Trump Says Both Putin and Zelenskiy are Stubborn
President Donald Trump said on Friday that both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy are stubborn as he tries to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine.
Asked by reporters in the Oval Office if he believed Putin was stubborn, Trump said he had been surprised and disappointed by Russian bombing in Ukraine while he was trying to arrange a ceasefire.
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Arab News
35 minutes ago
- Arab News
Top Trump officials visit prolific Alaska oil field amid push to expand drilling
DEADHORSE, Alaska: President Donald Trump wants to double the amount of oil coursing through Alaska's vast pipeline system and build a massive natural gas project as its 'big, beautiful twin,' a top administration official said Monday while touring a prolific oil field near the Arctic Ocean. The remarks by US Energy Secretary Chris Wright came as he and two other Trump Cabinet members — Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin — visited Prudhoe Bay as part of a multiday trip aimed at highlighting Trump's push to expand oil and gas drilling, mining and logging in the state that drew criticism from environmentalists. During the trip, Burgum's agency also announced plans to repeal Biden-era restrictions on future leasing and industrial development in portions of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska that are designated as special for their wildlife, subsistence or other values. The petroleum reserve is west of Prudhoe Bay and Deadhorse, the industrial encampment near the starting point of the trans-Alaska pipeline system. The pipeline, which runs for 800 miles (nearly 1,300 kilometers), has been Alaska's economic lifeline for nearly 50 years. Government and industry representatives several Asian countries, including Japan, were expected to join a portion of the US officials' trip, as Trump has focused renewed attention on the gas project proposal, which in its current iteration would provide gas to Alaska residents and ship liquefied natural gas overseas. Matsuo Takehiko, vice minister for International Affairs at Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, was among those at Prudhoe Bay on Monday. For years, state leaders have dreamed of such a project but cost concerns, shifts in direction, competition and questions about economic feasibility have hindered progress. US tariff talks with Asian countries have been seen as possible leverage for the Trump administration to secure investments in the proposed gas project. Oil and natural gas are in significant demand worldwide, Wright told a group of officials and pipeline employees in safety hats and vests who gathered near the oil pipeline on a blustery day with 13-degree Fahrenheit (-10 Celsius) windchills. The pipeline stretched out over the snow-covered landscape. 'You have the big two right here,' he said. 'Let's double oil production, build the big, beautiful twin, and we will help energize the world and we will strengthen our country and strengthen our families.' Oil flow through the trans-Alaska pipeline peaked at about 2 million barrels in the late 1980s. In 2011 — a year in which an average of about 583,000 barrels of oil a day flowed through the pipeline, then-Gov. Sean Parnell, a Republican, set a goal of boosting that number to 1 million barrels a day within a decade. It's never come close in the years since: last year, throughput averaged about 465,000 barrels a day. The Trump officials were joined Monday by a group that included US Sen. Dan Sullivan and Gov. Mike Dunleavy, both Republicans, who also took part in meetings Sunday in Anchorage and Utqiagvik. In Utqiagvik, an Arctic community that experiences 24 hours of daylight at this time of year, many Alaska Native leaders support Trump's push for more drilling in the petroleum reserve and to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil development. They lauded the visit after lamenting that they felt ignored by former President Joe Biden's administration. Alaska political leaders have long complained about perceived federal overreach by the US government, which oversees about 60 percent of lands in Alaska. Sullivan, Dunleavy and Alaska's senior US senator, Lisa Murkowski, often complained that Biden's team was too restrictive in its approach to many resource development issues. Murkowski, an at-times vocal critic of Trump, joined for the Sunday meeting in Anchorage, where she said Alaska leaders 'want to partner with you. We want to be that equal at the table instead of an afterthought.' Environmentalists criticized Interior's planned rollback of restrictions in portions of the petroleum reserve. While Sullivan called the repeal a top priority, saying Congress intended to have development in the petroleum reserve, environmentalists maintain that the law balances allowances for oil drilling with a need to provide protections for sensitive areas and decried Interior's plans as wrong-headed. Erik Grafe, an attorney with Earthjustice, called the Trump administration's intense focus on oil and gas troubling, particularly in a state experiencing the real-time impacts of climate change. He called the continued pursuit of fossil fuel development 'very frustrating and heartbreaking to see.' The Interior Department said it will accept public comment on the planned repeal. The three Trump officials also plan to speak at Dunleavy's annual energy conference Tuesday in Anchorage.
Arab News
an hour ago
- Arab News
Ukraine and Russia agree to swap dead and wounded troops but report no progress toward ending war
ISTANBUL: Representatives of Russia and Ukraine met Monday for their second round of direct peace talks in just over two weeks, but aside from agreeing to swap thousands of their dead and seriously wounded troops, they made no progress toward ending the 3-year-old war, officials said. The talks unfolded a day after a string of stunning long-range attacks by both sides, with Ukraine launching a devastating drone assault on Russian air bases and Russia hurling its largest drone attack of the war against Ukraine. At the negotiating table, Russia presented a memorandum setting out the Kremlin's terms for ending hostilities, the Ukrainian delegation said. Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, who led the Ukrainian delegation, told reporters that Kyiv officials would need a week to review the document and decide on a response. Ukraine proposed further talks on a date between June 20 and June 30, he said. After the talks, Russian state news agencies Tass and RIA Novosti published the text of the Russian memorandum, which suggested that Ukraine withdraw its forces from the four regions that Russia annexed in September 2022 but never fully captured as a condition for a ceasefire. As an alternate way of reaching a truce, the memorandum presses Ukraine to halt its mobilization efforts and freeze Western arms deliveries, conditions were suggested earlier by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The document also suggests that Ukraine stop any redeployment of forces and ban any military presence of third countries on its soil as conditions for halting hostilities. The Russian document further proposes that Ukraine end martial law and hold elections, after which the two countries could sign a comprehensive peace treaty that would see Ukraine declare its neutral status, abandon its bid to join NATO, set limits on the size of its armed forces and recognize Russian as the country's official language on par with Ukrainian. Ukraine and the West have previously rejected all those demands from Moscow. In other steps, the delegations agreed to swap 6,000 bodies of soldiers killed in action and to set up a commission to exchange seriously wounded troops. Kyiv officials said their surprise drone attack Sunday damaged or destroyed more than 40 warplanes at air bases deep inside Russia, including the remote Arctic, Siberian and Far East regions more than 7,000 kilometers (4,300 miles) from Ukraine. The complex and unprecedented raid, which struck simultaneously in three time zones, took over a year and a half to prepare and was 'a major slap in the face for Russia's military power,' said Vasyl Maliuk, the head of the Ukrainian security service, who led its planning. Zelensky called it a 'brilliant operation' that would go down in history. The effort destroyed or heavily damaged nearly a third of Moscow's strategic bomber fleet, according to Ukrainian officials. Russia on Sunday fired the biggest number of drones — 472 — at Ukraine since its full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine's air force said, in an apparent effort to overwhelm air defenses. That was part of a recently escalating campaign of strikes in civilian areas of Ukraine. Hopes low for peace prospects US-led efforts to push the two sides into accepting a ceasefire have so far failed. Ukraine accepted the proposed truce, but the Kremlin effectively rejected it. Recent comments by senior officials in both countries indicate they remain far apart on the key conditions for stopping the war. The previous talks on May 16 in the same Turkish city were the first direct peace negotiations since the early weeks of Moscow's 2022 invasion. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the fact that the two sides met again Monday was an achievement in itself amid the fierce fighting. 'The fact that the meeting took place despite yesterday's incident is an important success in itself,' he said in a televised speech. Zelensky said during a trip to Lithuania on Monday that a new release of prisoners of war was being prepared after the Istanbul meeting. The May 16 talks also led to a swap of prisoners, with 1,000 on both sides being exchanged. During the talks, Zelensky said, the Ukrainian delegation handed over a list of nearly 400 abducted children. Russia responded by proposing to 'work on up to 10 children.' 'That's their idea of addressing humanitarian issues,' Zelensky said Monday during an online briefing with journalists. The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant in 2023 for Putin and the country's commissioner for children's rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, accusing them of abducting children from Ukraine. The head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to Putin, said Kyiv had made a 'show' out of the topic and that children would be returned if their parents or guardians could be located. Zelensky also told journalists that the Russian side said it was ready for a two- to three-day ceasefire to collect bodies from the battlefield, not a full ceasefire. 'I think they're idiots, because the whole point of a ceasefire is to prevent people from being killed in the first place. So you can see their mindset — it's just a brief pause in the war for them,' he added. The relentless fighting has frustrated US President Donald Trump's goal of bringing about a quick end to the war. A week ago, he expressed impatience with Putin as Moscow pounded Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities with drones and missiles for a third straight night. Trump said on social media that Putin 'has gone absolutely CRAZY!' Ukraine upbeat after strikes on air bases Ukraine was triumphant after targeting the distant Russian air bases. The official Russian response was muted, with the attack getting little coverage on state-controlled television. The Russia-1 television channel on Sunday evening spent a little over a minute on it with a brief Defense Ministry statement read out before images shifted to Russian drone strikes on Ukrainian positions. Zelensky said the setbacks for the Kremlin would help force it to the negotiating table, even as its pursues a summer offensive on the battlefield. 'Russia must feel what its losses mean. That is what will push it toward diplomacy,' he said Monday in Vilnius, Lithuania, meeting with leaders from the Nordic nations and countries on NATO's eastern flank. Ukraine has occasionally struck air bases hosting Russia's nuclear-capable strategic bombers since early in the war, prompting Moscow to redeploy most of them to the regions farther from the front line. Because Sunday's drones were launched from trucks close to the bases in five Russian regions, military defenses had virtually no time to prepare for them. Many Russian military bloggers chided the military for its failure to build protective shields for the bombers despite previous attacks, but the large size of the planes makes that challenging. The attacks were 'a big blow to Russian strategic air power' and exposed significant vulnerabilities in Moscow's military capabilities, said Phillips O'Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Edward Lucas, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis, called it 'the most audacious attack of the war' and 'a military and strategic game-changer.' 'Battered, beleaguered, tired and outnumbered, Ukrainians have, at minimal cost, in complete secrecy, and over vast distances, destroyed or damaged dozens, perhaps more, of Russia's strategic bombers,' he said. Front-line fighting and shelling grinds on Fierce fighting has continued along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line, and both sides have hit each other's territory with deep strikes. Russian forces shelled Ukraine's southern Kherson region, killing three people and wounding 19 others, including two children, regional officials said Monday. Also, a missile strike and shelling around the southern city of Zaporizhzhia killed five people and wounded nine others, officials said.
Al Arabiya
4 hours ago
- Al Arabiya
Ukraine-Russia talks resume as Kyiv unleashes major drone attack on Russian airbases
In this episode of Global News Today, presented by Tom Burges Watson, we report on Ukrainian and Russian delegations beginning a second round of peace talks in Istanbul, where both sides are expected to exchange proposals on how to end the three-year war. We also cover Ukraine's massive drone offensive, code-named 'Spider's Web,' which reportedly destroyed 34 percent of Russia's strategic bomber fleet. Ukrainian security services say the strike –planned for over 18 months – caused more than $7 billion in damage and left over 40 Russian bomber planes in flames. Guests: Sir Michael Fallon – Former UK Defense Secretary Yuriy Sak – Advisor to Ukraine's Ministry of Strategic Industries, formerly at the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense Ambassador Matthew Bryza – Former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia
