Global News Podcast Trump and Putin fail to reach Ukraine deal
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The Independent
9 minutes ago
- The Independent
Democrat Senator said Alaska summit was ‘great day' for Russia: Putin was ‘absolved of his crimes in front of the world'
A key senator on the Foreign Relations committee called Donald Trump's Alaska summit with Vladimir Putin a 'disaster' Sunday and blamed the U.S. president for legitimizing his Russian opponent in front of the world. 'It was an embarrassment for the United States. It was a failure. Putin got everything he wanted,' said Chris Murphy, the ranking Democratic member of the Foreign Affairs subcommittee on European security cooperation. Murphy told NBC's Meet the Press that Trump was forced to abandon his main commitment — a call for a ceasefire — during the meeting and was similarly unable to convince Putin to drop demands for Ukraine to cede more territory, something the senator from Connecticut said was 'stunning' to see a U.S. president consider. 'He wanted to be absolved of his war crimes in front of the world. He was invited to the United States — war criminals are not normally invited to the United States of America,' Murphy said. Trump 'walked out of that meeting saying, 'I didn't get a ceasefire. I didn't get a peace deal. And I'm not even considering sanctions,'' the senator continued. 'And so Putin walks away with his photo op, with zero commitments made, and zero consequences. What a great day for Russia.' Murphy's comments to NBC come as two top Trump officials who traveled with the president to Alaska for the summit Friday, Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff, did the rounds on separate Sunday morning programs defending the outcome of the president's meeting with Putin. The optics of the meeting are being endlessly scrutinized in the mainstream press, partly due to the few specifics released so far about what the two men discussed. Among those moments been picked apart by analysts included the arrival of the Russian president, which was preceded by U.S. troops, in uniform, rolling out a red carpet on the tarmac. On Sunday, Witkoff told CNN'S State of the Union t hat the U.S. secured what he claimed was a 'game-changing' development in the discussions: Putin's willingness to consider accepting a U.S. security agreement protecting the future sovereignty of Ukraine's borders. This was the first time negotiators were able to gain ground on the issue, he explained. 'We were able to win the following concession: That the United States could offer Article 5-like protection, which is one of the real reasons why Ukraine wants to be in NATO," he said. Witkoff wouldn't specify whether the security guarantee could lead to what Trump and his followers have long opposed — a promise to directly engage U.S. troops in defense of Ukraine should Russia continue crossing Trump's red lines. Murphy, on Sunday, seemed to imply that such a guarantee would be the bare minimum standard necessary for any peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia. 'That [security guarantee] is an essential element of a peace agreement because any commitment that Vladimir Putin makes to not invade Ukraine again isn't worth the paper that it's written on,' said the senator. 'He's made that commitment many times. So yes, there has to be a guarantee that if Putin were to enter Ukraine after a peace settlement, that there would be some force there, a U.S. force, a U.S.-European force there to defend Ukraine.' He would go on to hammer Trump over reports that Witkoff wouldn't confirm when pressed by CNN's Jake Tapper, which revealed that Trump had signaled his own willingness to accept Russian demands for Ukraine to cede the entire occupied Donbas region as part of a potential agreement. Murphy said that the reported development was 'another sense that Putin is just in charge of these negotiations.' Chris Van Hollen, another Democrat on the Foreign Relations panel, was equally critical of Trump's meeting with the Russian president during an interview with ABC's Martha Raddatz on This Week. Heading into Friday's summit, Trump warned of 'severe consequences' if Russia continued to oppose peace efforts and said that he was working towards an immediate ceasefire. Afterwards, he claimed in a Truth Social post that "It was determined by all [in attendance] 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, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up.' Van Hollen called this news a 'setback' for the U.S.'s European allies and Ukraine, while accusing Trump of being 'flattered' by Putin. 'There's no sugarcoating this. Donald Trump, once again, got played by Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Putin got the red carpet treatment on American soil. But we got no ceasefire, no imminent meeting between Putin and Zelensky,' said Van Hollen. Jake Sullivan, national security adviser to the Biden administration, agreed. "President Trump's stated goals were very simple, get an immediate ceasefire, and in the absence of a ceasefire, impose what he called severe consequences," Sullivan said. "Well, the summit has come and gone. There is no ceasefire. There are no consequences.' Trump is now scheduled to meet Monday with European leaders including Finnish president Alexander Stubb, German chancellor Friedrich Merz, French president Emmanuel Macron and the UK's Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. Stubb is known for his personal relationship with Trump, and is poised to be on-hand to quell any disputes between Trump and Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky, who will also be in attendance. Zelensky is reported to be wholly opposed to any demand to recognize Russian occupation of the Donbas as legitimate.
Times
10 minutes ago
- Times
The ball is in Zelensky's court but he is in an impossible position
The final stand for thousands of soldiers, rich in coal but ruined by war — no other territory in Ukraine has seen a similar toll as the eastern Donbas region. Its fate may now decide the future of the war during today's meeting in Washington. Ukraine has clung to this industrial heartland ever since fighting erupted there in 2014, when pro-Russian separatists first began to clash with Ukrainian troops and declared Donetsk and Luhansk self-styled independent 'people's republics'. Central to President Putin's war aims, after the full-scale invasion of 2022 the war in Donbas escalated into a huge battle of attrition, costing hundreds of thousands of casualties on either side, reducing settlements to rubble and swathes of land into territory reminiscent of the mud-churned battlefields of the First World War. Battles for Donbas cities such as Bakhmut became graveyards of Ukraine's regular and volunteer units as troops died attempting to stem human wave Russian assaults. Yet now, despite holding on to 22 per cent of Donbas — about 6,600 sq km of land — Ukraine may be expected to surrender its most fortified defence lines after Putin demanded that it hand over this remaining territory, including strategic heights and fortified cities, as a condition to ending the war. It is not a condition that President Zelensky is expected to be willing or able to accept. Politically and militarily, the Ukrainian president would be unable to cede the Donbas territory to Russia, even if he wished to, without leaving Ukraine in a more precarious position than the one in which it now exists. Even if Russia were allowed a long-term de facto control of territory it already occupies in Ukraine, Ukraine's constitution poses a complex challenge to any potential surrender of unconquered territory — or the formal de jure recognition of Russian control over land so far seized by Putin's troops. The constitution expressly prohibits the president from unilaterally authorising any territorial changes, stipulating that Ukraine's territory is integral and inviolable; that the protection of Ukraine's sovereignty is the most important function of the state; and that any changes in territory can only be decided by a national referendum called by the country's parliament, the Verkhovna Rada. Zelensky — who set the tone of his war leadership when he said 'the fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride' in 2022 while refusing a US offer of evacuation — has stated repeatedly that he would not agree to territorial concessions. 'The answer to the Ukrainian territorial question is already in the constitution of Ukraine,' he said nine days ago in a video address, following the first remarks by President Trump that land swaps may form the basis of a peace deal. 'No one will deviate from this, and no one will be able to. Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupier.' Zelensky's meeting in Washington, where he will be accompanied by the main European leaders, Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary-general, and Sir Keir Starmer, comes after Trump told allies that Putin wanted Ukraine's Donbas as a condition to ending the war. • Matthew Syed: We have failed Ukraine in every way, even with the words we use In what could mark a fulcrum point in the course of the conflict, Monday's meeting will also be the first time Zelensky and Trump have met since their disastrous Oval Office meeting in February. It comes after the summit between Trump and Putin in Alaska on Friday, where Trump suddenly abandoned his demand for a ceasefire in favour of a peace settlement that appears to hinge Putin's demand for the unconquered Ukrainian territory of Donbas. So far it remains unclear whether the proposals by Putin are part of an opening gambit marking a starting point for negotiations, or a final non-negotiable offer. Either way, the suggestion of giving up unconquered Ukrainian-majority territory, where hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian civilians still live, to Russia, appears an impossible demand. 'Giving Donbas to Russia is legally, politically and strategically out of the question; and in addition it would cause serious division in our society,' noted Oleksandr Merezhko, chairman of Ukraine's foreign affairs committee and member of Zelensky's Servant of the People Party. 'Our constitution forbids any division of Ukrainian sovereign territory.' Putin's offer to freeze the front lines elsewhere in return for all of Donbas apparently ruled out the possibility of a ceasefire until a comprehensive deal is reached. A ceasefire had been one of Zelensky's key demands, at a time when Ukraine is being struck daily by Russian drones and ballistic missiles, and Ukrainian troops are in slow retreat along key areas of the battlefield. According to sources with knowledge of the Russian offer who spoke to Reuters, under the proposed Russian deal, Kyiv would fully withdraw from the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions — which both comprise Donbas — in return for a Russian commitment to halt attacks in the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. In addition, Russia would give up tiny pockets of occupied Ukraine near Kharkiv and Sumy totalling around 440 square km, in return for Ukraine handing up the 6,600 square kilometres it still holds in Donbas. The same sources also reported that Putin was also seeking formal recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014. Militarily, even though Ukraine's battlefield fortunes are in slow decline, surrendering Kyiv's remaining territory in Donbas to Putin would involve ceding key heights and the fortified cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, allowing Russia an easy axis of advance into other areas of Ukraine if hostilities recommenced. 'The ground our forces still hold in Donbas is a bastion, well fortified, and a gateway to other areas of Ukraine, which could be used as an easy springboard by the Russians in any further attack,' added Merezhko. 'This land is not merely symbolic. It is strategically vital.' Economically, though Ukraine has already lost a number of key mines in Donbas, further loss of territory would also prove crippling. Until it ceased production seven months ago due to fighting directly above it, the coke mine outside the Donbas city of Pokrovsk was the country's only source of coking coal, essential for the steel industry. • Mark Urban: On the front line, Russia's warfare is more cunning than ever At the start of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine's steel production plummeted by 70 per cent to 6.3 million tons. According to industry analysts, if the Pokrovsk mine is completely lost the country's steel production would drop to 2-3 million tons: a fraction of its glory days. With so much to lose, and amid such a febrile political environment, as their president goes to face Trump in Washington, few Ukrainians have found reassurance in what followed the Alaska summit, with briefings alluding to security guarantees for Ukraine in the style of Nato's all-for-one 'Article 5' outside the Nato alliance. 'Do we really expect nuclear armed western nations to respond aggressively against Russia in the case of further attacks upon Ukraine, if we are not actually a member of Nato?' concluded Merezhko. 'We don't think so. 'We just hope that the European leaders can keep Trump focussed on the key issues when he sees Zelensky in Washington,' he concluded. 'Without European pressure Trump seems to wander off towards Russia, like a line in that song by Frank Sinatra, 'my fickle friend the summer wind'.'
Times
44 minutes ago
- Times
Trump dropped ceasefire demand ‘because so much progress was made'
President Trump dropped his demand for a ceasefire in Ukraine because so much progress had been achieved in negotiations with Russia, his special envoy Steve Witkoff has claimed. Trump had insisted before his meeting with President Putin in Alaska that he would walk out if Russia did not agree to a ceasefire, and he faced widespread criticism in the United States over the weekend for apparently backing down from this demand. In a series of posts on social media on Sunday, the president said he 'had a great meeting in Alaska' and complained that 'if I got Russia to give up Moscow as part of the Deal, the Fake News and their PARTNER, the Radical Left Democrats, would say I made a terrible mistake'. Witkoff, who was present at the meeting, claimed that the lack of a ceasefire deal showed how much progress had been made during the negotiations.
