Trump says he will meet with Putin in Alaska to discuss the war in Ukraine
Earlier, the President had said he will meet 'very shortly' with Mr Putin to discuss the war in Ukraine and that he will announce the location soon.
'We're going to have a meeting with Russia, start off with Russia. And we'll announce a location. I think the location will be a very popular one,' Mr Trump said.
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.
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.
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.
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BBC News
20 minutes ago
- BBC News
Why are Trump and Putin meeting in Alaska?
The US and Russia have agreed to hold a meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin next Friday, to discuss ways forward to end the war in announced the meeting last Friday, the same day of his self-imposed deadline for Russia to agree to a ceasefire or else face more US sanctions. Three rounds of talks between Russia and Ukraine held at Trump's behest this summer have yet to bring the two sides any closer to peace. Here is what we know about the meeting between the two leaders, taking place in Alaska - a former Russian territory which only became a US state in 1959. Why are Putin and Trump meeting? Trump has been pushing hard - without much success - to end the war in Ukraine. As a candidate, Trump pledged that he could end the war within 24 hours after taking office. He has also repeatedly claimed that the war "never would have happened" if he had been president at the time of Russia's month, Trump told the BBC that he was "disappointed" by grew and Trump set a 8 August deadline for Putin to agree to an immediate ceasefire or face more severe US sanctions. As the deadline hit, Trump instead announced he and Putin would meet in person on 15 August. The meeting comes after US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff held "highly productive" talks with Putin in Moscow on Wednesday, according to Trump. Is Ukraine attending the meeting? A White House official has said that Trump is willing to hold a trilateral meeting which would also include Ukrainian President Volodymyr for now, it remains a Trump-Putin summit, as initially requested by the Russian response to the news of the Alaska summit, Zelensky has said any agreements without input from Kyiv will amount to "dead decisions".And on Friday, after Trump said there would need to "be some swapping of territories" in order for Moscow and Kyiv to reach an agreement, Zelensky spoke out on Telegram."We will not reward Russia for what it has perpetrated," Zelensky wrote. "Any decisions against us, any decisions without Ukraine, are also decisions against peace."Speaking to Fox New on Sunday, US Vice-President JD Vance suggested that Zelensky could join Putin and Trump for talks at a later for now, he said it would not be "productive" for Zelensky to meet Putin ahead of Trump's meeting with the Russian leader in Alaska. "Fundamentally, the president of the United States has to be the one to bring these two together," he said. What do both sides hope to get out of it? The US president claimed on Friday that a deal "to stop the killing" is "very close". He also has reportedly floated some thoughts on what may be necessary for both sides to agree to stop the both Russia and Ukraine say they, too, want the war to end, both appear to want things that the other harshly opposes. Ukraine has been adamant that it won't accept Russian control of regions it seized, most notably Crimea. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has dismissed the idea outright. "There's nothing to talk about here. This is against our constitution," he said. So far, Putin has not budged from his territorial demands, Ukraine's neutrality and the future size of its army. Russia invaded the country, in part, over Putin's belief that Ukraine was becoming westernised and accused the Western defensive alliance, Nato, of using the country to gain a foothold to bring its troops closer to Russia's borders. The Trump administration has been attempting to sway European leaders on a ceasefire deal that would hand over swathes of Ukrainian territory to Russia, the BBC's US partner CBS News deal would allow Russia to keep control of the Crimean peninsula, and take the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, which is made up of Donetsk and Luhansk, according to sources familiar with the illegally occupied Crimea in 2014 and its forces control the majority of the Donbas the deal, Russia would have to give up the Ukrainian regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, where it currently has some military control."There'll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both," Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday. Vance, in his Fox interview, said any future deal is "not going to make anybody super happy"."You've got to make peace here… you can't finger point," he said. "The way to peace is to have a decisive leader to sit down and force people to come together." Where will Trump and Putin meet? On Friday evening, Trump posted on his social media site Truth Social that a "highly anticipated meeting" between him and Putin would take place on 15 August in the "great state of Alaska". "Further details to follow," he said. Trump had said the meeting location would be "a very popular one for a number of reasons". The exact location of their meeting in Alaska has not been released. Why did they choose a US site? The US purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867, giving a historical significance to the presidential assistant Yuri Ushakov said the location is "quite logical" and that both countries are neighbours, with the Bering Strait dividing them. "It seems quite logical for our delegation simply to fly over the Bering Strait and for such an important and anticipated summit of the leaders of the two countries to be held in Alaska."The last time Alaska took centre stage in an American diplomatic event was in March 2021, when Joe Biden's newly minted diplomatic and national security team met their Chinese counterparts in sit-down turned acrimonious, with the Chinese accusing the Americans of "condescension and hypocrisy". ANALYSIS: Why Trump-Putin relationship has souredEXPLAINER: Why did Putin's Russia invade Ukraine?VISUALS: Tracking the war in mapsGLOBAL FALLOUT: How the global economy could be impactedVERIFY: Russian attacks on Ukraine double since Trump inaugurationGROUND REPORT: On Ukraine's front line, twisted wreckage shows sanctions haven't yet stopped Russia
The Guardian
20 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Confusion over the Alaska summit shows Vladimir Putin still calls the shots
In the five months since Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy met at the Oval Office in late February, Ukrainian officials have worked hard to repair the damage of that day, which ended with the Ukrainian president being kicked out of the White House. With advice from European allies, Zelenskyy recalibrated his strategy for dealing with the Trump administration, and there was a feeling it was broadly going well. 'We managed to reset communications, to find a new language to work with Trump,' said one senior official in Kyiv a week ago. It has also seemed as if Trump's rhetoric was finally shifting as he termed Russia's bombing of Ukrainian cities 'disgusting' in recent weeks and set Vladimir Putin a deadline of last Friday to stop the war or face the imposition of crippling new sanctions. Then came envoy Steve Witkoff's visit to Moscow last Wednesday. Putin appears to have made no major concessions during the three-hour Kremlin meeting, and in return was rewarded not with debilitating sanctions but with an invitation to meet Trump in Alaska. The offer to thrash out a Ukrainian peace deal at a bilateral summit with Trump represents exactly the sort of great-power deal-making Putin has always craved. It will be his first trip to the United States since 2007, with the exception of visits to the UN. Exactly how the Alaska summit will look is still unclear, with a particularly Trumpian kind of confusion and chaos accompanying its announcement. Kyiv, European capitals and even Trump's own staff have been trying to understand what exactly was agreed in the Kremlin. The first announcements from the White House suggested Putin would meet Trump, followed by a three-way meeting between Trump, Putin and Zelenskyy. This was swiftly denied by Putin. As he put it, 'we are still far from creating the conditions' for a meeting with Zelenskyy. An aide denied that the Russian side had ever agreed to a three-way meeting. A White House source told the New York Post on Thursday that if Putin did not agree to meet Zelenskyy, the meeting with Trump would not go ahead. But a few hours later, Trump denied that: he was happy to meet Putin anyway. The back-and-forth gave the distinct impression, not for the first time, that in the relationship between Trump and Putin, it is the Russian president who calls the shots. Some administration officials later briefed US media outlets that they may invite Zelenskyy anyway, and the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said in a Sunday interview he 'hopes and assumes' that Zelenskyy will take part. For now, this does not seem likely. A senior White House official told NBC that Trump was 'open' to a trilateral summit, but was 'focusing on planning the bilateral meeting requested by president Putin'. As worrying for Kyiv as the planned format of the talks is the apparent Russian deal now on the table. The plan, as it has been reported after filtering through the Trump administration and then to European capitals, is that the Ukrainian army should unilaterally withdraw from the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk it still controls, which would presumably include the fortified military stronghold of Kramatorsk. In exchange, the Kremlin would agree to freeze the lines in other places. 'Ukrainians will not give their land to occupiers,' Zelenskyy said over the weekend, adding that handing over land to Russia would violate the Ukrainian constitution. He said any deal done without Ukraine was destined to be 'stillborn'. Zelenskyy's public posture that Ukraine will never cede land is true up to a point. Kyiv is unlikely to renounce legal claims to its own territory, but the Ukrainian elite and much of Ukrainian society is increasingly ready for a deal that would recognise Russian de facto control, perhaps for a set period of time, in exchange for ending the fighting. The main problem with such a deal has always been what kind of guarantees Ukraine would receive that Russia would not simply use a ceasefire as time to regroup before attacking again. Brief discussions earlier this year about a European peacekeeping force to police a ceasefire were quickly scaled back to a 'reassurance force' stationed far from the frontlines. Ukrainians would therefore have not much to rely on but Putin's word, which they have learned from experience not to trust. Even still, there is a significant camp in the Ukrainian political and military elite who believe that, after more than three years of war, the situation has become so dire that the country is obliged to take such a deal, simply to allow for a pause in the fighting. The problem for Kyiv is the deal Putin apparently pitched to Witkoff is significantly worse than simply freezing the lines. 'As things stand, Ukraine and Europe are on the verge of being confronted with exactly the kind of Faustian deal they feared would emerge back in February,' Sam Greene, a professor at King's College London, wrote on X. Over the past few days, Zelenskyy and his team have been rallying support among European leaders and trying to put together an alternative, European plan. Unfortunately for Kyiv, previous experience suggests Trump is unwilling or unable to exert real pressure on Putin. 'If Putin and Trump reach an agreement directly, Europe will be faced with a fait accompli. Kyiv – even more so,' said Roman Alekhin, a Russian war blogger, on Sunday. It is exactly that prospect Ukraine's leadership will be doing their utmost to prevent in the days before Friday's summit.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Vladimir Putin's brute father gouged out his mother's eye with a pitchfork 'in a fit of rage', new book claims
Vladimir Putin 's father gouged out his mother's eye with a pitchfork, it was revealed. The violent attack came when his mother Maria was just 17 and as a result of the incident in which she lost her eye, Vladimir senior was ordered to marry her. The attack was 'in a fit of rage' according to independent news outlet Proekt. The bizarre story has emerged as a new book - The Tsar in Person. How Vladimir Putin Fooled Us All - details the Kremlin despot's life, and was highlighted by Proekt. Putin's father arrived with male friends when Maria - known as Marusya - was home alone in her village in Tver region in 1928. 'Marusya didn't want to let them in,' said an account by villager Anfisa Kormilitsyna. This apparently enraged Putin's father. 'They took the pitchfork that was standing by the fence and started breaking down the gate.' 'She got scared, ran out of the house, and raced up to the fence. 'And Volodka [Vladimir senior, Putin's father] at that moment broke through the gate with the pitchfork and hit Marusya right in the face. 'In short, he accidentally gouged out her eye. 'He took her to the hospital right away. 'There, Marusya's eye was removed. 'For a girl in those days, this was a disgrace: who would marry a defective woman? 'So Marusya's mother threatened Volodka: if you don't marry, I'll put you on trial. 'So they got married. 'Marusya was very embarrassed about her glass eye later, never looked you in the face when talking, and tilted her head to the side.' She revealed Putin's wild father was notorious for terrorising teenage girls in his village. 'He liked to lift up girls' skirts and tie them in a knot over their heads,' said Anfisa. This was so the village boys 'could get a better look at the girl's knickers,' said co-author Roman Badanin. 'Putin's mother had been one-eyed since her youth because the other eye had been put out with a pitchfork in a fit of rage by the father of the future Russian leader,' said Proekt. Yet Putin has only spoken about how his parents were perfect. His mother was over 40 by the time she gave birth to the future spy and dictator, triggering rumours that he was adopted or the child of a lover. Last year he recounted: 'Never — I want to emphasise this — never did I see my father drunk. 'That never happened at all. I'm not even talking about my mother. 'I never heard a single swear word from him. Not one. Well, I'm not even talking about my mother here either.' The authors accused Putin of covering up his personal life. 'In Russia, lies and inventions have replaced truth and history,' said a story about the new book in Proekt.
