want peace and harmony to reign in Ukraine'. Which brings me to the subject of security guarantees. The last time Zelensky mentioned those in the White House, he got thrown out. This time, Trump acknowledged that any peace agreement must include security guarantees for Ukraine; during the Monday meeting, he even claimed that Putin agreed that such guarantees were necessary. But what could those be? Putin has said that Ukraine is a historical mistake, that there is no such thing as a Ukrainian nation or a Ukrainian language. How could anyone guarantee Ukraine's safety against a nuclear-armed neighbour who thinks Ukraine shouldn't exist? The only plausible answer would be membership in Nato or its equivalent — an agreement that would obligate the Western alliance, or whatever is left of it, to defend Ukraine to the full extent of its abilities. Putin has consistently cited the very possibility of such an agreement as the 'root cause' of his war against Ukraine. It is a safe bet that Putin will reject any agreement that involves a real promise of security for Ukraine. And that brings me to the number 'six' — something Trump kept invoking on Monday, when he claimed that he had resolved that many wars in his first seven months in office. The conflicts he is taking credit for resolving seem to be the ones between Congo and Rwanda (little evidence that it's over); Egypt and Ethiopia (ditto); India and Pakistan (there is evidence of very little US involvement); Kosovo and Serbia (same); Armenia and Azerbaijan (ditto, but the sides did go to the White House to sign an agreement); Cambodia and Thailand (US-backed talks resulted in a ceasefire, not necessarily an end to the conflict); Israel and Iran (Trump claims to have prevented a nuclear war by dropping bunker-busting bombs). That's actually seven. But also, none. — The New York Times Masha GessennThe author is a Russian and American journalist, author and translator
Observer
2 days ago
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Peace deal must ensure its 'security', says Russia
PARIS: Russia said on Tuesday that any deal on Ukraine should ensure its own security and that of Russians in Ukraine, as Kyiv's allies met to discuss possible peace talks, after suggestions that Volodymyr Zelensky could sit down with Vladimir Putin. Hopes of a breakthrough rose when the Ukrainian president and European leaders met in Washington on Monday with US President Donald Trump, who said he had also spoken by phone with his Russian counterpart. But Russia warned that any solution of the war in Ukraine must respect "Russia's security interests", with its Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov adding that any meeting between the leaders "must be prepared very thoroughly". Face-to-face talks between Zelensky and Putin would be their first since Russia's brutal war three-and-a-half years ago. The Ukraine war, which has killed tens of thousands of people, has ground to a virtual stalemate despite a few recent Russian advances, defying Trump's push to end it. Lavrov told state TV channel Rossiya 24 that any deal to end the conflict must ensure the rights of "Russian-speaking people who live in Ukraine." His comments came as France and Britain were co-hosting a virtual meeting of about 30 of Kyiv's allies known as the "coalition of the willing" to "keep them up to date on what was decided", President Emmanuel Macron told French news channel LCI. He added that work on setting the peace talks will start after that, hinting at Geneva as a possible location. Macron also voiced wider European concern about Moscow's territorial ambitions, after suggestions that Ukraine could be forced to concede parts of the embattled Donbas region still under its control. On the streets of Kyiv, there was scepticism about whether the latest talks could end the grinding conflict. "The main problem is Putin himself doesn't want it," Anton, 32, who works in a warehouse, said. "They can meet as many times as they want but Putin doesn't need it and Donald Trump doesn't really know what to do." But in Moscow, some people were more hopeful. "I hope we can agree on mutually beneficial terms," said Vyacheslav, 23, who works for the government. He added that it would have been better if the meeting between the presidents had happened "at the very beginning." Trump, who last week held talks with Putin in Alaska, wrote on his Truth Social network after Monday's meetings that he called Putin to start planning peace talks with Zelensky. A three-way summit with both leaders would then be held, he added. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who was part of the European delegation, said Putin had agreed to the bilateral meeting within the next two weeks. Zelensky said he was "ready" to meet his bitter foe Putin and on Tuesday hailed the Washington talks as a "truly significant step toward ending the war and ensuring the security of Ukraine and our people". In Moscow, where a Kremlin aide said that Putin was open to the "idea" of direct talks with Ukraine, Lavrov said the United States had now taken "a much deeper approach to resolving the crisis". Trump's summit with Putin last Friday failed to produce a ceasefire and, just before Monday's talks, a Russian drone strike on an apartment block in Kharkiv killed seven, including two children. Trump, meanwhile, said he had discussed security guarantees for Ukraine and that Putin had agreed to them, despite ruling out Kyiv's long-held dream of joining the Nato alliance. The guarantees "would be provided by the various European Countries, with a coordination with the United States of America", he said. The Financial Times said Ukraine had undertaken to buy $100 billion of US weapons financed by Europe in return for US guarantees for its security. Zelensky later spoke to reporters about a $90-billion package and said Ukraine and its allies would formalise the terms of the security guarantees within 10 days. The presence of the European leaders, however, underscored continuing nervousness about whether Trump will pivot towards Putin as he has on a number of occasions. Trump had pushed Ukraine ahead of the meeting to give up Crimea and abandon its goal of joining Nato — both key demands made by Putin. — AFP
