New Israeli settlement to split East Jerusalem from occupied West Bank
Mr Smotrich's office said the plan aims to "bury the idea of a Palestinian state", a move previously frozen since 2012 due to international objections.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reiterated his call for the "voluntary migration" of Palestinians from Gaza, a concept critics equate to ethnic cleansing.
Despite efforts to revive ceasefire talks, Mr Netanyahu's office confirmed Israel has no plans to send a negotiating team to Cairo.
Meanwhile, Israeli gunfire has killed at least 25 people seeking aid in Gaza, according to health officials and witnesses.
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Sky News
an hour ago
- Sky News
Zelenskyy prepares for fresh White House visit - as Putin issues first comments after summit
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he is preparing for his meeting with Donald Trump - as Vladimir Putin issued his first comments following the US-Russia talks on the war in Ukraine. The Ukrainian president will fly to Washington DC for the next stage of talks on Monday, which could pave the way for a three-way meeting alongside the Russian leader, Mr Trump has said. It comes following a high-profile summit between the US president and Mr Putin, held in Alaska on Friday. The US president had heavily previewed the talks, threatening sanctions for Russia should there be no agreement on a ceasefire. But a short news briefing following the summit ended with no mention of a ceasefire, no agreement on how to end the war, and little clarity about the next steps. On Saturday, Mr Trump appeared to change his stance on what he hopes to achieve from the talks, indicating he wants a permanent peace settlement rather than a ceasefire, and announced the follow-up meeting with Mr Zelenskyy. In a post on X, the Ukrainian president said he was grateful for the invitation and added: "It is important that everyone agrees there needs to be a conversation at the level of leaders to clarify all the details and determine which steps are necessary and will work." However, he said Russia had rebuffed "numerous calls for a ceasefire and has not yet determined when it will stop the killing", which "complicates the situation". Mr Zelenskyy continued: "If they lack the will to carry out a simple order to stop the strikes, it may take a lot of effort to get Russia to have the will to implement far greater - peaceful coexistence with its neighbours for decades. "But together we are working for peace and security. Stopping the killing is a key element of stopping the war." 23:24 The Ukrainian president's last visit to the White House earlier this year descended into a fiery spat with Mr Trump and his vice president JD Vance that saw him leave early. Mr Putin issued his first statement on Saturday afternoon following the Friday's summit, describing the talks as "timely and quite useful" - but said the "removal" of what he calls the "root causes" of the crisis "must underlie the settlement". He continued: "We definitely respect the US administration's position which wants the hostilities to stop as soon as possible. So do we, and we would like to move forward with settling all issues by peaceful means. "The conversation was very frank and substantive, which, in my view, moves us closer towards making necessary decisions." In calls on Saturday, Mr Trump told Mr Zelenskyy that the Russian leader had offered to freeze frontlines elsewhere if Kyiv agreed to withdraw from the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, a person familiar with the matter told the Reuters news agency. US envoy Steve Witkoff told Ukraine's leader that Mr Putin had said there could be no ceasefire without this, and that the Russian president could pledge not to launch any new aggression against Ukraine as part of an arrangement. Meanwhile, European leaders who make up the "coalition of the willing" are set to hold a conference call tomorrow ahead of the crunch talks between Mr Trump and Mr Zelenskyy. In a statement on Saturday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the US leader's efforts had "brought us closer than ever before to ending Russia's illegal war in Ukraine" and that his leadership "in pursuit of an end to the killing should be commended". He said he supported the next phase of talks, but added: "In the meantime, until (Putin) stops his barbaric assault, we will keep tightening the screws on his war machine with even more sanctions."
Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
US halts visas for Gazans after Loomer highlights their arrival at airports
The US has halted all visitor visas for people from Gaza after Laura Loomer, the far-Right activist, shared videos allegedly showing evacuees from the wartorn enclave arriving at US airports. 'All visitor visas for individuals from Gaza are being stopped while we conduct a full and thorough review of the process and procedures used to issue a small number of temporary medical-humanitarian visas in recent days,' the US state department wrote in a statement posted on X. On Friday, Ms Loomer, a Maga loyalist, posted several times about Heal Palestine, a humanitarian aid group, allegedly facilitating the evacuation of Gazans injured by Israeli forces to the US for medical treatment. According to its website, the NGO has helped evacuate 148 people from Gaza, including 63 injured children. It claims to have carried out the largest single medical evacuation of injured children from Gaza to the US in July. This included 11 critically injured children, with their caregivers and siblings. Among those evacuated were Seba, 12, who lost both legs in a school bombing and Anas, eight, who is the sole survivor of a bombing that killed his entire family. Ms Loomer took credit for the state department's halt on medical humanitarian visas for Gazans on Saturday, saying it had been in response to the 'release of my reports yesterday exposing flights of Gazans arriving at airports all across the US'. Writing on X, Ms Loomer said: 'The Trump administration needs to shut this abomination down ASAP before a family member of one of these Gazans goes rogue and kills Americans for Hamas.' She also called for those responsible for approving humanitarian visas to the children and their families to be fired. Her posts were picked up by some pro-Israel Republicans. 'Deeply concerned about the incoming flights – including to Texas – allegedly filled with folks from Gaza as reported by @LauraLoomer. Inquiring,' Congressman Chip Roy wrote on Friday. Florida Republican Randy Fine said: 'Massive credit needs to be given to @LauraLoomer for uncovering this and making me and other officials aware.' The US government halting visas for children injured in Gaza comes amid continued outrage over the conditions faced by those in Gaza. A baby girl and her parents were reportedly killed by an Israeli airstrike on Saturday, according to Nasser hospital officials and witnesses. Motasem al-Batta, his wife and the girl were killed in their tent in the crowded Muwasi area. Israel's military says it is dismantling Hamas' military capabilities and takes precautions not to harm civilians. Muwasi is one of the heavily populated areas in Gaza where Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said his forces plan to widen the coming military offensive. The mobilisation of forces is expected to take weeks, and Israel may be using the threat to pressure Hamas into releasing more hostages. It comes as the United Nations was warned that levels of starvation and malnutrition in Gaza were at their highest since the war began. Palestinians are reportedly drinking contaminated water as diseases spread, while some Israeli leaders continue to talk openly about the mass relocation of people from Gaza. Another 11 malnutrition-related deaths occurred in Gaza over the past 24 hours, the territory's Hamas-run health ministry said on Saturday, bringing the malnutrition-related deaths during the war to 251. The UN and partners say getting aid into the territory of more than two million people, and then on to distribution points, remains highly challenging with Israeli restrictions and pressure from crowds of hungry Palestinians. The UN human rights office claims at least 1,760 people were killed while seeking aid between May 27 and last Wednesday.
The Sun
3 hours ago
- The Sun
Putin has laid cunning trap that makes Zelensky's White House visit a minefield… Russian leader knows the peace he wants
AT first sight, Friday's summit meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin came to no clear conclusion. But the Russian leader has cunningly laid a trap, hoping that Volodymyr Zelensky is the one to say 'No' to President Trump's peace plan. 3 3 Since Alaska, Trump has shifted from demanding an immediate ceasefire to calling for immediate and full peace agreement. This is what Putin wants — to bounce Zelensky into a take-it-or-leave-it deal. But what would peace be like? To be sure, Putin knows what he means by peace — Ukraine surrenders to his key demands. Kyiv gives up a swathe of territory to Russia. It abandons any hope of integrating into Western institutions such as Nato or the EU. And it disarms so it cannot repeat the tough fight it has put up since February 2022, in case Russia decides to re-invade. In the meantime, sanctions on Russia are lifted and the Kremlin gets back its $300billion assets frozen in the West. A fast-tracked peace deal means Ukraine agreeing to complicated things such as who gets what territory, to what kind of country it will be internally. Putin wants to keep the Crimea peninsula plus the four southern regions which his army occupies. He might swap a slither of land for the tiny bit of Russia's Kursk region which Ukraine's army holds, but he will never give up Crimea. Crimea is a floating aircraft carrier and naval base which would give the Kremlin dominance of the Black Sea. Its surrounding waters hold huge oil and gas reserves which can only be exploited once the fighting stops. Trump-Putin latest- Don says 'no deal' on Ukraine war & holds call with Zelensky after saying it's now 'up to him' Seizing Crimea without a shot in 2014 was a huge boost to Putin's prestige at home. Similarly, the western part of the Donetsk region is a fortress which blocks any future Russian grab into the heart of Ukraine. Putin is prepared, apparently, to make superficial concessions in other places to get the Ukrainians out of that key strategic area. Although it sounds like a swap, in reality Putin is prepared to give up his claim to places he doesn't fully control such as the cities of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — though not the nuclear power station there — in return for Zelensky handing over places in Donetsk which the Ukrainian army still holds. Annexing this key region would be an achievement he's been unable to achieve in years of fighting. Putin also wants to reverse many of the changes Ukrainians voted for in the past ten years. Most of all, he wants Zelensky out of office. As the hero of Ukraine's resistance, he is Putin's biggest bugbear. That makes Zelensky's visit to Washington tomorrow such a minefield for him. Zelensky needs to avoid the kind of Oval Office ambush he faced in February when he had a shouting match with US leaders. To be fair, Trump looks likely to offer Ukraine carrots to make any concessions to Russia easier to swallow. Already, Washington has got the Ukrainians to agree to an economic partnership worth up to $500billion to develop the country's mineral and rare earth resources. Trump sold that deal by saying it would be worthwhile for Ukraine to share 50 per cent of the profits with America because Putin wouldn't reinvade if US companies' assets were in the line of fire. Well, that didn't stop him in 2022. But that selling point goes to the heart of what Ukraine sees as an acceptable peace settlement. Zelensky wants the US to guarantee any agreement with Russia will be kept. It has to be a cast-iron guarantee like Nato's promise to defend each member's territory if it is attacked. Ukrainians remember how Bill Clinton and John Major persuaded them to hand over the Soviet nuclear missiles on their territory to Russia in 1994 in return for a guarantee of their borders. We know what that piece of paper was worth. Keir Starmer and his European partners say they are a 'coalition of the willing' ready to put troops on the ground to enforce any deal that Trump and Putin concoct. But without US involvement that force would be a paper tiger. Think back to how pathetic the European peacekeepers were in the Balkans in the 1990s until the US cavalry came over the horizon to stop the wars in ex-Yugoslavia. Trump knows his voters are bitterly opposed to US boots on the ground in foreign danger zones. Putin and Zelensky both know Trump is a man in a hurry. Got what he wanted They are at war but it is the President who wants a deal most urgently. Trump sees himself as a peacemaker worthy of the Nobel Prize. To be fair he has knocked heads together between smaller, weaker states like Armenia and Azerbaijan. But Putin's Russia sees itself as a global superpower. Putin got what he wanted on Friday when Trump treated him as an equal partner. The devil will be in the details of any peace deal. Putin is a master of detail. Trump is a master of ceremonies, lavishing attention on the media image of signing deals. Zelensky has to tread very carefully. A weekend is a very short time to prepare a peace to end three brutal years of war. Meeting 'a big win for Vlad' By Michael Hamilton VLADIMIR Putin will feel emboldened after the summit in the US, a former top military intelligence officer is warning. Colonel Philip Ingram said he feared Kremlin's tyrant had come out on top after the Alaska talks. The security and terror analyst added: 'This is a big win for Putin. His body language afterwards showed he had achieved more than Trump. 'Donald Trump was treating this as a business transaction, and wanted a quick victory. 'But Putin is tickling the fish and playing a longer game.' He warned it would be alarming to Ukraine but stressed that, importantly, the US had not made any concessions. Ship blitz same time as talks By Michael Hamilton UKRAINE blitzed a supply ship it said was carrying drone components to Russia as Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin met. Kyiv's forces carried out the long-range drone attack, striking the vessel at a port north of the Caspian Sea hours before the summit at a US military base in Anchorage. Pictures showed a partly sunken ship at Olya, near Astrakhan, about 500 miles from the front line of the war. Ukraine commanders yesterday claimed credit for the attack. They said the ship, the Port Olya-4, was 'loaded with components' for drones and 'ammunition from Iran'. And they called the port an 'important logistics hub for the supply of military goods'. The General Staff said the army had also bombed an oil refinery on the Volga River in Russia overnight on Friday. Meanwhile Russia continued to launch attacks inside Ukraine as the summit got under way. Ukrainian officials said 24 Russian drones had struck 12 locations inside the country, and they had carried on throughout the Trump-Putin talks. Yesterday, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said: 'On the day of the negotiations, the Russians are killing as well — and that speaks volumes. 'Everyone needs a just end to the war. 'Russia must end the war that it started and that has been dragging on for years.' Russia breached Ukrainian defences in the eastern Donbas region where Moscow is focusing its attacks. Its soldiers advanced by six miles from the front into Donetsk province. On Friday, troops from Kyiv's elite Azov Corps were leading attempts to head off the Russian infiltration.
