Ukraine Drone Strikes Hit Nuclear Bombers Deep Inside Russia
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Yahoo
11 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump-Putin summit in Alaska resembles a slow defeat for Ukraine
Location matters, former real estate mogul US President Donald Trump said. Moments later he announced Alaska, a place sold by Russia to the United States 158 years ago for $7.2 million, would be where Russian President Vladimir Putin tries to sell his land deal of the century, getting Kyiv to hand over chunks of land he's not yet been able to occupy. The conditions around Friday's summit so wildly favor Moscow, it is obvious why Putin leapt at the chance, after months of fake negotiation, and it is hard to see how a deal emerges from the bilateral that does not eviscerate Ukraine. Kyiv and its European allies have reacted with understandable horror at the early ideas of Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, that Ukraine cede the remainders of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in exchange for a ceasefire. Naturally, the Kremlin head has promoted the idea of taking ground without a fight, and found a willing recipient in the form of Witkoff, who has in the past exhibited a relaxed grasp of Ukrainian sovereignty and the complexity of asking a country, in the fourth year of its invasion, to simply walk out of towns it's lost thousands of men defending. It is worth pausing and reflecting on what Witkoff's proposal would look like. Russia is close to encircling two key Donetsk towns, Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka, and may effectively put Ukrainian troops defending these two hubs under siege in the coming weeks. Ceding these two towns might be something Kyiv does anyway to conserve manpower in the months ahead. The rest of Donetsk – principally the towns of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk – is a much nastier prospect. Thousands of civilians live there now, and Moscow would delight at scenes where the towns evacuate, and Russian troops walk in without a shot fired. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's rejection of ceding land early Saturday reflects the real dilemma of a commander in chief trying to manage the anger of his military and the deep-seated distrust of the Ukrainian people towards their neighbor, who continues to bombard their cities nightly. What could Ukraine get back in the 'swapping' Trump referred to? Perhaps the tiny slivers of border areas occupied by Russia in Sumy and Kharkiv regions – part of Putin's purported 'buffer zone' – but not much else, realistically. The main goal is a ceasefire, and that itself is a stretch. Putin has long held that the immediate ceasefire demanded by the United States, Europe and Ukraine for months, is impossible as technical work about monitoring and logistics must take place first. He is unlikely to have changed his mind now his troops are in the ascendancy across the eastern frontline. Europe is also wary of mirroring the failure of former UK Foreign Secretary Neville Chamberlain to stand up to Nazi Germany in 1938 – of the worthlessness of a 'piece of paper' signed by a Kremlin that has repeatedly agreed to deals in Ukraine and then simply used the pause to regroup before invading again. To his credit, Putin has made it clear what he wants from the start: all of Ukraine subjugated or occupied and a strategic reset with the US that involves it dropping Kyiv like a stone. His aide, Yury Ushakov, spoke of Alaska being a great place to talk economic cooperation between Washington and Moscow, and suggested a return summit in Russia had already been proposed. There is a risk we see bonhomie between Trump and Putin that allows the US president to tolerate more technical meetings between their staffers on the what and when of any ceasefire deal. A plan about land swaps or grabs that is wholly in Moscow's favor, might then be presented to Kyiv, with the old US ultimatums about aid and intelligence sharing being contingent on their accepting the deal that we have seen before. Cue French President Emmanuel Macron on the phone to Trump again, and around we go. Putin needs more time to continue to conquer and he is about to get it. What has changed since the last time Trump found his thinking dragged somehow back towards Russia's orbit, around the time of the Oval Office blowout with Zelensky? Two elements are there now that were absent then. Firstly, we cannot ignore that India and China – the former risking 25% tariffs in two weeks and the latter still waiting to learn what damage it'll suffer – were on the phone to the Kremlin in the past days. They might have provided some impetus for Putin to meet Trump, or at least provide more lip service to diplomacy again, and may be concerned at their energy imports being compromised by Trump's secondary sanctions. But Putin cannot have needed much persuading to agree to a formal invitation to the US to have the bilateral meeting his team have long held out as the way towards peace in Ukraine. And another sanctions deadline of Friday has just whizzed past, almost unnoticed in the kerfuffle about Alaska and land deals. Secondly, Trump claims his thinking around Putin has evolved. 'Disappointed,' 'disgusting,' 'tapping me along' are all newcomers to his lexicon about the Kremlin head. While Trump appears effortlessly able to stop himself causing genuine pain to Moscow, allowing threats and deadlines to fall lifeless around him, he is surrounded by allies and Republicans who will remind him of how far down these roads he has gone before. Much could go right. But the stage is set for something more sinister. Consider Putin's mindset for a moment. The third Trump threat of sanctions has evaporated, and his forces are moving into a period of strategic gain on the frontlines. He's got his first invitation to the US in a decade to talk peace about Ukraine without Ukraine, discussing a deal where he doesn't even have to fight to get some of the rest of the land he wants. And this is before the former KGB spy gets to work his apparent magic on Trump. Friday is six days away, but even at this distance resembles slow defeat for Kyiv. Solve the daily Crossword
Bloomberg
an hour ago
- Bloomberg
Lula, Putin Discuss Stronger Brazil-Russia Ties in Phone Call
Russian President Vladimir Putin called Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to discuss cooperation among so-called BRICS countries, whose loose alliance has been energized by US tariff policy. The two leaders reaffirmed their determination to further strengthen their countries' strategic partnership and coordination within BRICS, according to the Kremlin. Putin initiated the call, which included a discussion of his talks with the US on Ukraine and Brazil-Russia cooperation, Lula's office said in a statement.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Ukraine's Zelenskiy rejects land concessions ahead of Trump-Putin talks
By Olena Harmash and Suban Abdulla KYIV/LONDON (Reuters) -Ukraine will not cede its land, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday, rejecting U.S. suggestions that a deal with Russia could involve swapping territories as Washington and Moscow prepared for talks between their leaders on ending the war. U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Friday that he would meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Alaska on August 15, saying the parties, including Zelenskiy, were close to a deal that could resolve the three-and-a-half-year conflict. Details of the potential deal have yet to be announced, but Trump said it would involve "some swapping of territories to the betterment of both". It could require Ukraine to surrender significant parts of its territory - an outcome Kyiv and its European allies say would only encourage Russian aggression. "Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupier," Zelenskiy said in a video address, adding that Ukraine's borders were fixed in the country's constitution. "No one will deviate from this – and no one will be able to," he said. U.S. Vice President JD Vance will meet Ukrainian and European allies in Britain on Saturday to discuss Trump's push for peace, Downing Street said, adding that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer had spoken about it with Zelenskiy. "They agreed this would be a vital forum to discuss progress towards securing a just and lasting peace," the Downing Street spokesperson added. 'CLEAR STEPS NEEDED' Zelenskiy has made a flurry of calls with Ukraine's allies since Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff's visit to Moscow on Wednesday which Trump described as having achieved "great progress". "Clear steps are needed, as well as maximum coordination between us and our partners," Zelenskiy said in a post on X after his call with Starmer. "We value the determination of the United Kingdom, the United States, and all our partners to end the war." Ukraine and the European Union have pushed back on proposals that they view as ceding too much to Putin, whose troops invaded Ukraine in February 2022, citing what Moscow called threats to Russia's security from a Ukrainian pivot towards the West. Kyiv and its Western allies say the invasion is an imperial-style land grab. Moscow has previously claimed four Ukrainian regions – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – as well as the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which was annexed in 2014. Russian forces do not fully control all the territory in the four regions and Russia is demanding that Ukraine pull out its troops from the parts of all four of them that they still control. Ukraine says its troops still have a small foothold in Russia's Kursk region a year after its troops crossed the border to try to gain leverage in any negotiations. Russia said it had expelled Ukraininan troops from Kursk in April. Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, described the current peace push as "the first more or less realistic attempt to stop the war". "At the same time, I remain extremely sceptical about the implementation of the agreements, even if a truce is reached for a while. And there is virtually no doubt that the new commitments could be devastating for Ukraine," she said. Fierce fighting is raging along the more than 1,000-km (620-mile) front line along eastern and southern Ukraine, where Russian forces hold around a fifth of the country's territory. Russian troops are slowly advancing in Ukraine's east, but their summer offensive has so far failed to achieve a major breakthrough, Ukrainian military analysts say. Ukrainians remain defiant. "Not a single serviceman will agree to cede territory, to pull out troops from Ukrainian territories," Olesia Petritska, 51, told Reuters as she gestured to hundreds of small Ukrainian flags in the Kyiv central square commemorating fallen soldiers. (Additional reporting by Maxim Rodionov in London, Andrea Shalal in Washington and Dheeraj Kumar in Bengaluru; writing by Olena Harmash; editing by Philippa Fletcher) Solve the daily Crossword
