Trump, Zelenskyy clash again and U.S. warns it could abandon Ukraine talks
By Doina Chiacu, Elizabeth Piper and John Irish
U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy clashed again on Wednesday on efforts to end the three-year-old war in Ukraine, with the U.S. leader chiding Zelenskyy for refusing to recognize Russia's occupation of Crimea.
Trump's Vice President JD Vance said it was time for Russia and Ukraine to either agree to a U.S. peace proposal "or for the United States to walk away from the process," echoing a warning Trump gave last week.
Speaking to reporters in India, Vance said the proposal called for freezing territorial lines "at some level close to where they are today" and a "long-term diplomatic settlement that hopefully will lead to long-term peace."
"The only way to really stop the killing is for the armies to both put down their weapons, to freeze this thing," he said.
A former Western official familiar with the U.S. proposal said it also called for the recognition of Russia's annexation of Crimea.
Zelenskyy's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said on Wednesday in an X post that he stressed to the U.S. in London that Ukraine "will stand firm on its core principles during the negotiations" that relate to sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Zelenskyy on Tuesday reiterated that Ukraine will not recognize Russia's annexation of Crimea, saying: "There's nothing to talk about here. This is against our constitution."
Trump, who argued with Zelenskyy in a televised Oval Office meeting in March, called this an inflammatory statement that made a peace deal harder to achieve.
The U.S. president said Crimea was lost years ago "and is not even a point of discussion."
"Nobody is asking Zelenskyy to recognize Crimea as Russian Territory but, if he wants Crimea, why didn't they fight for it eleven years ago when it was handed over to Russia without a shot being fired?" Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Russian fighters seized control of the Crimean peninsula in 2014 in a move that was condemned internationally. Few countries recognize Russia's claim to Crimea.
Trump scolded the Ukrainian leader and said the U.S. was trying to stop the killing in his country and that they were "very close to a deal" for peace.
Since taking office in January, Trump has sharply altered the U.S. approach, pressing Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire while easing many measures the Biden administration took to punish Russia for its 2022 full-scale invasion of its neighbor.
Nevertheless, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said after Wednesday's talks, Kyiv was committed to working with the U.S. to achieve peace.
RUBIO CANCELS LONDON TRIP
Earlier, U.S., Ukrainian and European officials met in London for peace talks aimed at ending the three-year war. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio canceled his trip there, raising questions over how much progress was being made.
Rubio's no-show prompted cancelation of a broader meeting with foreign ministers from Ukraine, Britain, France and Germany, underscoring the gaps between Washington, Kyiv and its European allies over how to bring an end to the war.
Trump has warned Washington could walk away if there was no progress on a deal soon. He raised the pressure on Sunday when he said he hoped Moscow and Kyiv would make a deal this week to end the conflict.
At the heart of Wednesday's talks was an attempt to establish what Kyiv could possibly accept after Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff presented proposals to a similar session in Paris last week. Three diplomats said those proposals appeared to demand more concessions from Ukraine than Russia.
A spokesperson for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer played down any disappointment over Rubio's abrupt cancellation and said the talks involved "substantive technical meetings with European, U.S. and Ukrainian officials on how to stop the fighting."
"We remain absolutely committed to securing a just and lasting peace in Ukraine and these talks today are an important part of that," the spokesperson said.
One official close to the negotiations said progress was being made.
Since Trump expressed his desire to broker peace in Ukraine and made a surprise call to Russian President Vladimir Putin in February, European nations have scrambled to find ways to support Kyiv against Moscow while keeping the U.S. onside.
But Witkoff's proposals, which several sources have said included recognizing Russia's annexation of Crimea, Washington beginning to lift sanctions on Russia and ruling out Ukrainian membership of NATO, were unacceptable to both Kyiv and other European nations.
Sources said U.S. proposals include Ukraine and the Europeans accepting Russia's control of the 20% of Ukraine's territory that it has gained in the war. Russia is pushing for lifting of EU sanctions against it before negotiations are finished, which Europe staunchly opposes, diplomats said.
A source close to the discussions said the downgrading of the parley came after Ukraine drafted a paper for the Europeans on Tuesday in which it said there would be no discussions on territorial issues until "a full and unconditional ceasefire".
© Thomson Reuters 2025.
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Japan Times
2 hours ago
- Japan Times
Cashing in on his comeback, Trump rescues frail finances
Last spring, even as Donald Trump's march back toward the White House dominated public attention, his finances, largely out of view, faced serious threats. His office building in lower Manhattan generated too little cash to cover its mortgage, with the balance coming due. Many of his golf courses regularly lacked enough players to cover costs. The flow of millions of dollars a year from his stint as a television celebrity had mostly dried up. And a sudden wave of legal judgments threatened to devour all his cash. Then, with his clinching of the Republican nomination, everything began to change. In the following months, Trump, along with his two eldest sons, Eric and Donald Jr., refocused the family business, forming a series of partnerships, especially in cryptocurrency, with investors who were willing to bank on his victory. Once Trump won the presidency in November, that approach kicked into overdrive. His family business announced numerous new deals that would financially benefit Trump directly, even as he made policy decisions that affected those industries or that involved countries in which the United States had political interests. Most glaringly, Trump is now both a partner in several crypto ventures and, as president, crypto's chief policy regulator, and he has signaled that he wants his administration to have a hands-off approach to digital currencies. Today, those moves are seen by Trump's detractors as a money grab of historic proportions. But an analysis by The New York Times of thousands of pages of internal Trump Organization documents filed in one of the legal actions against him suggests a more urgent motivation for Trump's behavior: a need, rather than simply a desire, for easy money to keep his empire intact. In late 2023, Trump boasted of having between $300 million and $400 million in cash when he testified as part of that legal action, a lawsuit brought by the New York attorney general that accused the Trumps of defrauding their lenders. His cash stockpile, Trump said, showed "how good a company I built,' and, he added in earlier testimony, "especially for a developer.' Contrary to those assertions, records filed in the fraud case suggest that Trump's cash was not the product of a steady and strong empire. His balance had fluctuated wildly, hitting a low of $52 million in 2018, a small figure for the size of his operation. The subsequent increase came largely from the sale of properties and a payout of more than $150 million from a passive investment. Moreover, the version of Trump's business that he projects - a real estate development company that executes large, complex tasks - hasn't existed for a nearly a decade, since the Trumps' last two major construction projects failed to make money. Instead, Trump's wealth is now built on monetizing the family name in new ways and, intentionally or not, the office of the presidency. It is an enterprise in pursuit of multimillion-dollar checks - from actual real estate developers, from cryptocurrency and social media enterprises run by others. It is also a business that hawks Trump-branded trinkets such as watches and gold-toned mobile phones to the president's passionate supporters. Many of the deals open multiple channels for anyone to funnel cash to a sitting president, often in ways that are untraceable under current disclosure requirements. And because some of what is being sold is use of the president's name, there are no clear metrics to gauge whether he has received market rate, a premium because of his office or, in effect, a hopeful bribe. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has said that Trump abides by all conflict-of-interest laws and acts with only the interests of the American public in mind. In response to questions from the Times, Eric Trump, who runs his father's businesses, issued a written statement saying the company is stronger than ever and largely debt free thanks to "the most iconic' properties and "cryptocurrency ventures on Earth.' "I have never been more proud of our company,' the statement said. "Our portfolio is operating flawlessly, and 2025 will mark the strongest year in the remarkable history of the Trump Organization.' Perfectly assessing Donald Trump's privately held businesses at any point in time is nearly impossible. But within months of his testimony in the New York civil fraud trial, all of his cash and liquid investments looked to be at risk. His businesses had often required cash infusions before a judge in the trial entered a judgment against the Trumps of $355 million. Trump faced a second judgment of $88.3 million in the sexual abuse and defamation lawsuits brought by writer E. Jean Carroll. Trump has not yet had to pay the judgments, which now total more than $600 million with interest. But he did have to put up cash totaling $175 million in the fraud case, and cash and bonds totaling $97 million in Carroll's cases, to pursue appeals. He also faced a potential hit of $100 million from a long-standing tax audit, though it now appears unlikely that his political appointees at the Internal Revenue Service would sign off on such an assessment - another benefit of having returned to the Oval Office. To be sure, Trump was not facing a calamity. He could have sold more properties, at the expense of his family's future wealth, to cover any shortfall. The Trumps found a different path. "His approach to almost everything at this point now seems to be that he's going to get away with whatever he can get away with, and sort of dare people to try to find legal or political ways to stop him,' said Noah Bookbinder, president of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal-leaning nonprofit group. Escalator to nowhere When Trump completed construction on Trump Tower four decades ago, its five-floor atrium was filled with luxury retailers from around the globe - Asprey of London, Buccellati, Cartier - creating a destination for high-end shoppers and tourists alike. Those spaces, and the office rentals above, provided Trump with one of his most reliable sources of profits for decades, a 2020 analysis of his tax returns by the Times found. The famed shimmering escalators leading up to the top retail floors are now roped off, the stores there having departed over the years. Two smaller spaces on the ground floor and below offer Trump-branded merchandise, such as license-plate frames and sweatshirts. The atrium's signature design feature — a multistory marble water wall — has been turned off and covered by a large U.S. flag. Only one major retailer remains: Gucci, in the one space with visibility from the sidewalk. At 40 Wall St., Trump's office tower in lower Manhattan, 25% of the building has been vacant since last year. In March, Fitch Ratings reported that, after covering basic expenses, the building generated $2 million per year less than Trump needed for his mortgage payments, and in a few years he will face a multimillion-dollar jump in the rent he pays for the ground under the building. Vacancies have also haunted Trump's most recent large-scale construction site, a 92-story tower in Chicago. With most of the apartments and hotel rooms sold off years ago, Trump's ownership stake is comprised mostly of some 70,000 square feet of retail space that he had hoped would produce millions of dollars a year in rental income. Designed below street level with little visibility to passersby, those floors remain empty 16 years after the building was finished. Things did not go measurably better with Trump's redevelopment of the Old Post Office in Washington, which opened as a hotel in 2016. He never recorded a profitable year there - despite its becoming a destination for acolytes of Trump during his first administration. He sold his interests in 2022 to a private equity firm for $375 million, a price that elicited excitement from the Trumps. "To say the result is a financial success would be an understatement,' Eric Trump wrote in an email to company employees. But company documents filed in the fraud case show that the sale did not cover Trump's costs on the project. The hotel's buyer could not cover closing costs and borrowed $28 million from the Trumps before defaulting on the loan. Without that repayment, Trump was going to be left with $79 million from the sale after paying taxes, according to a spreadsheet created by his accountant and filed in the fraud lawsuit. Another company record filed in the case shows that he had invested about $100 million in the project. It has now been nearly a decade since the Trumps completed the hotel. The years since have been marked by contraction. In addition to the Washington hotel, in recent years Trump has sold control of a golf course in the Bronx, a mansion in Los Angeles, land on a Caribbean island, numerous luxury condominiums that he had held as rentals in buildings he constructed and the developable land around his golf course near Los Angeles. Each sale brought a wave of cash, but also a diminished opportunity for future earnings. Not looking to build Trump rarely escapes to anywhere on weekends and vacations other than his own golf courses, where he goes to exercise, relax and be seen. He has said that those 14 courses do not represent a "major business' for him, rather investments that reflect his love of the game. He spent hundreds of millions of dollars remaking them to his tastes, often with ornate clubhouses and elaborate artificial waterfalls. Those investments have not always paid off. A golf course appraisal expert for the New York attorney general's office examined the financial records of all but one of Trump's golf courses for 2011 through 2021 and found that at least half of them reported negative cash flow for multiple years. One email showed Allen Weisselberg, the company's longtime head of finance, notifying Trump's two elder sons that the Trump Organization produced only $2.2 million in 2017, before taxes or disbursements to the family. A primary culprit was the golf courses, where the Trumps had spent almost $13 million more than planned on maintenance and improvements, while the courses brought in $15 million less in operating profits than expected. Trump has also described his courses as real estate development projects in waiting. But the Trumps have not created a record of success toward that goal. Their efforts to add homes to his two courses in Scotland, for example, stalled. The Trumps did win approval in January for a major development in the parking lot at Trump National Doral, a golf resort near Miami. The project would include nearly 1,500 condominium apartments and more than 140,000 square feet of commercial space. But that plan does not appear to be the one that will restart the Trumps' real estate development business anytime soon. During his deposition in the fraud case, Trump said that he might build there in a decade, leave it for his children to develop or "sell it to another developer for a lot of money and let them do it.' He said he often sought zoning approval to develop, just in case. Regardless, Trump added, "we're not actively looking to build.' In 2021, Deutsche Bank, which held Trump's mortgage, hired the firm Newmark to appraise Doral, Trump's highest-revenue resort, with four courses and 643 hotel rooms. The resulting analysis concluded that Trump had spent $379 million buying and renovating the resort, and that it was worth only $297 million. The appraisal included an even more jarring finding. While Doral, like several of Trump's properties, was known to benefit from people looking to buy proximity to a president during Trump's first term, his managers believed even more potential customers stayed away because of him. Trump's divisive public comments over time had pushed down bookings and room rates for six years running, his managers told the appraisers. The managers believed that "the Trump brand has negatively impacted' revenues at Doral. Newmark's experts agreed, writing that "we believe that with a different brand, the subject might perform better.' Spigot turned back on The Doral appraisal highlights perhaps the starkest turn in the Trump family's finances. The value of the Trump name as a brand on real estate projects and mass-market consumer goods made by others, both here and abroad, was central to sustaining his businesses during his peak years on "The Apprentice.' The annual reports that the Trumps sent to their lenders showed television and licensing profits totaled $259 million from 2011 to 2017. But even with that deluge of cash, Donald Trump still reported an overall negative cash flow of $46.8 million from his empire. Donald Trump Jr. testified glowingly during the fraud trial about those licensing deals. Compared with real estate development, they required no investment and little labor. "I don't want to say it was free revenue,' he said, but "it was a pretty spectacular system that we were able to create.' But the cash gusher from entertainment had slowed to a trickle by the time the elder Trump entered politics, and after he entered the White House in 2017, the company fell into a dry spell for new licensing deals. Some of that was because the Trump Organization pledged not to sign new foreign deals in an attempt to avoid conflicts of interest. After Trump left office in January 2021, the Trump Organization did not announce a major new branding agreement until late 2022 — for a golf resort in Oman. The spigot of foreign branding deals did not fully turn back on until after Trump clinched the Republican nomination and a second term seemed within reach. 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Weeks later, the Trumps and Mehta signed a new licensing deal for a commercial office tower in Pune, India. They announced yet another deal - their sixth - in April. Mehta did not respond to requests for comment but has said that Trump-branded properties draw heightened interest in India. Donald Trump's deals on the Arabian Peninsula all share a connection to one man: Ziad El Chaar, a Lebanese-born construction executive who first brought Trump into a branding agreement in 2013, for a golf course in Dubai, through a construction company based there called DAMAC. El Chaar has since become CEO of DarGlobal, a subsidiary of Dar Al Arkan Real Estate, a large Saudi Arabia-based construction company with ties to the Saudi government. He has signed five more deals with the Trumps since last summer. During a DarGlobal event introducing the Oman project, El Chaar said the Trump name "immediately put the project on the global map.' 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Trump's tax returns during his television celebrity years showed payments in round numbers when he signed a licensing contract, typically $750,000 or $1 million. Financial disclosure forms he recently filed showed payments of exactly $5 million each for the deal in Vietnam and one with El Chaar's company. But in terms of the potential for anyone, from anywhere, to transmit hundreds of millions of dollars to a U.S. president, the recent wave of licensing agreements was only a warmup. A massive stockpile Last December, just months after Trump and his two eldest sons made their first public comments in support of digital currencies, Eric Trump was invited to appear as the keynote speaker at a bitcoin conference in Abu Dhabi. He addressed the question he presumed to be on everyone's mind: Why are you here? "I know all of you are thinking: 'Eric, you're from real estate family. You've spent your entire life in real estate, concrete, drywall,'' he said. "I built Trump Chicago,' he added twice, referring to a four-year project completed when he was 24. Sixteen years after completion of the Chicago tower, the Trumps still invoke its memory to establish business gravitas and their chosen identity as real estate developers. But their recent moves into crypto and other enterprises bear more in common with Donald Trump's licensing deals: little or no investment, risk or operational responsibility. Trump, and to a lesser extent his sons, generally serve as a means to draw attention and convert the president's political supporters into investors and paying customers. Trump has invested nothing in Trump Media, the parent company of the social media site Truth Social, and has no official duties. But he received more than half of the company's stock, a stake that has fallen in value but is still worth $2 billion. In crypto, the Trumps have entered into a series of partnerships. Their partners were the ones who have invested most or all of the capital, or raised money through token sales, and run the businesses. The crypto coins issued to the Trump family through its first foray into the sector, World Liberty Financial, have recently been worth at least $236 million. The Trumps' sale of meme coins, otherwise worthless collectible digital trinkets, has been particularly lucrative. The fees collected by Trump and his associates on those sales have so far totaled $320 million, according to Chainalysis, a crypto analytics firm. The meme coins have proved to be a multimillion-dollar leap from the Trump-branded Bibles, guitars and watches that the Trumps sold during last year's campaign. The long-term viability of the new businesses remains unclear, as does the liquidity of some of Trump's holdings in them. He cannot yet sell most of his crypto coins. And he would most likely crush Trump Media if he unloaded his stock, even as the company continues to lose money and struggles to produce $1 million per quarter in revenue, roughly the average of a single McDonald's restaurant. But the new cash has already helped solve old problems. Last month, the Trumps paid off the $115 million mortgage coming due on 40 Wall St. Analysts had said that the building's low rental income would make banks squeamish about refinancing. Going forward, the new enterprises represent a massive stockpile with the potential to cover legal judgments, mortgage payments and holes in balance sheets for years to come. This article originally appeared in The New York Times © 2025 The New York Times Company
The Mainichi
2 hours ago
- The Mainichi
Ukraine says it struck a Russian air base as Russia sent hundreds of drones into Ukraine
LONDON (AP) -- Ukraine said it struck a Russian air base on Saturday, while Russia continued to pound Ukraine with hundreds of drones overnight as part of a stepped-up bombing campaign that has dashed hopes for a breakthrough in efforts to end the more than 3-year-old war. Ukraine's military General Staff said that Ukrainian forces had struck the Borisoglebsk air base in Russia's Voronezh region, describing it as the home base of Russia's Su-34, Su-35S and Su-30SM fighter jets. Writing on Facebook, the General Staff said it hit a depot containing glide bombs, a training aircraft and "possibly other aircraft." Russian officials did not immediately comment on the attack. Such attacks on Russian air bases aim to dent Russia's military capability and demonstrate Ukraine's capability to hit high-value targets in Russia. Last month, Ukraine said it destroyed more than 40 Russian planes stationed at several airfields deep in Russia's territory in a surprise drone attack. Russia fired 322 drones and decoys into Ukraine overnight into Saturday, Ukraine's air force said. Of these, 157 were shot down and 135 were lost, likely having been electronically jammed. According to the air force, Ukraine's western Khmelnytskyi region was the main target of the attack. Regional Gov. Serhii Tyurin said Saturday that no damage, injuries or deaths had been reported. Russia has been stepping up its long-range attacks on Ukraine. Waves of drones and missiles targeted Kyiv overnight into Friday in the largest aerial assault since Russia's invasion of Ukraine began. On Saturday, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the number of people killed in the assault had increased to two. A further 31 people were wounded. The fresh wave of attacks came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday that he had a "very important and productive" phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump. The two leaders discussed how Ukrainian air defenses might be strengthened, possible joint weapons production between the U.S. and Ukraine, and broader U.S-led efforts to end the war with Russia, according to a statement by Zelenskyy. Asked Friday night by reporters about the call, Trump said, "We had a very good call, I think." When asked about finding a way to end the fighting, Trump said: "I don't know. I can't tell you whether or not that's going to happen." The U.S. has paused some shipments of military aid to Ukraine, including crucial air defense missiles. Ukraine's main European backers are considering how they can help pick up the slack. Zelenskyy says plans are afoot to build up Ukraine's domestic arms industry, but scaling up will take time. Russia's Defense Ministry said it shot down 94 Ukrainian drones overnight into Saturday, along with 45 further drones Saturday morning and early afternoon. No casualties were reported, but local officials in the Saratov region said 25 apartments were damaged by Ukrainian drones in the city of Engels. Four Ukrainian drones were shot down while approaching Moscow on Saturday, according to Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin. Air traffic was briefly halted as a precaution at one of Moscow's airports, Sheremetyevo, Russia's aviation authority Rosaviatsiya said.
Nikkei Asia
3 hours ago
- Nikkei Asia
China opens third extension to sensitive Taiwan Strait flight path
HONG KONG (Reuters) -- China said on Sunday it has opened a third extension of the M503 flight route, which is just west of an unofficial dividing line in the Taiwan Strait, with Taipei protesting this was a "unilateral" move aimed at changing the strait's status quo. China last year moved the M503 route closer to the median line, drawing a similarly angry response from Taipei, which says any changes to the flight route and its extensions must be communicated in advance and agreed by both sides. The opening of the W121 extension comes days before the annual Han Kuang military and civil defense drills that Taiwan holds to simulate a Chinese blockade and invasion of the democratic island. The median line had for years served as an unofficial barrier between Chinese-claimed Taiwan and China, but China says it does not recognize its existence and Chinese warplanes now regularly fly over it as Beijing seeks to pressure Taipei to accept its sovereignty claims. The Civil Aviation Authority of China said that "in order to further optimize the airspace environment and improve operational efficiency, from now on, civil aviation will use the W121 connection line of the M503 route." Taiwan's China policy-making Mainland Affairs Council said in a statement to Reuters that mainland China "used unilateral actions to change the status quo and increase cross-strait and regional unrest." This is the third extension after W122 and W123, which are to the south of W121, opened last year. All three go west to east, from mainland China in the direction of Taiwan. This measure is aimed at "ensuring flight safety, reducing flight delays, and protecting the rights and interests of passengers," China's Taiwan Affairs Office said. It added that the opening was "beneficial" to both sides of the strait. Taipei disputed the explanation as "unjustified", saying "the number of international air travelers on the mainland has not yet recovered" to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels. Taiwan, facing ramped-up military pressure from China, which considers the separately governed island as its own, begins its Han Kuang exercises on July 9 and they are set to last for 10 days.
