Trump says US air support possible for Ukraine security guarantee
Washington (AFP) President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that US air support and European ground troops could be part of security guarantees for Ukraine, warning of a "rough" situation if talks between Moscow and Kyiv fail."When it comes to security, they're willing to put people on the ground," he told Fox News, referring to European allies whom he met in the White House on Monday."We're willing to help them with things, especially, probably, if you talk about by air, because no one has the kind of stuff we have, really, they don't," Trump said.He added his "assurance" that no US ground troops would deploy to Ukraine, and he categorically ruled out Ukraine joining the Western military alliance NATO.Moscow has long said it will not tolerate Ukraine joining NATO and has been hostile to the idea of Western troops deploying to the former Soviet territory.Trump said that "France and Germany, a couple of them, UK -- they want to have boots on the ground.""I don't think it's going to be a problem, to be honest with you. I think, I think Putin is tired of" the war, he added.Trump said that following his talks on Monday with European leaders he is pushing to organise a bilateral summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky -- followed by another where he will join."I called President Putin, and we're trying to work out a meeting with President Zelensky. We'll see what happens there," he said. "If that works out, if it works out, then I'll go to the trilat and close it up."Saying it was possible Putin would back out, Trump said "I hope President Putin's going to be good and if not, it's going to be a rough situation."Zelensky "has to show some flexibility also."Trump said Ukraine has to accept it will not get its lost territories back -- including the eastern Donbas region -- but in return will get peace.
"I assume you've all seen the map. You know, a big chunk of territory is taken and that territory has been taken. Now they're talking about Donbas, but Donbas right now, as you know, is 79% owned and controlled by Russia," Trump said.
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Arabian Post
an hour ago
- Arabian Post
Prospects Of Ukraine Peace Deal Brighten After Trump-Zelensky Meeting
By Nitya Chakraborty The prospects of arriving at a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia to end the nearly three and half year old war have brightened after the Monday meeting of President Donald Trump with the Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House in the presence of the major European government heads. As a follow up, President Putin will be meeting Zelensky at a one on one meeting within next few days in a third country followed by a trilateral meeting to be attended by Trump. Two issues on which Trump was insistent was that Ukraine will not get back Crimea which Russia took control in 2014 and Ukraine will have to give up its ambition to become a member of NATO. To compensate this, Trump agreed to security guarantee to Ukraine by the European powers as also the USA. There are issues about land swapping. Those have been discussed but Trump has asked Zelensky to talk with Putin bilaterally. This actual control issue of some the areas remain unresolved as of now and this hurdle has to be crossed at the bilateral meeting. But if the US sources are to be believed, Trump has some proposals on land swapping which might be the basis for an understanding at the next meeting. Overall, the situation is positive as far as the prospects of ending the Ukraine war finally. President Putin has talked of the bilateral meeting within next two weeks, but Trump is in a hurry and so is Zelensky. Possibility is there, the bilateral one on one meeting will be held much before that. For Trump, it is a matter of personal prestige as any failure this time in arriving at a peace agreement will be taken as his personal failure also as a peace maker. In the entire efforts at making deal to end the Ukraine war, Trump has used trade and arms purchases from the USA as a bait to persuade the recalcitrant countries to come to agreement. This approach has been pursued with more vigour in the case of Ukraine which is very rich in minerals including rare earth but badly needs huge arms to modernize more its armed forces and air power. Trump took advantage of this and extracted a US$ 500 billion deal in March/April this year from Ukraine President in the first round of talks for ending Ukraine war, and in the current round, Zelensky has agreed to buy $ 90 billion arms from the USA to modernize its army. Talks have been held to allow Ukraine to export its own manufactured drones to the USA. After this$90billion purchase of arms from the US companies, Ukraine will assess its own requirements and place orders. Thus, Trump has opened up a big opportunity for the US defence companies in the US market, irrespective of the peace deal. Ukraine, with its $12.5 trillion in mineral wealth – including 20% of global titanium, significant lithium, and rare earths is a big attractive market to both Trump and Putin. While Trump is interested in the mineral wealth of Ukraine and already he has made a big deal, Putin is equally interested in getting control of big deposits of coal, gas and rare earth in some provinces of Ukraine like Donesk, Luhansk and Kherson. These were the part of Soviet Union in the communist rule. President Putin who was a leading member of the CPSU and the chief of KGB, still dreams of Greater Russia. His annexation of some strategic areas of Ukraine has to do with his nationalistic ambitions on Greater Russia, apart from taking steps to combat threat from NATO. The US, under Trump's second administration, counters with its own expansionist agenda. The April 2025 Ukraine-United States Mineral Resources Agreement ties Kyiv's economic recovery to American corporates.. This deal subjugates Ukraine's resources to US firms seeking to counter China's dominance in rare earth processing. In the latest US-China trade deal, Trump was able to extract a concession from China on resuming supply of rare earth minerals to the US market, but this was of small quantity. Trump wants to have bigger share of the rare earth minerals market and collaboration with Ukraine can ensure that. Ukraine economy is suffering in the last three and half years of war since February 24, 2022. The government badly needs massive financial support to rebuild its economy. That is not possible without big help from the USA. In 2022, the GDP of Ukraine went down by 28.8 per cent, but it recovered to 5.3 per cent in 2023 and 3.5 per cent in 2024. In 2025, the projected GDP growth is only 2 per cent. Thousands of young soldiers have died. Ukraine people are tired of the war ravages. They are looking for a respite. Nearly 33 million population of the country generally maintain a good living standard with the per capita GDP at $ 6261 projected in 2025. Sector wise services contribute 60 per cent to the GDP, industry 28.6 per cent and agriculture 12.2 per cent. Ukraine will need a massive rehabilitation and reconstruction programme if the war finally ends. But if the peace agreement is not reached at the proposed bilateral and trilateral meetings and the war intensifies, the impact on the Ukraine economy will be tragic. Ukraine people are looking at the coming meetings with big expectations that their woes will be over. (IPA Service)
Middle East Eye
6 hours ago
- Middle East Eye
Exclusive: Powerful Libyan official in talks with Israel to resettle Palestinians from Gaza
A senior official in Libya's internationally recognised government has held talks with Israeli officials over a proposal to resettle hundreds of thousands of Palestinians expelled from Gaza, multiple sources have told Middle East Eye. Speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the issue, Libyan, Arab and European officials told MEE that National Security Adviser Ibrahim Dbeibah, a relative of Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, was spearheading the talks despite Palestinians in Gaza flatly rejecting US President Donald Trump's postwar plan for the enclave. One Libyan source said that "practical talks" had already taken place but the specifics were vague. "The mechanisms and implementation have not yet been spoken about," the source said. Another Libyan source said that discussions were still ongoing and that members of the Tripoli-based parliament were deliberately being kept in the dark as pro-Palestine sentiment runs deep in the country. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters The source said that in an attempt to placate some Libyan leaders, the US was prepared to confer economic support or other benefits in exchange for the country taking in Palestinians. The source said that Ibrahim Dbeibah had already received guarantees that the US Department of Treasury would release some $30bn in frozen state assets. In May, separate sources had told MEE that Massad Boulos, an adviser to Trump and father-in-law to his daughter Tiffany, had held discussions with Ibrahim Dbeibah about unlocking billions of dollars in sanctioned frozen wealth funds. The assets were frozen in early 2011 by former US President Barack Obama, several months before the Nato-backed ouster of longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi. Boulos flatly denied that he was involved in talks over the resettlement of Palestinians, telling MEE that the reports were "inflammatory and totally false". However, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly said that Trump had "long advocated for creative solutions to improve the lives of Palestinians, including allowing them to resettle in a new, beautiful location while Gaza rebuilds". Seeking legitimacy from the US The idea of Libya serving as a possible new home for expelled Palestinians comes amid reports that Khalifa Haftar, a powerful military leader who also oversees a rival rubber-stamp parliament in the country's east, was offered greater control over the country's oil resources if he agreed to resettle hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Haftar, who has played a seminal role in the widespread destruction and instability in Libya, as well as the ensuing civil war in neighbouring Sudan, has denied the reports. Meanwhile on Monday, hours after receiving a request for comment from MEE on the issue of resettling Palestinians, Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah said that his government would not engage in the "crime" of resettling Palestinians. The Gaza playbook: Israel's five-step ethnic cleansing strategy Read More » He reiterated a line from a statement by the US embassy in Tripoli in May which dismissed reports that Washington was pursuing a relocation plan for Palestinians in Libya. Israel has publicly mulled expelling Palestinians from Gaza and last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli officials were in contact with "several countries" about absorbing displaced civilians from the war-torn territory. "I think this is the most natural thing," Netanyahu said. "All those who are concerned for the Palestinians and say they want to help the Palestinians should open their doors to them. What are you preaching to us for? We're not pushing them out - we're enabling them to leave… first of all, [leaving] combat zones, and also the Strip itself, if they want to." Recently, Israel's Agriculture Minister, Avi Dichter, singled out Libya as "the ideal destination" for Palestinians saying they would "happily leave" Gaza if the necessary international support was provided. "Libya is a huge country, with vast areas and a coastline similar to Gaza's," he said. "If the world invests billions to rehabilitate Gazans there, the host country will also benefit economically." Israeli officials have long advocated expelling Palestinians from Gaza and within a week of the 7 October attacks, Israel's intelligence minister at the time, Gila Gamliel, presented the cabinet with her "voluntary migration plan" where she hoped 1.7 million Palestinians would leave the enclave. Forced displacement, as observed in Gaza, violates international humanitarian law, notably Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits the forcible transfer of protected persons by an occupying power. The European source told MEE that Dbeibeh and Haftar were "simultaneously negotiating with the Israelis" in the hope of getting "more legitimacy from the Americans". The source said that if the resettlement plan was forcibly imposed on Libya, Palestinians would find themselves moving out of the frying pan and into the fire. "It will be catastrophic at multiple levels," the source said. "Firstly, for the Palestinians themselves, who would have just about made it out of the Strip alive and escaped an obliterated life in Gaza, facing forced expulsion to a country like Libya which is in deeply complicated political turmoil with divided governments, where systems and society is broken by its civil war." "The Palestinians will not be getting any care from those governments, which will push them to the following catastrophe, [which] will lead to a new wave of migration towards the shores of Europe. And this is also a scary thought, firstly because the past decades have proven to us that many of them will only make it halfway through the Mediterranean, like many of those boats that capsized. And those that would eventually get to Europe, I do not think that Europe would be welcoming of another one million Arabs arriving at its shores, as the Syrians who just made similar journeys just few years ago." The Arab official, who was intimately aware of the latest talks, warned that complicity in Israel's ethnic cleansing plan could provoke widespread anger across all of Libya. "This will be a shock to the Libyan people," he said. Mohamed Mahfouz, a Libyan political analyst, echoed his remarks, telling MEE that the US was acutely aware that discussions around Libya resettling Palestinians could cause great distress for Libyan authorities. "Accepting Palestinians could come at a high price for any of the parties that will engage with the United States on this matter. This in itself may explain why neither [Libyan] government is yet to normalise relations." Outreach to Africa In recent weeks Israeli officials have publicly said, then later denied, reaching out to leaders from across Africa and Asia to use their territories as potential destinations for expelling Palestinians. Plans have been mooted for Palestinians to be resettled in Sudan, South Sudan and the breakaway region of Somalia known as Somaliland, despite all of the territories being plagued by violence. Sudan has been gripped by intense violence since its civil war broke out in 2023, with an estimated 150,000 people killed in the past two years. South Sudan has struggled to recover from a civil war that broke out after independence, with more than seven million people facing food insecurity and at least 2.3 million children at risk of malnutrition. Meanwhile, Somaliland continues to face threats from the armed group al-Shabab over the region's memorandum of understanding with Ethiopia - one of the greatest enemies of the group. A Libyan political analyst, who requested anonymity due to fear of reprisal attacks by government-aligned militias, said that it was "unsurprising" that Ibrahim Dbeibah was leading the outreach efforts with Israel. "[Ibrahim] Dbeibah, like the Libyan government, is marked by self-interest. He is well aware of the benefits of ingratiating himself with the US and Trump." While Libya does not officially recognise Israel, the Tripoli-based government, known officially as the Government of National Unity (GNU), is known to have held several secret meetings with Israeli officials in recent years. In 2023, Najla al-Mangoush, then foreign minister under Dbeibah, secretly met Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen in Italy. The revelation sparked outrage in Libya, resulting in angry protests and her suspension. In a later interview with Al Jazeera Arabic, Mangoush claimed she had attended the meeting on direct orders from Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, and that it was coordinated between his government and Israel. Arabic Post later reported that Ibrahim Dbeibah had orchestrated the meeting, citing unnamed sources. Middle East Eye reached out to the prime minister's office and the GNU for comment but did not receive a response by time of publication.
Khaleej Times
7 hours ago
- Khaleej Times
S&P affirms 'AA+' credit rating for US, cites impact of tariff revenue
S&P Global on Monday affirmed its "AA+" credit rating on the US, saying the revenue from President Donald Trump's tariffs will offset the fiscal hit from his massive tax-cut and spending bill. Trump signed the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" into law in July after it was passed by the Republican-controlled Congress. The bill, which delivered new tax breaks, also made Trump's 2017 tax cuts permanent. "Amid the rise in effective tariff rates, we expect meaningful tariff revenue to generally offset weaker fiscal outcomes that might otherwise be associated with the recent fiscal legislation, which contains both cuts and increases in tax and spending," S&P said in a statement. "At this time, it appears that meaningful tariff revenue has the potential to offset the deficit-raising aspects of the recent budget legislation." The U.S. reported a $21 billion jump in customs duty collections from Trump's tariffs in July, but the government budget deficit still grew nearly 20% in the same month to $291 billion. Interest on the public debt also continued to grow, hitting $1.013 trillion in the first 10 months of the fiscal year, an increase of 6%, or $57 billion, over the prior-year period due to slightly higher interest rates and increased debt levels. Since returning to power in January this year, Trump has launched a global trade war with a range of tariffs that have targeted individual products and countries. The Republican president has set a baseline tariff of 10% on all imports to the U.S., as well as additional duties on some items and trading partners. IMPACT OF TARIFFS S&P, which became the first ratings agency to cut the pristine U.S. government rating in 2011, said the outlook on the U.S. rating remains stable. The ratings agency said it expects the Federal Reserve, which Trump has criticized this year for not cutting interest rates, "to navigate the challenges of lowering domestic inflation and addressing financial market vulnerabilities." It projected the country's general government deficit to average 6.0% of GDP during the 2025-2028 period, down from 7.5% in 2024 and from an average 9.8% of GDP in 2020-2023. S&P said it could lower the rating over the next two to three years if already high deficits increase. "The ratings could also come under pressure if political developments weigh on the strength of American institutions and the effectiveness of long-term policymaking or independence of the Federal Reserve," it said. SP, however, said it could raise the U.S. rating in the event of sustained economic growth and adjustments to the U.S. fiscal profile that would diminish recent increases in the country's debt burden. There was no reaction in markets on Tuesday to SP's credit rating affirmation, which follows a U.S. sovereign credit downgrade by Moody's in May, when that ratings agency cut the triple-A U.S. rating by one notch, citing rising debt levels. The U.S. national debt load surged above a record $37 trillion last week. James Ragan, co-chief investment officer and director of investment management research at D.A. Davidson, said the SP rating affirmation was an acknowledgment of the meaningful tariff revenue generated so far. "That's all good revenue (coming) in, but that's also a drag on the economy, so I think we don't know the impact of that going forward," he said.
