Russia and Ukraine Agree on New Prisoner Swap But Fail to Reach Truce
The Russian delegation handed over peace proposals that include Kyiv surrendering control of territory it still holds in four partially occupied regions, a Ukrainian official said.
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The Hill
16 minutes ago
- The Hill
Trump cancels Bedminster vacation to work on Ukraine-Russia talks
President Trump canceled his August vacation to his Bedminster resort to work on talks to end the Ukraine-Russia war, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday. Leavitt said Trump considered continuing peace talks while at his New Jersey golf resort but decided to stay at the White House instead. 'This is normally the time when the president goes on vacation, but not this president,' she said. 'There [were] discussions about him working from Bedminster for a couple of weeks, but he decided against it.' 'He's a man on a mission. He wants to move. Get things done quickly,' Leavitt added. 'He wants to strike when the iron is hot.' Presidents typically take a vacation in August while Congress is out for its recess. Trump took a 17-day trip to Bedminster in 2017 during his first term. Trump has been focused on ending the Ukraine-Russia war and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday. Days later, on Monday, Trump hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and several European leaders at the White House for talks. The president announced after those talks that he is working to arrange a bilateral meeting between Putin and Zelensky, followed by a trilateral meeting that would involve him. When asked about the timing of the trilateral meeting, Leavitt replied, 'It's hard to judge. I think he wants to see how the bilat goes.' The White House has been optimistic about the meetings taking place, without giving a timeline. Leavitt told reporters that Putin promised he would have a direct meeting with Zelensky.
CNN
17 minutes ago
- CNN
Ukraine wants a ‘ceasefire,' Putin and Trump want a ‘peace deal.' Here's the big difference
Russia Donald Trump War in Ukraine ImmigrationFacebookTweetLink Follow US President Donald Trump has ditched his call for a ceasefire in Ukraine, backing instead Russian President Vladimir Putin's push for a permanent peace agreement. That has not stopped some European leaders from pushing for a temporary truce first, even though the US president has seemingly decided one is not necessary. It's not that Kyiv and its allies don't want peace. But they understand that the kind of deal sought by Russia can't happen unless the most basic principle underpinning the global order – that a country cannot get what it wants by force – is thrown under the bus. And Kyiv's European allies are not willing to risk that, not least because they could well become the next target of Russia's aggression. Speaking to the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and several European leaders in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump adopted some of Moscow's talking points, questioning whether a ceasefire was 'necessary' if a broader peace deal could be achieved. But international law experts and analysts say that any deal that would force Ukraine to give up its land to stop the killing of its people by Russia would be completely illegal under the UN Charter, a key international agreement which most countries signed up to after the horrors of the Second World War. While often thought of as essentially the same thing, there is a big difference between a peace deal and a ceasefire in the eyes of international law. During a ceasefire, warring parties agree to stop fighting with each side keeping hold of the territory under its military control. But the understanding is that the pause is temporary – usually to provide a window to negotiate, deliver humanitarian help or evacuate civilians. Kyiv and its European allies suggested that a ceasefire might be a precursor for a meeting between Zelensky and Putin, followed by a trilateral meeting between Trump, Zelensky, and Putin. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who attended the summit on Monday, said that he 'can't imagine that the next meeting will take place without a ceasefire.' A ceasefire can be short – like the 1914 Christmas Truce that lasted a few days – or it could stretch to decades. The ceasefires between Cyprus and Turkey, and between India and Pakistan have been in place for decades with no permanent peace settlement in sight. What Putin wants – and now, apparently, Trump as well – is a permanent peace agreement. Under international law, a peace agreement is meant to be a formal, long-term treaty that dictates the future relationship between two countries. And that's where things get complicated. 'There is a uniquely core principle to international law that is inscribed front and center in the UN Charter: Use of force is emphatically prohibited. So what that also (means) is that any treaty that you procure by use of force is effectively illegal and is inherently void,' said Jeremy Pizzi, an international lawyer and a legal adviser of Global Rights Compliance, a human rights foundation. Little detail has been shared about the kind of peace deal Putin discussed with Trump last week, but it is clear that the Russian leader has not abandoned some of his maximalist demands, including that Ukraine give up the entire eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, known as the Donbas, and is banned from joining NATO in the future. This would make the deal doubly illegal under international law: illegal because of the way it would be reached – by force – and illegal because of its content. But even if he wanted to – which he does not – Zelensky cannot agree to give up territory. Under the Ukrainian constitution, any change to the country's borders must be approved by a referendum – a rule that is in place partly because of Russia's tendency to install puppet governments in foreign countries. A survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), a leading public opinion pollster, in May and June found that the vast majority of Ukrainians reject the idea of recognizing Ukrainian territories as part of Russia. An even bigger majority is against giving up control over territories that are currently controlled by Ukraine. Speaking to CNN from Kyiv, Pizzi said that even if the Ukrainians somehow changed their minds and voted in favor of giving up their land – which they are unlikely to do, according to KIIS – the agreement would still be illegal under international law. 'Regardless of the Ukrainian constitution, Zelensky, or no one, can hand over territory linked to aggressive military conquest. The prohibition of using armed force to conquer territory is absolute under international law,' Pizzi said. There are also practical and strategic reasons why Ukraine cannot agree to Moscow's demands. The Russian military currently controls almost all of Luhansk and more than 70% of Donetsk, which means that Putin is asking Kyiv to give up even more than it has lost so far. But the parts of the Donbas region that are still under Kyiv's control include infrastructure that is crucial for Ukraine's defense. A string of industrial cities including Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and Kostiantynivka that are connected by main roads and railways form the backbone of Ukraine's defenses. If they were to be taken by Russia, the road to the western parts of the country would be wide open. There is also little incentive for Kyiv to trust Moscow, Pizzi said. 'Russia has engaged in armed attacks against Ukraine for over 10 years now, consistently, repeatedly during that time. Russia has feigned negotiations, feigned good faith, while continuing to use violence and keeping up the same illegal maximalist goals in the background and Ukrainian authorities are painfully aware of this,' he said. 'There is no logical, sensible reason to trust Russia in the absence of a precursor, a good faith decision or engagement that they make on their part to hold off from killing more Ukrainians,' he added. Kyiv, backed by the Europeans, has indicated that it is willing to recognize the current reality on the ground in order to stop the killing. This would likely mean freezing the conflict along the current front lines and essentially giving up on trying to regain its land while the ceasefire is in place. Analysts at the Eurasia Group wrote in a note on Monday that the European leaders would no doubt make it very clear to Trump that there can be no question of acceptance of a permanent annexation of Ukrainian territory by force. 'While there is openness to recognition of the de facto military position on the ground, neither Ukraine nor the Europeans will accept that Russia should be 'given' more land than it has captured,' they said, quoting a Western intelligence assessment that it would take Russia more than four years to occupy the rest of the Donbas. And, crucially, even if Kyiv were to recognize that the reality on the ground gives Russia the de-facto control of some of its land, it would certainly not agree to make this a permanent recognition. Kyiv's goal remains to regain all of its territory in the future. The Eurasia analysts said there was some doubt in the European minds that 'Trump understands, or cares about, the importance of the distinction' between the two. A ceasefire might be the only way out of the current violence. A permanent peace deal would be against international law. 'The reality is that (international law) makes it almost politically impossible to conclude a peace treaty when the victim is not winning. And my response to that is: That's the point,' Pizzi said.
Atlantic
17 minutes ago
- Atlantic
Trump Doesn't Understand What Lasting Peace Requires
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. On the surface, yesterday's White House summit on Ukraine showed an impressively unified front among President Donald Trump, major European leaders, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The participants all smiled and expressed optimism. Zelensky donned a suit, avoiding harangues like those he received over his military attire during his previous visit. Yes, the leaders offered sometimes exaggerated praise for Trump, but the president also praised each of them in hyperbolic terms, and he had a few good lines, even if NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte laughed a little too hard at some of them. The biggest division during the meeting was not about whether Trump is more sympathetic to Russia or Ukraine, the central question in the past. Instead, the disunity was over substance versus process. Trump appeared to treat the peace negotiation as basically a series of steps to be completed, while his counterparts were more focused on questions of cease-fires and security guarantees. This cleavage suggests that although European leaders appear to have succeeded—at least for now—in persuading Trump to move somewhat toward them and away from Russian President Vladimir Putin, turning that into a real peace will still be challenging. For Trump, the answer to stopping the war appears to be getting the right sequence of meetings: First, he met with Putin; then he met with Zelensky; next, he will meet with both men and, he says, hammer out a deal. 'We're going to try and work out a [trilateral meeting] after that and see if we can get it finished, put this to sleep,' he said yesterday. (Zelensky was open to such a meeting yesterday. The White House said today that Putin has agreed as well, but the Kremlin has been publicly noncommittal.) Zelensky and the other Europeans, meanwhile, were much more concerned about the details of what might come up at this eventual trilateral meeting, or along the way. For the pro-Ukraine bloc, the big victory from yesterday was a discussion of security guarantees for Ukraine—basically, assurances that once a peace deal is in place, allies will assist Ukraine if Russia restarts hostilities. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, discussed creating something similar to NATO's Article 5 mutual-defense agreement. But Trump was notably vague about what sort of commitments he might make. Trump also wavered on the importance of a cease-fire. Prior to his summit with Putin in Alaska last week, Trump had insisted on a cessation of hostilities, which Putin flatly rejected. Now Trump seems to have given up on that. 'All of us would obviously prefer an immediate cease-fire while we work on a lasting peace,' he said. 'And maybe something like that could happen. As of this moment, it's not happening.' (As if to underscore the point, Russian drones struck Ukraine yesterday—though this sort of provocation also seems to be one reason for Trump's new openness to Ukraine.) Some observers were appalled by Trump's meeting with Putin on American soil, noting that the Russian president is a butcher, an autocrat, and a war criminal wanted on international warrants. All of this is true, and nauseating, but as National Review 's Rich Lowry notes, achieving peace will require dealing with Putin. (When President Barack Obama tried diplomacy with Iran, Republicans were outraged; now the roles are reversed.) Peace deals are judged on results, not always the character of those making them. Yasser Arafat and Henry Kissinger were Nobel Peace laureates, after all. Sitting down, however, is not enough on its own, and if treated that way, it can simply encourage bad actors such as Putin by giving them status and recognition without requiring any or many concessions. Trump sees himself as a dealmaker, and he's often described—sometimes, though not always, positively—as transactional. But he is so personally motivated by deals per se that he doesn't always appear to grasp that others are not, or why they're not. Trump's approach to this negotiation has ignored the fact that Putin doesn't seem interested in a deal at all: He appears content to drag the war out as long as possible. Nor does Trump's method account for the fact that some terms of a peace deal would be so onerous as to make it unacceptable to Zelensky on patriotic and political grounds. Dealing with the messy details is hard work, and Trump has never shown much interest in, or patience for, policy minutiae. This fetishization of process over substance has previously led Trump into the same diplomatic cul-de-sacs. In 2018—despite the skepticism of some of his own aides—he met with North Korea's Kim Jong Un in Singapore. The summit produced all the pageantry and pomp that Trump adores, and it led to a pen-pal relationship between the men, but in part because that was his focus, the gambit has not produced any breakthroughs on North Korea opening up, reducing nefarious activities overseas, or relinquishing nuclear weapons. Trump has held multiple meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to try to move toward a peace deal in Gaza, but his inability to get much traction there has led him to lash out at his ally. Other perils still dog the Ukraine peace process. Trump continues to speak about Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine as though Ukraine had some choice or culpability in the matter. ('Russia is a powerful military nation, you know, whether people like it or not,' he said on Fox & Friends this morning. 'It's a much bigger nation. It's not a war that should have been started; you don't do that. You don't take—you don't take on a nation that's 10 times your size.') Trump also has a tendency to latch on to whatever he heard from the last person he spoke with, which explains his vacillation between Friday's friendliness to Putin and yesterday's chumminess with Zelensky, and makes it hard to know where he might settle. But the biggest challenge at this moment is the nitty-gritty. Process is important and shouldn't be written off, but it's important because it provides a framework for resolving the substance. No peace deal can be achieved without accepting that. Today's News Russian President Vladimir Putin promised to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the coming weeks, according to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. In an interview on Fox News this morning, President Donald Trump said that no U.S. ground forces will go to Ukraine as part of any peace deal with Russia, but he is open to providing Ukraine with military air support. The Justice Department has launched an investigation into whether Washington, D.C., police manipulated data to make the city's crime rates appear lower, according to The Washington Post. More From The Atlantic The Growing Cohort of Single Dads by Choice By Faith Hill Charlie Calkins grew up in a big extended family. We're talking about nearly 30 cousins—some of whom had their own kids. When he was in high school, he spent a lot of time with those young children: a position that some surly teens might resent but that Calkins adored. The idea that someday he would be a father himself seemed, to him, only natural. He just needed to wait for the right partner to show up. So he did: He waited and waited. He went to business school. He built a career in tech. He traveled. And he went on dates. When a relationship didn't work out, he'd return to 'professional mode'—bouncing between 'intermittent surges' of dating and work. 'I spent a lot of my early adulthood going, When everything's right, it will happen,' he told me. 'I'm definitely a The stars will align kind of person. And then one day it hit me: They were not aligning.' That's how Calkins ended up, in his 40s, making an appointment with a fertility clinic. Read. A new generation of disabled writers isn't interested in inspiring readers, Sophia Stewart writes. Watch. Remaking an Akira Kurosawa masterpiece is no small task, but Highest 2 Lowest (out now in theaters) is a worthy attempt, David Sims writes.
