Trump threatens 'severe consequences' if Putin blocks Ukraine peace
Trump did not specify what the consequences could be, but he has warned of economic sanctions if a meeting between himself and President Putin in Alaska on Friday proved fruitless.
The comments by Trump and the mood music after a virtual meeting of Trump, European leaders and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy could provide some hope for Kyiv after fears the Alaska meet could sell out Ukraine and carve up its territory.
However, Russia is likely to resist Ukraine and Europe's demands strongly and previously said its stance had not changed since it was set out by Putin in June 2024.
When asked if Russia would face any consequences if Putin does not agree to stop the war after Friday's meeting, Trump responded: 'Yes, they will.'
Asked if those consequences would be sanctions or tariffs, Trump told reporters: 'I don't have to say, there will be very severe consequences."
But the president also described the aim of the meeting between the pair in Alaska as "setting the table" for a quick follow-up that would include Zelenskiy.
"If the first one goes okay, we'll have a quick second one," he said.
"I would like to do it almost immediately, and we'll have a quick second meeting between President Putin and President Zelenskiy and myself, if they'd like to have me there."
Trump did not provide a time frame for a second meeting.
European leaders and Zelenskiy had earlier spoken with Trump in a last-ditch call hosted by Germany to lay out red lines ahead of the Alaska meeting.
"We had a very good call. He was on the call. President Zelenskiy was on the call. I would rate it a 10, very friendly," Trump said.
French President Emmanuel Macron said Trump agreed that Ukraine must be involved in any discussions about ceding land while Zelenskiy said Trump had supported the idea of security guarantees in a post-war settlement.
"President Trump was very clear that the United States wanted to achieve a ceasefire at this meeting in Alaska," Macron said.
"The second point on which things were very clear, as expressed by President Trump, is that territories belonging to Ukraine cannot be negotiated and will only be negotiated by the Ukrainian president."
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who hosted the virtual meeting, said the principle that borders could not be changed by force must continue to apply.
"If there is no movement on the Russian side in Alaska, then the United States and we Europeans should ... increase the pressure," he said.
"President Trump knows this position, he shares it very extensively and therefore I can say: We have had a really exceptionally constructive and good conversation with each other."
Trump and Putin are due to discuss how to end the three-and-a-half-year-old conflict, the biggest in Europe since World War Two. Trump has previously said both sides will have to swap land to end fighting that has cost tens of thousands of lives and displaced millions.
On a day of intense diplomacy, Zelenskiy flew into Berlin for virtual meetings with European leaders and then with Trump.
He and the Europeans worry that a land swap could leave Russia with almost a fifth of Ukraine, rewarding it for almost 11 years of efforts to seize Ukrainian land, the last three in all-out war, and embolden Putin to expand further west in the future.
Russian forces have made a sharp thrust into eastern Ukraine in recent days in what may be an attempt to increase the pressure on Kyiv to give up land.
"I told the U.S. president and all our European colleagues that Putin is bluffing (about his stated wish to end the war)," Zelenskiy said. "He is trying to apply pressure before the meeting in Alaska along all parts of the Ukrainian front. Russia is trying to show that it can occupy all of Ukraine ..."
A source familiar with the matter said the call with Trump discussed possible cities that could host a three-way meeting, depending on the outcome of the talks in Alaska.
Wary of angering Trump, European leaders have repeatedly said they welcome his efforts, while stressing that there should be no deal about Ukraine without Ukraine's participation.
Trump's agreement last week to the summit was an abrupt shift after weeks of voicing frustration with Putin for resisting the U.S. peace initiative. Trump said his envoy had made "great progress" at talks in Moscow.
A Gallup poll released last week found that 69% of Ukrainians favour a negotiated end to the war as soon as possible. But polls also indicate Ukrainians do not want peace at any cost if that means crushing concessions.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Alexei Fadeev earlier said Moscow's stance had not changed since last year.
As conditions for a ceasefire and the start of talks, the Kremlin leader had demanded that Ukraine withdraw its forces from four regions that Russia has claimed as its own but does not fully control, and formally renounce its plans to join NATO.
Kyiv swiftly rejected the conditions as tantamount to surrender.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
14 minutes ago
- The Independent
Largest ICE detention facility at Fort Bliss opens after months of delays, contract squabbles, and a workplace death
A new immigration detention facility, expected to be the largest in the United States, is set to open this week after facing months of delays, including a failed contract and a workplace death. The detention facility, dubbed 'Lonestar Lockup' by Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn, will begin receiving hundreds of people on August 17. The site at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, has an initial capacity of approximately 1,000, but that will expand to 5,000, making it the largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in the country. Donald Trump 's administration has rushed to open detention camps including in Florida, dubbed 'Alligator Alcatraz', and Indiana's 'Speedway Slammer', to fulfill the president's mass deportation agenda. More than 60,000 people are now being held in immigrant detention centers, according to internal ICE records obtained by The New York Times, breaking the previous record of 55,654 people in August 2019. The process of building the soft-sided tent camp at the Texas military base has been beset by controversies since the beginning. For the past six months, Trump officials have been seeking to build an ICE facility on a military base, eventually settling on Fort Bliss. In April, the administration initially awarded a multi-billion-dollar contract to a company called Deployed Resources to build the Fort Bliss camp but it was quickly canceled. A White House document about the contract claims it was terminated 'for convenience', citing Trump's executive order on wasteful spending and transparency. Weeks later, the government offered two contracts to build and maintain the facility, but both offers were pulled before they could be awarded to a new company. It is unclear why. Finally, in July, the Department of Defense announced it had secured a $231.9 million contract, under a Navy program, with Acquisition Logistics LLC to construct and operate the ICE detention facility in El Paso. Another company that did not win the bid, Gemini Tech Services LLC., filed a bid protest in July. While it is sealed, a source told NBC News the company was seeking to stop construction of the facility. The Fort Bliss project is also subject of two investigations by the Government Accountability Office, an independent nonpartisan agency that audits, investigates, and evaluates government services, according to NBC News. Those investigations are for improper bidding. Last month, the project faced tragedy after Hector Gonzalez, a 38-year-old employee with a subcontracted company, died in a workplace accident. The death is being investigated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration as well as the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division. 'Hector was a beloved husband, father, son, brother and co-worker and he will be greatly missed. Our support and prayers are with his entire family,' a spokesperson for his company, Disaster Management Group, told NBC News. In response to questions about the bid protest and workplace accident death, an Army spokesperson told NBC News that they are 'aware of the GAO protest for the Acquisition Logistics contract,' but could not discuss the issue due to ongoing litigation. 'However, we can confirm that this protest is unrelated to the recent death, which is under investigation,' the Army spokesperson added. In a statement, ICE said that the Fort Bliss facility will adhere to the agency's detention standards and will include access to legal representation, visitation, recreation space, and medical treatment space. The immigration detention center will also provide balanced meals and necessary accommodations, ICE stated. The facility with serve as a detention center and processing center, streamlining the removal process, ICE noted. "Upon completion, this will be the largest federal detention center in history for this critical mission - the deportation of illegal aliens," Pentagon spokesperson Kingsley Wilson said. So far, several states have assisted the federal government by building detention facilities including Florida, which erected Alligator Alcatraz, a tent camp and temporary holding center in the Everglades. It's been subject to scrutiny by lawmakers and detainees for its poor conditions. Similarly, the Speedway Slammer, an extension of the Miami Correctional Facility in Indiana, has also been subject to criticism from local people who believe the facility is an inhumane way of housing immigrants. Both facilities were built quickly to assist in the administration's mass deportation agenda which has compounded worries from Democratic lawmakers and immigration advocates that the locations are unable to meet the stringent requirements of an ICE facility.
BBC News
15 minutes ago
- BBC News
Ukraine war: US and Russian delegations head to Alaska for crunch talks
US and Russian officials will converge on the state of Alaska ahead of a highly anticipated Friday meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir pair will meet for the first time in six years, as Trump tries to enact a key campaign pledge to end Russia's war in Ukraine. The US president, who has portrayed himself as a global peacemaker, hopes to leverage his personal relationship with Putin to achieve a ceasefire breakthrough where others have Thursday he assessed there was a "25% chance" the meeting would not be leader Volodymyr Zelensky has been excluded from the talks, and warned that any resolutions made in his absence will be meaningless. The summit comes exactly one week after Trump's deadline for Russia to reach a ceasefire or face tough new was always highly unlikely that Kyiv and Moscow – who have been locked in a bloody war since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – would reach an agreement to end hostilities before that was scepticism about whether Trump would stand by his threat of imposing sanctions on countries that do business with Russia, which would have resulted in a blistering trade war with China. He has, however, gone as far as to say he will impose secondary tariffs on India later this month over its purchases of Russian week's announcement that Trump and Putin would meet had the effect of tacitly pausing the sanctions countdown - and awarding both sides more time to think about their next move. ANALYSIS: What do Putin and Trump each want from summit in Alaska?Putin must 'prove he is serious about peace,' says StarmerWhy did Putin's Russia invade Ukraine? Throughout the week, the American approach to the aims and hopes for the summit has been varied – shifting from the positive, to the cautious, to the the latter extreme, Trump has threatened "very severe consequences" if his Russian counterpart does not agree to end the war. What seemed to harden his approach was a group call on Wednesday with European leaders including the other hand, Kyiv will have been alarmed when Trump mooted the "swapping of territories" and the White House indicated that the president would take a passive approach by treating the meeting as a "listening exercise". All the while, the Russians have remained mostly silent – refusing to engage with speculation and rumours of frozen frontlines, territorial exchanges or minerals deals between Moscow and is consistency in that silence. Whenever Kremlin officials have spoken this week, it has been to reiterate Putin's seemingly intractable position on the conflict. They have restated that the war will only end once Russia gains full sovereignty over the Ukrainian regions it partially occupies – Donetsk and Luhansk, known as the Donbas, as well as Kherson and Zaporizhzhia – and a pledge that Kyiv will demilitarise and not join Nato, the military alliance of Western Trump seems convinced that the usually convivial relationship he has cultivated with Putin could help him unlock a deal to end the conflict and further his image as a global peacemaker. The issue has become central to the question of what Trump has delivered on the world stage since returning to the US presidency. He has a domestic audience to keep happy, and many of his supporters backed him for his pledge to swiftly end the war and disentangle America from expensive foreign conflicts more of the summit - his first meeting with Putin for six years - the American hopes that his negotiating style will pay dividends where other efforts to end the war have failed. His top officials have stressed the importance of him meeting Putin in person, and Trump himself has talked up his business-like instincts, saying he may know "in the first two minutes... exactly whether or not a deal can be made". Europe finds itself in the unenviable position of being caught between the two sides and excluded from Friday's their last-minute call with Trump on Wednesday, European leaders emerged tentatively optimistic that once in Alaska the US president would fight their Ukraine itself, they have endured several turbulent months, during which Trump had a memorable White House bust-up with Zelensky and later temporarily paused military supplies for Kyiv - a markedly different stance to his predecessor Joe Biden. Ukraine has been sidelined ahead of Friday, protests by the Ukrainian leader that any agreement struck by Trump and Putin without input from Kyiv would amount to "dead decisions", it became increasingly clear as the week progressed that the US-Russia meeting would remain a bilateral only. While he remained careful to keep Trump onside, Zelensky felt he had to intervene after the US president's throwaway comments about the need to see "some swapping, changes in land" between Russia and Ukraine."We will not withdraw from the Donbas. We cannot do that," the Ukrainian president said, with a hint of exasperation, as speculation over potential territorial concessions reached a height on Tuesday."Everyone forgets the first part: our territories are illegally occupied. For the Russians, the Donbas is a bridgehead for a future new offensive," he said, arguing that he would "pave the way" for further conflict on its soil if it gave up the many of his compatriots, Zelensky is convinced that Putin wants to destroy Ukraine's sovereignty and people, and believes any concession to Russia would result in renewed and perhaps fatal aggression in the near is why he has consistently pushed to be invited into the room with Trump and Putin. While this will not be the case during Friday's summit, the US president has pledged to update Zelensky soon afterwards - and has indicated he is angling for a "quick" three-way meeting in the near future. What Putin would have to gain from such a meeting is unclear. The Kremlin has always said Putin and Zelensky have no reason to meet until much further down the negotiating that could still be far off. Ultimately, Putin's "central objective lies in obtaining... the geopolitical 'neutralisation' of Ukraine," according to analyst Tatyana Stanovaya."It is extremely difficult to convey what is truly at stake... as people often simply cannot accept that Putin might want so much - and be serious about it. Unfortunately, he can."The frenzied lead-up to the Alaska summit has revealed that if Trump's position on a potential resolution of the conflict is still subject to change, Putin's is will offer them a meeting place; common ground at the negotiating table may be harder to find. Follow the BBC's coverage of the war in Ukraine EXPLAINER: Where in Alaska is Trump meeting Putin and why?VISUALS: The war-ravaged Ukrainian territories in mapsVERIFY: Russian attacks on Ukraine double since Trump inaugurationGROUND REPORT: On Ukraine's front line, twisted wreckage shows sanctions haven't yet stopped Russia
Reuters
15 minutes ago
- Reuters
Exclusive: Trump ally Erik Prince plans to keep personnel in Haiti for 10 years to fight gangs and collect taxes
Aug 14 (Reuters) - The prominent Donald Trump supporter and private security executive Erik Prince says he has a 10-year deal with Haiti to fight the country's criminal gangs, and then take a role in restoring the country's tax-collection system. In an interview with Reuters, Prince said his company, Vectus Global, would be involved in designing and implementing a program to tax goods imported across Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic once the security situation is stabilized. He said he expected to wrestle control of major roads and territories from the gangs in about a year. 'One key measure of success for me will be when you can drive from Port-au-Prince to Cap Haitian in a thin-skinned vehicle and not be stopped by gangs,' Prince said in the interview. Prince would not comment about how much the Haitian government would pay Vectus Global, nor how much tax he expects to collect in Haiti. The new president of the transitional council, Laurent Saint-Cyr, who was inaugurated on August 7 as part of a planned rotation of council leaders, did not respond to requests for comment. Haiti's former council president and prime minister also did not respond to requests for comment. Vectus began operating in Haiti in March, deploying mainly drones in coordination with a task force led by the prime minister, but the long-term engagement and the involvement in tax collection have not been previously reported. A person familiar with the company's operations in Haiti told Reuters that Vectus would intensify its fight against the criminal gangs that control large swathes of Haiti in the coming weeks in coordination with the Haitian police, deploying several hundred fighters from the United States, Europe and El Salvador who are trained as snipers and specialists in intelligence and communications, as well as helicopters and boats. Vectus's force includes some French and Creole speakers, the person said. Prince, a former U.S. Navy Seal, founded the Blackwater military security firm in 1997. He sold the company in 2010 after Blackwater employees were convicted of unlawfully killing 14 unarmed civilians while escorting a U.S. embassy convoy in Baghdad's Nisour Square. The men were pardoned by Trump during his first term in the White House. Since Trump's return to the White House, Prince has advised Ecuador on how to fight criminal gangs and struck a deal with the Democratic Republic of Congo to help secure and tax its mineral wealth. 'It's hard to imagine them operating without the consent of the Trump administration,' said Romain Le Cour Grandmaison, head of the Haiti program at Geneva-based Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. When asked for comment about Le Cour Grandmaison's assertion, a State Department spokesperson said it has not hired Prince or his company for any work in Haiti. A senior White House official said: "The U.S. government has no involvement with the private military contractor hired by the Haitian government. We are not funding this contract or exercising any oversight.' It's unclear whether Prince's contract would be affected by the change of leadership in Haiti earlier this month. In an August 7 televised address, Saint-Cyr said he welcomed more international support to fight the gangs. 'I am inviting all the international partners to increase their support, send more soldiers, provide more training," he said. "Help us with a more robust international force.' The crisis in Haiti has worsened in recent years, as armed gangs gained territory and attacked hospitals, police stations and prisons, taking control of strategic transport routes and extorting funds from the population. Rights groups accuse the gangs of massacres, rapes, kidnappings and arson. About half the population is food-insecure and over 8,000 people in displacement camps face famine-level hunger. Haiti used to collect half of its tax revenue at the border with the Dominican Republic, but gang control of key transport routes has crippled trade and cut off state income, a report commissioned last year by Haiti's government and several multilateral organizations found. This has undermined the government's ability to respond to the crisis or deliver basic services, the report said. The Dominican Republic is a key source of grains, flour, milk, water and other food staples for Haiti, according to customs data. Haiti also relies on imports from the Dominican Republic for textiles, consumer goods, and medical supplies. Security contractors working in Haiti have faced challenges operating in a country with entrenched links between the gangs, local police and some factions of the government. Earlier this year, a team from American security firm Studebaker Defense abandoned their mission in Haiti after two of their members were abducted, likely due to corrupt police officials, the New York Times reported. Mounir Mahmalat, who serves as a country coordinator of the World Bank's Fragility, Conflict and Violence Group, said that it was virtually impossible to ensure the safe transport of goods or the security of people working in Port-au-Prince. Other security firms working in Haiti have raised questions about how Vectus would hold onto cleared gang territory as well as the wisdom of channelling resources to private security firms instead of the country's own security forces. "Resorting to private military companies cannot be seen as a solution to insecurity in Haiti,' said Gedeon Jean, head of Haiti's Center for Human Rights Analysis and Research. 'The use of private companies has often resulted in human rights violations.' While a private force could help police restore security, Jean warned against large spending on a foreign company while Haiti's own security forces lack funds and equipment.
