Trump and Putin cannot decide on land swaps, say Ukraine and EU
Europeans and Ukrainians, so far, are not invited to the summit.
European Union foreign ministers are meeting on Monday following talks on Ukraine among US and European security advisers over the weekend.
They are wary that President Vladimir Putin will try to claim a political victory by portraying Ukraine as inflexible.
Concerns have mounted in Europe and Ukraine that Kyiv may be pressed to give up land or accept other curbs on its sovereignty.
Ukraine and its European allies reject the notion that Mr Putin should lay claim to any territory even before agreeing to a ceasefire.
'As we work towards a sustainable and just peace, international law is clear: all temporarily occupied territories belong to Ukraine', EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said ahead of the ministerial meeting.
'A sustainable peace also means that aggression cannot be rewarded,' Ms Kallas said.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said 'it must be obvious to Poland and our European partners – and I hope to all of Nato – that state borders cannot be changed by force'.
Any land swaps or peace terms 'must be agreed upon with Ukraine's participation,' he said, according to Polish news agency PAP.
On Sunday, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Germany would not accept that territorial issues be discussed or decided by Russia and the United States 'over the heads' of Europeans or Ukrainians.
In 2022, Russia illegally annexed the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in Ukraine's east, and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south, even though it does not fully control them.
It also occupies the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized in 2014.
On the 620-mile front line, Russia's bigger army has made slow but costly progress with its summer offensive.
The relentless pounding of urban areas has killed more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians, according to UN estimates.
'In the end, the issue of the fact that the Russians are controlling at this moment, factually, a part of Ukraine has to be on the table' in any peace talks after the Alaska summit, Nato secretary general Mark Rutte said on CBS on Sunday.
Giving up any territory, especially without a ceasefire agreement first, would be almost impossible for Mr Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky to sell at home after thousands of troops have died defending their land.
Ultimately, Putin is seen as being not so much interested in land itself, but rather in a more 'Russia-friendly' Ukraine with a malleable government that would be unlikely to try to join Nato, just as pro-Russian regions in Georgia stymied that country's hopes of becoming a member.
Mr Zelensky insists that a halt to fighting on the front line should be the starting point for negotiations, and the Europeans back him. They say that any future land swaps should be for Ukraine to decide and not be a precondition for a ceasefire.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
22 minutes ago
- The Independent
With tariffs, a DC takeover, and Putin summit, Trump is now fully unleashed. And the world's tolerance for pain put to the test
Donald Trump is finally getting almost everything that he wants. But the question is, how will everyone else respond to that? On Wednesday, he arrived at the Kennedy Center and announced that he would host the annual honors award ceremony, a first for a president. For a president who loves the theatrical, it's definitely a coup, especially given that he removed the board members that Joe Biden nominated before the new board made him chairman. Trump has long had a flair for the theatrical–at his rallies, he regularly plays 'Memory' from Cats and 'Do You Hear the People Sing?' from Les Miserables –and it further reflects how he wants to remake parts of government that were previously nonpartisan and unchanged by who occupies the White House into his own image. But while Trump taking over the performing arts center is campy and even a bit weird, it shows how Trump feels no scruples and that he can finally realize the vision he wants for the country. The only question at this point is what the rest of the world's pain tolerance will be. Earlier this week, Trump made the unprecedented announcement that he would seize control of the Washington, D.C. police department and deploy the National Guard onto the streets of the nation's capital. Trump has long griped about crime and in many ways, it's a chance for him to live out the vision he wanted during the 2020 George Floyd protests, where he could deploy active duty troops onto the streets of American cities. He tried similar measures when he deployed the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles, though, as The Independent's Inside Washington newsletter flagged on Monday, that move led to his approval rating dropping. And much of the deployment of the National Guard has proven to be policing theater, given that guardsmen and women have been patrolling the tony Georgetown neighborhood. Washington, D.C. is an overwhelmingly Democratic city that has also seen a large slice of its workforce laid off thanks to the chaotic cuts unleashed by Trump's former consigliere Elon Musk and his apprentice at the Department of Government Effieincy, Edward Coristine, also known as 'Big Balls,' whom right-wing influencer Benny Johnson insisted receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Trump having troops roaming the city will likely not land well with the public nationally or in the district. But that's not the only area where Trump has finally removed the handcuffs. Last week, after a prolonged pause, Trump resumed his 'Liberation Day' tariffs. Trump had initially paused them the week after he announced them in April, saying he noticed the bond market had gotten 'a little queasy.' Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, had gone on Fox Business to speak with Maria Bartiromo, one of Trump's favorite pundits, the day before the pause. But this time, Trump is brooking no opposition from the lords of finance. Earlier this month, he responded to a poor jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics by sacking the chief statistician and nominating E.J. Antoni, an alumnus of the conservative Heritage Foundation, the think tank behind Project 2025. On Tuesday, the bureau put out a report showing that inflation for the core Consumer Price Index, which includes items for everything except food and energy, rose by 0.3 percent and inflation overall rose by 0.2 percent in July. And core CPI also rose by 3.1 percent in the past year. But Trump has not backed down. In response, he blasted Goldman Sachs's CEO, David Solomon, after a report by the investment titan showing that consumers are eating 22 percent of the tariffs. Clearly, Trump is not afraid of the fallout and believes that if he just gets the right people, he will get the result. Then there's the matter of Russia and Vladimir Putin. On Friday, he will host the Russian authoritarian in Alaska as he hopes to bring an end to Moscow's war in Ukraine. In recent months, Trump has seemed to come around on Russia, expressing his frustration with Putin, realizing that the rest of the Western world already knows: Putin has no interest in ending the war unless he can claim territory he believes rightfully belongs to Russia. This will be a stark contrast to the 2018 summit in Helsinki, when he seemed to brush off American intelligence and sided with Putin's denial that Russia intervened in the 2016 election. That earned him severe criticism, not the least of which came from the late John McCain. Now, McCain is dead and most of the old school Republican hawks have left the Senate. The ones who remain will not put up a fight. Instead, Trump gets to host Russia's president on American soil and, as if to make an even bigger point, he's hosting it in the home state of Lisa Murkowski, a Russia hawk and perpetual Trump critic. Trump knows that no matter what, he can push Murkowski and she will not push back. During Trump's press conference announcing the D.C. takeover, he said that police can 'do whatever the hell they want.' Trump clearly believes he can do the same. The question now is what will the consequences be of an unfettered Trump?
BBC News
22 minutes ago
- BBC News
JD Vance - The 'Scots-Irish hillbilly' taking a break in Scotland
When JD Vance stepped onto Scottish soil on Wednesday he became the second inhabitant of the White House to visit the country in a vice-president is believed to be staying in Ayrshire, just north of Galloway, the area he says his forebears left in the 17th while his boss, President Donald Trump, is half-Scottish - his mother was born in Lewis in the Western Isles - Vance's claim to Caledonian blood has come under some this is important because in his own way the vice-president is a follower of the modern creed his Maga allies claim to hate - identity politics. That's loosely defined as people of a particular group - perhaps racial, sexual or social - putting that group's goals ahead of traditional party as Vance once put it: "To understand me, you must understand that I am a Scots-Irish hillbilly at heart." He made that claim in his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, a bestseller which was subsequently turned into an Oscar-nominated film starring Glenn Close and Amy book describes a childhood spent surrounded by poverty and substance abuse in Appalachia, the broad mountainous region which extends across the eastern USA from Canada to the Deep South. It's estimated that about 90% of the area's early European immigrants came in the 17th Century from the lands which stretch along both sides of the Scottish-English border. These included Ayrshire, Galloway, Dumfriesshire and the areas now known as the Scottish Borders. Vance claims his ancestors were from Galloway and were part of this terms Scots-Irish, Scotch-Irish and Ulster-Scots relate to people who left Scotland, settled as part of the Ulster plantation and then moved on to North today includes pockets of extreme poverty and its inhabitants are often offensively depicted as "hillbillies" - simple, unsophisticated and poor. Vance's memoir is an attempt to reclaim that tradition. He writes: "I may be white, but I do not identify with the WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) of the Northeast. "Instead, I identify with the millions of working-class white Americans of Scots-Irish descent who have no college degree. "To these folks, poverty is the family tradition... Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash. I call them neighbours, friends and family."The book sets out Vance's developing political ideas as it charts his move towards conservatism. And though he was at the time a critic of Donald Trump, the book explains why poor rural voters in places like Appalachia were becoming attracted to the Maga movement. But while Vance makes explicit links between his family heritage and his political views, others are more sceptical. Speaking on the BBC's Good Morning Scotland programme, Prof Angelia Wilson of the University of Manchester said Vance has used his Scots-Irish heritage to craft his image."What we know about his background is often what he wants us to know about his background and his construction of the narrative has been very much based on the American dream," she said."Everybody who is white and working class in the American south claims to be of some sort of Scotch-Irish heritage. There is some absolute truth there."There's also a bit of cultural construction happening because it was those in the north-east, those 'damn Yankees' that claimed to be Wilson believes the administration Vance is now part of does not especially represent the heritage he likes to embrace."The values that he may have grown up with, that might ring true with Scottish stereotypes about being financially conservative and valuing families and community and helping those in need, are certainly not values that Trump and Maga talk about now."So he is now not a man of Scottish values," she said. Prof Ewan Hague of DePaul University in Chicago is an expert in white racial identities and the cultural relationships between Scotland and America. He believes Vance's identification with the Scots-Irish community has actually brought him definite political benefits."He can align himself with the Trump voters," he says. "In 2016, he was strongly against Donald Trump. I think that's well known. "I think part of it is these are the kinds of self identities that Trump has that have really moved towards sort of supporting Trump. The sort of lower income rural white population. "And so by emphasising that as part of his core identity, JD Vance, I think, can tap into those connections. And these ideas of strength, self-reliance, very kind of "small c" conservative connection to family and patriotism and nation. "The Scots-Irish becomes a kind of shorthand for a lot of the things that we're seeing from the kind of cultural perspectives of the current administration." If this all sounds a little politically cynical, it should be said there are many things to celebrate about the links between Scotland and the United the past 26 years, Tartan Day has grown into a huge celebration. Set up to mimic the traditional St Patrick's Day celebrations enjoyed by the Irish-American community in cities across the USA, it brings celebrities, pipe bands, business leaders and politicians out on the streets of New York every is seen as a key way of promoting Scotland across North from different parts of the political spectrum have said Scots should make every effort to get along with President Trump as a means of getting any political and economic advantage out of his recent trip to his mother's Vance trip is another opportunity to do that, though this visit promises to be a much more low-key, private all, he may well at some point succeed his boss into the West Wing. A future President Vance would see himself as the second chief executive in a row with Scottish may question just how Scottish he is or how much that even means. But if it's how he sees himself, it is a factor this week and for the future.
The Guardian
22 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Russia clamps down on WhatsApp and Telegram over data sharing
Russia has announced restrictions on the WhatsApp and Telegram messenger apps, accusing the foreign-owned platforms of failing to share information with law enforcement in fraud and terrorism cases. Moscow has clashed with foreign tech platforms for several years over content and data storage in a simmering dispute that intensified after Russia's full invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with critics saying that Russia is trying to expand its control over the country's internet space. President Vladimir Putin has authorised the development of a state-backed messaging app integrated with government services, as Moscow seeks to establish what it calls digital sovereignty by promoting homegrown services and reducing its dependence on platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram. 'In order to counteract criminals … measures are being taken to partially restrict calls on these foreign messengers,' the Interfax news agency quoted the communications regulator Roskomnadzor as saying. 'No other restrictions have been imposed on their functionality.' Russia's digital ministry said: 'Access to calls in foreign messengers will be restored after they start complying with Russian legislation.' In a statement, WhatsApp's owner, Meta Platforms, said: 'WhatsApp is private, end-to-end encrypted, and defies government attempts to violate people's right to secure communication, which is why Russia is trying to block it from over 100 million Russian people. We will keep doing all we can to make end-to-end encrypted communication available to people everywhere, including in Russia.' Telegram said it 'actively combats misuse of its platform, including calls for sabotage or violence, as well as fraud' and removes 'millions of pieces of harmful content every day'. Reuters reported that voice calls on Telegram had barely functioned since 11 August and that WhatsApp calls had been rendered impossible due to intermittent sound and a metallic buzzing. The digital development ministry said Telegram and WhatsApp had ignored repeated requests to take measures to stop their platforms being used for activities such as fraud and terrorism. Anton Gorelkin, deputy head of the lower house of parliament's information technology committee, said the platforms would need to open legal entities in Russia and cooperate with Roskomnadzor and law enforcement as part of their compliance with Russian law to lift the blocking measures. Meta was labelled an extremist organisation by Moscow in 2022, but WhatsApp, widely used in Russia, was allowed to remain. The messenger has received some penalties for failing to remove information banned by Russia. Sign up to This is Europe The most pressing stories and debates for Europeans – from identity to economics to the environment after newsletter promotion Gorelkin last month said that WhatsApp should prepare to leave the market. Another lawmaker described WhatsApp's presence in the Russian market as a breach of national security. Critics have voiced concerns that Russia's new state-backed messaging app may track its users' activities and have suggested Russia might slow WhatsApp's speeds in order to get users to migrate to the new platform. Human Rights Watch said in a report last month that Russia's government was increasing its technological capacities and control over the country's internet infrastructure, allowing for more widespread blocking and throttling of unwanted websites and censorship circumvention tools.
