Zelenskyy rejects ‘gifting land' to Russia ahead of Trump-Putin meeting
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has staunchly rejected a suggestion by Donald Trump that 'swapping territory' could be a way to end Russia's war on Ukraine. European leaders have reiterated their support for Kyiv ahead of planned talks between the US President and Russia's Putin.
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Norway wealth fund divests from several Israeli companies due to Gaza war
Norway's $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund says it is terminating all contracts with asset managers handling its Israeli investments and has divested parts of its portfolio. The announcement on Monday came after an urgent review launched last week after media reports said the fund had built a stake in an Israeli jet engine group that provides services to Israel's military, including the maintenance of fighter jets, as Israel's genocidal war on Gaza and the Palestinian population rages. The fund, an arm of Norway's central bank and the world's largest, held stakes in 61 Israeli companies as of June 30 but in recent days divested stakes in 11 of these, it said in a statement. 'We have now completely sold out of these positions,' the fund said, adding that it is continuing to review Israeli companies for potential divestments. 'These measures were taken in response to extraordinary circumstances. The situation in Gaza is a serious humanitarian crisis,' Nicolai Tangen, the CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management, said in a statement. 'We are invested in companies that operate in a country at war, and conditions in the West Bank and Gaza have recently worsened. In response, we will further strengthen our due diligence.' The fund stated that it has 'long paid particular attention to companies associated with war and conflict'. 'We constantly monitor companies' risk management related to conflict zones and respect for human rights,' it said. The Norwegian government began its review after Aftenposten, the country's leading newspaper, revealed that the fund had a stake in Bet Shemesh Engines Ltd (BSEL), which provides parts to Israeli fighter jets that are being deployed in the war on Gaza. Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store had said at the time that the investment was 'worrying'. The sovereign fund, which owns stakes in 8,700 companies worldwide, has sold its stakes in an Israeli energy company and a telecommunications group in the past year. In June, Norway's largest pension fund also decided to sever its ties with companies doing business with Israel. That same month, however, Norway's parliament rejected a proposal for the fund to divest from all companies with activities in occupied Palestinian territory. Several of Europe's biggest financial firms have cut back their links to Israeli companies or those with ties to the country, according to an analysis of filings by the Reuters news agency, as pressure mounts from activists and governments to end the war in Gaza. Last month, Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, called on countries to cut off all trade and financial ties with Israel, including a full arms embargo, and withdraw international support for what she termed an 'economy of genocide'. In a report titled From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide, Albanese detailed 'the corporate machinery sustaining Israel's settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians in the occupied territory'. The report singled out companies – including arms manufacturers, technology giants, heavy machinery companies and financial institutions – for their 'complicity' in Israel's repression of Palestinians from sustaining Israeli expansions onto occupied land to enabling the surveillance and killings of Palestinians.
Al Jazeera
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EU holds talks amid fear that Trump-Putin meeting will sideline Ukraine
European foreign ministers are holding emergency talks to discuss their next steps before a meeting between United States President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, as Europe fears Ukraine will be excluded and forced into unacceptable territorial compromises to end the Russia-Ukraine war, now in its fourth year. In a pre-US-Russia summit push aimed at consensus, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz invited Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the NATO secretary general and several European leaders to a virtual meeting on Wednesday. The European Union's top diplomats held a meeting by video link on Monday with their Ukrainian counterpart Andrii Sybiha. 'The path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine,' leaders from France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Britain and Finland, and EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said in a joint statement ahead of the call. Zelenskyy said on Monday that concessions to Moscow would not persuade it to stop fighting and that there was a need to ramp up pressure on the Kremlin. 'Concessions do not persuade a killer,' he said. Zelenskyy insists he will never consent to any Russian annexation of Ukrainian territory nor give up his country's bid for NATO membership. European leaders have also underscored their commitment to the idea that international borders cannot be changed by force. The EU has insisted that Kyiv and European powers should be part of any deal. The EU's top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said 'the US has the power to force Russia to negotiate seriously', but 'any deal between the US and Russia must have Ukraine and the EU included, for it is a matter of Ukraine's and the whole of Europe's security.' Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Monday said that the US had pledged to consult with Europe ahead of the summit. 'I will wait… for the effects of the meeting between Presidents Trump and Putin – I have many fears and a lot of hope,' he said. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer also expressed support for Trump's efforts to end the war with Ukraine, as long as the terms for ending the war are not dictated. 'Any peace must be built with Ukraine, not imposed upon it, and we will not reward aggression or compromise sovereignty. Ukraine will decide its own future, and we will support it every step of the way,' he said. Trump announced last week that he would meet Putin in Alaska on Friday to try to resolve the ongoing conflict. The meeting will be the first between a sitting US and Russian president since 2021. The US president is reportedly open to inviting Zelenskyy to Alaska, but there has been no confirmation as of yet. Putin has insisted the conditions must be right for him and the Ukrainian leader to meet in person. Aerial assaults intensifying In the meantime, aerial exchanges have intensified with diplomatic momentum to end the war in play, with Ukraine claiming to have hit a facility that produces missile components in Russia's Nizhny Novgorod region. Local authorities said one person was killed in the attack and two were wounded. An official told Reuters that at least four drones hit the Arzamas manufacturing plant producing control systems and other components for Russian X-32 and X-101 missiles. The Russian Defence Ministry said its air defence units destroyed a total of 59 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 12 over the Tula region, as well as over the Crimean Peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014. The ministry also said its forces had taken control of the settlement of Lunacharske in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, which Ukraine renamed Fedorivka in 2016. Russia carried out several deadly attacks in various Ukrainian locations over the weekend, including in the fiercely contested areas of Kherson and Zaporizhia.
Al Jazeera
10 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
‘Putin will fool Trump': Why Ukrainians are wary about Trump-Putin talks
Kyiv, Ukraine – Taras, a seasoned Ukrainian serviceman recovering from a contusion, expects 'no miracles' from United States President Donald Trump's August 15 summit with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. 'There's going to be no miracles, no peace deal in a week, and Putin will try to make Trump believe that it is Ukraine that doesn't want peace,' the fair-haired 32-year-old with a deep brown tan acquired in the trenches of eastern Ukraine, told Al Jazeera. Taras, who spent more than three years on the front line and said he had recently shot down an explosives-laden Russian drone barging at him in a field covered with explosion craters, withheld his last name in accordance with the wartime protocol. Putin wants to dupe Trump by pandering to the US president's self-image as a peacemaker to avoid further economic sanctions, while the Russian leader seeks a major military breakthrough in eastern Ukraine, Taras said. 'Putin really believes that until this winter, he will seize something sizeable, or that [his troops] will break through the front line and will dictate terms to Ukraine,' Taras said. As the Trump administration trumpets the upcoming Alaska summit as a major step towards securing a ceasefire, Ukrainians — civilians and military personnel — and experts are largely pessimistic about the outcomes of the meeting between the US and Russian presidents. This is partly because of the facts on the ground in eastern Ukraine. Earlier this month, Russia intensified its push to seize key locations in the southeastern Donetsk region, ordering thousands of servicemen to conduct nearly-suicidal missions to infiltrate Ukrainian positions, guarded 24/7 by buzzing drones with night and thermal vision. In the past three months, Russian forces have occupied some 1,500sq km (580 square miles), mostly in Donetsk, of which Russia controls about three-fourths, according to Ukrainian and Western estimates based on geolocated photos and videos. The pace is slightly faster than in the past three years. Within weeks after Moscow's full-scale invasion began in February 2022, Russia controlled some 27 percent of Ukrainian territory. But Kyiv's daring counteroffensive and Moscow's inability to hold onto areas around the capital and in Ukraine's north resulted in the loss of 9 percent of occupied lands by the fall of 2022. Russia has since re-occupied less than 1 percent of Ukrainian territory, despite losing hundreds of thousands of servicemen, while pummelling Ukrainian cities almost daily with swarms of drones and missiles. Russia's push to occupy a 'buffer zone' in Ukraine's northern Sumy region failed as Kyiv's forces regained most of the occupied ground. Ukraine also controls a tiny border area in Russia's western Kursk region, where it started a successful offensive in August 2024, but lost most of its gains earlier this year. The scepticism in Ukraine over the Alaska meeting is also driven by reports of what the US might offer Putin to try to convince him to stop fighting. Reports — not denied by Washington — suggest that Trump might offer Moscow full control of Donetsk and the smaller neighbouring Luhansk region. In exchange, Moscow could offer a ceasefire and the freezing of the front line in other Ukrainian regions, as well as the retreat from tiny toeholds in Sumy and the northeastern Kharkiv region, according to the reports. But to give up Donetsk, Kyiv would have to vacate a 'fortress belt' that stretches some 50km (31 miles) along a strategic highway between the towns of Kostiantynivka and Sloviansk. Donetsk's surrender would 'position Russian forces extremely well to renew their attacks on much more favorable terms, having avoided a long and bloody struggle for the ground,' the Institute for the Study of War, a US think tank, said on Friday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that Ukraine will not 'gift' its land, and that it needs firm security guarantees from the West. 'We don't need a pause in killings, but a real, long peace. Not a ceasefire some time in the future, in months, but now,' he said in a televised address on Saturday. Some civilian Ukrainians hold a gloomy view on the prospects of peace, believing that Kyiv's tilt towards democracy and presumed eventual membership in the European Union, and Moscow's 'imperialistic nature' set up an equation that prevents a sustainable diplomatic solution. 'The war will go on until [either] Ukraine or Russia exist,' Iryna Kvasnevska, a biology teacher in Kyiv whose first cousin was killed in eastern Ukraine in 2023, told Al Jazeera. But the lack of trust in the Alaska summit for many Ukrainians also stems from a deep lack of faith in Trump himself. Despite Trump's recent change in rhetoric and growing public dissatisfaction with Moscow's reluctance to end the hostilities, the US president has a history of blaming Ukraine – for the war and its demands of its allies – while some of his negotiators have repeated Moscow's talking points. It is also unclear whether Zelenskyy will be invited to a trilateral meet with Trump and Putin in Alaska, or whether the US will go ahead and seek to shape the future of Ukraine without Kyiv in the room. 'Trump has let us down several times, and the people who believe he won't do it again are very naive, if not stupid,' Leonid Cherkasin, a retired colonel from the Black Sea port of Odesa who fought pro-Russian rebels in Donetsk in 2014-2015 and suffered contusions, shrapnel and bullet wounds, told Al Jazeera. 'He did threaten Putin a lot in recent weeks, but his actions don't follow his words,' he said. He referred to Trump's pledges during his re-election campaign to 'end the war in 24 hours', and his ultimatums to impose crippling sanctions on Russia if Putin does not show progress in a peace settlement. Trump's ultimatum to Putin, initially 50 days long, was reduced to '10 to 12 days' and ended on Friday, one day after the Alaska summit was announced. Military analysts agree that Putin will not bow to Trump's and Zelenskyy's demands. Meanwhile, the very fact of a face-to-face with Trump heralds a diplomatic victory for Putin, who has become a political pariah in the West and faces child abduction charges that have led the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant against him. Putin last visited the US for bilateral meetings in 2007, only coming for UN summits after that, but not visiting the country since the warrant was issued. 'What's paramount for Putin is the fact of his conversation with Trump as equals,' Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany's Bremen University, told Al Jazeera. 'I think the deal will be limited to an agreement on cessation of air strikes, and Putin will get three months to finalise the land operations – that is, to seize the [entire] Donetsk region.' An air ceasefire may benefit Russia, as it can amass thousands of drones and hundreds of missiles for future attacks. The ceasefire will also stop Ukraine's increasingly successful drone strikes on military sites, ammunition depots, airfields and oil refineries in Russia or occupied Ukrainian regions. 'Then [Putin] will, of course, fool Trump, and everything will resume,' Mitrokhin said.
