Trump says wants three-way meeting with Putin, Zelenskyy
Trump is due to sit down with Putin in Anchorage on Friday, the first meeting between the Russian leader and a sitting US president since 2021.
"If the first one goes okay, we'll have a quick second one," he told reporters.
"I would like to do it almost immediately, and we'll have a quick second meeting between President Putin and President Zelenskyy and myself, if they'd like to have me there."
The high-stakes talks come with Trump seeking to broker an end to Russia's nearly three-and-a-half-year war in Ukraine, and Zelenskyy and his European allies have urged the Republican to push for a ceasefire.
A stepped-up Russian offensive, and the fact that Zelenskyy has not been invited to the Anchorage meeting on Friday, have heightened fears that Trump and Putin could strike a deal that forces painful concessions on Ukraine.
Trump said Russia would face "very severe consequences" if Putin did not agree to end the war after Friday's meeting, without elaborating.
The US leader promised dozens of times during his 2024 election campaign to end the war on his first day in office, but has made scant progress towards brokering a peace deal.
He threatened "secondary sanctions" on Russia's trading partners over its invasion of Ukraine, but his deadline for action came and went last week with no action announced.
Trump told reporters he'd had a "very good call" with European leaders, including Zelenskyy, as he took questions from reporters at an arts event at Washington's Kennedy Center.
"I would rate it at 10. You know - very, very friendly," he said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNA
2 hours ago
- CNA
US may not be able to create scenario to end war in Ukraine: Rubio
The United States will keep trying to create a scenario to help end Russia's war in Ukraine, but that might not be possible, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told CBS on Sunday (Aug 17). "If peace is not going to be possible here and this is just going to continue on as a war, people will continue to die by the thousands ... we may unfortunately wind up there, but we don't want to wind up there," Rubio said in an interview with "Face the Nation". European leaders will accompany Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to meet President Donald Trump in Washington on Monday, seeking to bolster him as the US president presses Ukraine to accept a quick peace deal after Trump's meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Friday. "There are things that were discussed as part of this meeting that are potentials for breakthroughs, that are potential for progress," said Rubio, adding that topics for discussion would include security guarantees for Ukraine. According to sources, Trump and Putin discussed proposals for Russia to relinquish tiny pockets of occupied Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine ceding a swathe of fortified land in the east and freezing the front lines elsewhere.
Business Times
5 hours ago
- Business Times
China's US$11 trillion stock market is a headache for both Xi and Trump
[BEIJING] At the heart of why consumers in China save so much and spend so little, and why Xi Jinping and Donald Trump will struggle to change that behaviour even if they want to, lies the country's stock market. Even after a recent rally, Chinese indexes have only just returned to levels seen in the aftermath of a dramatic bubble burst a decade ago. Instead of incentivising consumers to spend, poor equity returns have nudged them toward saving. A US$10,000 investment in the S&P 500 Index a decade ago would now have more than tripled in value, while the same amount in China's CSI 300 benchmark would've added just around US$3,000. Part of the reason, long-term China watchers say, is structural. Created 35 years ago as a way for state-owned enterprises to channel household savings into building roads, ports and factories, exchanges have lacked a strong focus on delivering returns to investors. That skew has spawned a host of problems from an oversupply of shares to questionable post-listing practices, which continue to weigh on the US$11 trillion market. The country's leaders are under pressure to fix this. President Xi is counting on domestic spending to reach the 5 per cent economic growth goal, especially as a tariff war with the US heats up over the massive trade imbalance. At the same time, Beijing has reasons to keep prioritising the market's role as a source of capital: the country needs vast funding to nurture companies that underpin its tech ambitions – even if their profitability remains questionable. 'China's capital market has long been a paradise for financiers and a hell for investors, although the new securities chief has made some improvements,' Liu Jipeng, a securities veteran who teaches at China University of Political Science and Law, said in an interview. 'Regulators and exchanges are always consciously or unconsciously tilting toward the financing side of the business.' The limits of China's stock rally have again been evident this year. The CSI 300 has risen less than 7 per cent despite a burst of optimism over AI, trailing benchmarks in the US and Europe. The underperformance – along with factors including an uncertain economic outlook – helps explain China's extraordinarily high savings rate, which stands at 35 per cent of disposable income. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up Chen Long, who works in the asset management industry, has taken to social media platform Xiaohongshu to warn people of the risks of chasing the recent rally. 'Many ordinary people come in thinking they could make money, but the majority of them end up poorer,' Chen said in an interview, adding that he has been investing since 2014. 'State-owned companies primarily answer to the government rather than shareholders, while many private entrepreneurs have little regard for small investors.' Over the past year, China's top leadership has shown greater awareness of the stock market's importance as a vehicle for wealth creation. That's especially the case with an ongoing property slump and a fragmented social safety net, which exacerbates a sense of insecurity. The Communist Party's Politburo pledged to 'stabilise housing and stock markets' in a December meeting – a rare expression of support for equities at the high-level gathering. The body also called for 'increasing the attractiveness and inclusiveness of domestic capital markets' in July. There is no quick fix to boosting household confidence 'except for a stock market rebound,' said Hao Hong, chief investment officer at Lotus Asset Management. 'This is a topic that we economists have been discussing in the closed door meetings in Beijing.'' In some ways, the market's malaise has been decades in the making. 'The exchanges are motivated to fulfill the government's call for increasing companies' financing,' said Lian Ping, chairman of the China Chief Economist Forum, a think tank that advises the government. 'But when it comes to protecting investors' interests, there are few who are motivated to do it.' An explosive growth in new listings made China the world's biggest IPO market in 2022. Yet insufficient safeguards for shareholders and lax oversight of IPO frauds have led to share price crashes and delistings – what retail investors refer to as 'stepping on a land mine.' Take Beijing Zuojiang Technology, which listed in 2019. The company said in a 2023 statement that its product was modelled after Nvidia's BlueField-2 DPU. The company warned in January the following year that it was at risk of being delisted, citing an investigation for disclosure violations. It was subsequently removed from the Shenzhen bourse. The China Securities Regulatory Commission didn't immediately reply to a fax seeking comment. Recent years have seen greater efforts to screen poor-quality IPOs and crack down on financial fraud. There's also a push to reduce additional stock issuances by listed companies and share sales by major stakeholders, while encouraging more corporate profit to be passed on to investors. There has been visible progress. Initial public offerings shrank to nearly a third of 2023 levels last year. Shanghai and Shenzhen-listed companies handed out a combined US$334 billion in cash dividends for 2024, up 9 per cent from the previous year, according to state media. 'The regulations and overall requirements after IPO have become stricter, in terms of reliability, transparency, or information disclosure,' said Ding Wenjie, investment strategist at China Asset Management. Reforms, however, have fallen short of transforming the market into one that prioritises investor returns. Even with the rise in share buybacks, CSI 300 companies spent only 0.2 per cent of their market value on repurchasing shares in 2024, far less than the nearly 2 per cent spent by S&P 500 firms, according to calculations by Bloomberg. The recent policy push to attract more tech listings is also a worrying sign for some investors. Regulators are resuming the listing of unprofitable companies on the STAR board, dubbed China's Nasdaq, while allowing them for the first time for the Shenzhen-based ChiNext board – which is earmarked for growth enterprises. IPOs so far this year have increased by nearly 30% from the same period in 2024. That's an inevitable move to secure capital for firms that are vital to China's battle against the US for supremacy in AI, semiconductor and robotics, but also signals that authorities may again be putting funding needs ahead of investor protection. Fast-tracking more firms to list without tackling the core problems of corporate credibility will 'just add volume without restoring investor trust,'' said Hebe Chen, an analyst at Vantage Markets in Melbourne. Stock exchange officials have been actively reaching out to investment banks and encouraging companies to file for IPOs, according to people familiar with the matter. Some high-quality tech applicants could get access to so-called 'green channels' for a faster review and approval process, the people said. 'The entire regulatory environments are still not up to the task of delivering the best out of those companies,' said Dong Chen, chief Asia strategist at Pictet Wealth Management. It requires a more comprehensive improvement of the institutional environment 'to provide the right incentives'' for companies to deliver values to their shareholders, he said. BLOOMBERG
CNA
5 hours ago
- CNA
European leaders to join Zelenskyy for Ukraine talks with Trump
BRUSSELS: European leaders will join Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during his visit to Washington on Monday (Aug 18) seeking an end to Moscow's invasion, after President Donald Trump dropped his push for a ceasefire following his Alaska summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Securing a ceasefire in Ukraine, more than three years after the Kremlin ordered the invasion, had been one of Trump's core demands before the summit, to which Ukraine and its European allies were not invited. But after a meeting that yielded no clear breakthrough, Trump ruled out an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine – a move that would appear to favour Putin, who has long argued for negotiations on a final peace deal. Ukraine and its European allies have criticised it as a way to buy time and press Russia's battlefield advances, with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen among the leaders set to try and bend Trump's ear on the matter. Ahead of the Washington visit on Monday, von der Leyen said on X she would welcome Zelenskyy for a meeting in Brussels on Sunday, which other European leaders would join by video call, before accompanying the Ukrainian leader on his US trip at his "request" with "other European leaders". The German government confirmed Merz was among those other European leaders, and would try to emphasise "interest in a swift peace agreement in Ukraine". Finland said its president, Alexander Stubb, would also travel to Washington. Trump briefed Zelenskyy and European leaders on his flight back from Alaska to Washington, saying afterwards that "it was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a peace agreement which would end the war". Ceasefire agreements "often times do not hold up," Trump added on his Truth Social platform. But Zelenskyy has appeared unconvinced by the change of tack, saying on Saturday that it "complicates the situation". If Moscow lacks "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", he said on social media. "HARSH REALITY" Trump expressed support during his call with Zelenskyy and European leaders for a proposal by Putin to take full control of two largely Russian-held Ukrainian regions in exchange for freezing the frontline in two others, an official briefed on the talks told AFP. Putin "de facto demands that Ukraine leave Donbas", an area consisting of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions in eastern Ukraine, the source said. In exchange, Russian forces would halt their offensive in the Black Sea port region of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine, where the main cities are still under Ukrainian control. Several months into its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia in September 2022 claimed to have annexed all four Ukrainian regions even though its troops still do not fully control any of them. "The Ukrainian president refused to leave Donbas," the source said. Trump notably also said the United States was prepared to provide Ukraine security guarantees, an assurance Merz hailed as "significant progress". But there was a scathing assessment of the summit outcome from the European Union's top diplomat Kaja Kallas, who accused Putin of seeking to "drag out negotiations" with no commitment to end the bloodshed. "The harsh reality is that Russia has no intention of ending this war any time soon," Kallas said. ZELENSKYY BACK IN THE WHITE HOUSE The main diplomatic focus now switches to Zelenskyy's talks at the White House on Monday. The Ukrainian president's last Oval Office visit in February ended in an extraordinary shouting match, with Trump and Vice President JD Vance publicly berating Zelenskyy for not showing enough gratitude for US aid. In an interview with broadcaster Fox News after his sit-down with Putin, Trump had suggested that the onus was now on Zelenskyy to secure a peace deal as they work towards an eventual trilateral summit with Putin. "It's really up to President Zelenskyy to get it done," Trump said. EUROPEAN PRESSURE In an earlier statement, European leaders welcomed the plan for a Trump-Putin-Zelenskyy summit but added that they would maintain pressure on Russia in the absence of a ceasefire. Meanwhile, the conflict in Ukraine raged on, with both Kyiv and Moscow launching attack drones at each other on Sunday. Back in Moscow, Putin said his summit talks with Trump had been "timely" and "very useful". In his post-summit statement in Alaska, Putin had warned Ukraine and European countries not to engage in any "behind-the-scenes intrigues" that could disrupt what he called "this emerging progress".
