Zelensky: Ukraine and Russia to hold peace talks on Wednesday
Moscow has not commented on the peace talks yet. A Turkish government spokesperson said Wednesday's talks would take place in Istanbul, the same venue where previous negotiations in May and June failed to work towards a ceasefire.This week's talks will be yet another attempt to bring an end to the war that has been going on for more than three years, and will come after Trump expressed frustration with Vladimir Putin. The US president told the BBC he was "disappointed" but "not done" with the Russian leader.
I'm 'disappointed but not done' with Putin, Trump tells BBCUkrainians unimpressed by Trump's 50-day ultimatum to Putin
The Istanbul talks could focus on further prisoner exchanges and a possible meeting between Zelensky and Putin, a senior Ukrainian official told the Agence France-Presse news agency.Moscow, however, has downplayed the likelihood of reaching any concrete outcome anytime soon.Commenting on the prospects for a breakthrough, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday that the two sides were "diametrically opposed" and "a lot of diplomatic work lies ahead".Russia has intensified its drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian cities in recent weeks, causing record civilian casualties. It launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbour in 2022.
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The Independent
5 minutes ago
- The Independent
Protests in Ukraine after Zelensky approves bill curbing autonomy of anti-corruption agencies
Hundreds of people gathered in Ukraine's capital Kyiv to lodge their protest with the Volodymyr Zelensky's administration for passing a controversial bill tightening restrictions on its anti-corruption agencies, presenting the war-hit nation with its biggest domestic turmoil since the Russian invasion in February 2022. Ukraine's parliament on Tuesday passed amendments to allow the country's general prosecutor, appointed by the president, strict control over two anti-corruption bodies – the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (Nabu) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (Sapo). President Zelensky, whose party holds a majority in parliament, approved the amendments late on Tuesday. The changes would allow the general prosecutor to transfer cases from the agencies and reassign prosecutors. The move has alarmed the country as this could result in granting more power to Ukraine's chief prosecutor Ruslan Kravchenko, also seen as a Zelensky loyalist, to reassign corruption probes to investigators of their preference. Shortly after the bill was cleared in parliament, hundreds of people gathered in Kyiv carried placards to protest. Protests also broke out in other cities like Dnipro, Lviv and Odesa. 'We chose Europe, not autocracy,' read one placard by a demonstrator. Another read: 'My father did not die for this.' The vote was denounced on social media as a betrayal of Ukraine's decade-long geopolitical ambition. The protests echoed the long-standing sentiment of fighting corruption in Ukraine as critical to erasing a legacy of Russian rule. Vladyslava Kirstyuk, 18, said memories of her childhood in occupied eastern Ukraine, after Russia's covert invasion in 2014, left a strong impression. "I know what it means for one person to have all the power, when nothing is transparent and everything is working against you," she said. "I don't want it to be the same for us here." Mr Zelensky also said he had spoken to Nabu chief Semen Kryvonos and other top prosecutors. Mr Kryvonos had urged the Ukrainian president to not sign the fast-tracked bill, which he called an attempt to "destroy" Ukraine's anti-corruption infrastructure. The two agencies – Nabu and Sapo were set up in the country after the 2014 Maidan revolution toppled a pro-Russian president and set Kyiv on a Western course. They are credited for their work to tackle corruption and graft in Ukraine during the war, levelling charges against lawmakers, ministers and a former deputy head of Zelensky's administration. 'Last week, we ran an editorial warning of an anti-democratic backslide in Ukraine. Today, it's happening in plain sight. This isn't what our people have been fighting and dying for, and it's devastatingly unfair to them,' said Olga Rudenko, the chief editor of Ukrainian publication The Kyiv Independent. Ukraine is also facing backlash from anti-graft campaigners who have been alarmed since the government charged a top anti-corruption activist this month with fraud and evading military service. The move has been dubbed as political retribution by authorities for exposing corrupt officials. Rooting out endemic corruption and graft is critical for Ukraine to join the European Union and also a key condition to receive western aid at a time the country is battered by war. The European Union enlargement commissioner Marta Kos said she was "seriously concerned" by Tuesday's vote. "The dismantling of key safeguards protecting NABU's independence is a serious step back," she said, adding that rule of law was at "the very centre" of EU accession talks.
Daily Mail
6 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Putin's show of strength to the West: Russia carries out huge wargames in Baltic and Caspian seas with 150 warships and 15,000 troops ahead of peace talks with Ukraine today
Russia launched major navy drills around the world today, deploying more than 150 vessels and 15,000 military personnel in the Pacific and Arctic oceans and in the Baltic and Caspian seas as peace talks with Ukraine were set to get underway. The so-called 'July Storm' exercise from July 23 to July 27 will test the readiness of the fleet for non-standard operations, the use of long-range weapons and other advanced technology, including unmanned systems, Russia's defence ministry said. 'At sea, the crews of the ships will practice deployment to combat areas, conducting anti-submarine operations, defending areas of deployment and economic activity,' a statement read. They will also practice 'repelling attacks by air attack weapons, unmanned boats and enemy drones, ensuring the safety of navigation, striking enemy targets and naval groups', under the supervision of Navy chief Admiral Alexander Moiseev. Besides the naval vessels, more than 120 aircraft will also take part in the drills along with 10 coastal missile systems, displaying Moscow 's aerial prowess. It comes as a delegation of eight Russian officials gets set to meet their Ukrainian counterparts in the Turkish city of Istanbul for a third round of direct peace talks. But there is little hope the negotiations will yield significant results, and the Kremlin earlier this week sought to play down expectations. Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters: 'There is no reason to expect any breakthroughs in the category of miracles... it is hardly possible in the current situation. 'We intend to pursue our interests, we intend to ensure our interests and fulfil the tasks that we set for ourselves from the very beginning.' Asked if he could give a sense of how the Kremlin saw the potential time frame of a possible peace agreement, Peskov said he could give no guidance on timing. 'There is a lot of work to be done before we can talk about the possibility of some top-level meetings,' Peskov added, a day after Zelensky renewed a call for a meeting with Vladimir Putin. The Russian President has thus far spurned Zelensky's offers of a face-to-face meeting to end Europe's biggest conflict since World War II. But the Ukrainian leader insists that lower-level delegations like the ones expected for talks in Istanbul today simply do not have the political heft to stop the fighting on their own. The sides remain far apart on how to end the war begun by Russia's full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022. The Russian President has repeatedly declared that any peace deal should see Ukraine withdraw from the four regions that Russia illegally annexed in September 2022. He also wants Ukraine to renounce its bid to join NATO and accept strict limits on its armed forces - demands Kyiv and its Western allies have rejected. 'Ukraine never wanted this war, and it is Russia that must end the war that it itself started,' Zelensky said in a Telegram post as he called for a sit-down with Putin. But Peskov said Tuesday that 'a lot of work needs to be done before having a detailed discussion on the possibility of high-level meetings,' effectively scrapping hopes of a summit to bring Zelensky and Putin together any time soon. Ukrainian and Western officials have accused the Kremlin of stalling in talks in order for its bigger army to capture more Ukrainian land. Moscow's forces are currently in control of roughly 20% of Ukraine's landmass. Indeed, sources in the Kremlin told Reuters last week that Putin intends to simply seize more Ukrainian territory and believes his nation, which has thus far survived the toughest sanctions imposed by the West, can endure further economic hardship. 'Putin thinks no one has seriously engaged with him on the details of peace in Ukraine - including the Americans - so he will continue until he gets what he wants,' one source said. Russian analysts have said Moscow's forces will aim to bleed Ukraine dry with a strategy of 'a thousand cuts,' using drones and meat grinder assaults to relentlessly pressure many sectors of the front while increasing long-range aerial attacks against key infrastructure. Since spring, Russian troops have accelerated their land gains, capturing the most territory in eastern Ukraine since the opening stages of Moscow's full-scale invasion in 2022. DeepState Map, a Ukrainian open-source live mapping service, suggests Putin's soldiers have managed to secure 1,415 square kilometres (546 square miles) of land in the past three months. Now, they're closing in on the eastern strongholds of Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka in the Donetsk region, methodically capturing villages near both cities to try to cut key supply routes and envelop their defenders. Capturing those strongholds would allow Russia to push toward Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, setting the stage for the seizure of the entire Donetsk region. If Russian troops seize those last strongholds, it would open the way for them to forge westward to the Dnipropetrovsk region. The regional capital of Dnipro, a major industrial hub of nearly 1 million, is about 150 kilometres (90 miles) west of Russian positions. Putin's troops are also already in control of the entire Luhansk region, along with more than 70% of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, and small parts of the Kharkiv region, where they are encircling Lyman and Kupiansk. Russia's battlefield success of late is due in part to Ukraine's manpower and ammunition shortages after more than three years of brutal war, but can also be attributed in part to a refinement of frontline tactics, specifically the use of drones. Petro, a senior sergeant with the 38th Marine Brigade fighting near Pokrovsk, told the Kyiv Independent last week that his unit is experiencing a 'huge problem' with Russia's use of drones and glide bombs. Rather than relying on tanks and armoured vehicles to grind forward as they did earlier in the war, Russian forces are increasingly deploying swarms of first-person view (FPV) drones to bombard Ukrainian positions and limit the mobility of defenders. Roman Pohorilyi, co-founder of DeepState Map, added that Shahed-type attack drones are also being used along the contact line, not just to launch attacks on infrastructure. But groups of unfortunate foot soldiers are nonetheless forced to pile in behind them in a mad dash to overwhelm the defensive lines - a tactic Petro described as 'meat assaults in small groups'. 'Three (Russian soldiers) advance, two are killed, and one reaches the trench.' A view of the destruction after Russian forces launched a missile attack on the Kyivskyi district of Kharkiv Since Donald Trump's return to the White House in January, the US and Russian leaders have shared several personal phone calls. Trump also dispatched special envoy Steve Witkoff to Moscow for a diplomatic visit, and the US has proposed an unconditional ceasefire - but these actions have yielded no results. Moscow's escalating attacks on Ukraine have tested Trump's patience, and his temper boiled over last week during a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office. 'We are very, very unhappy with [Russia], and we're going to be doing very severe tariffs if we don't have a deal in 50 days, tariffs at about 100 per cent,' he threatened. 'I'm disappointed in President Putin. I thought we would've had a deal two months ago,' he went on, in reference to the US-proposed ceasefire that Kyiv accepted but was rejected by Moscow. Perhaps more consequentially, Trump also threatened to levy secondary sanctions on buyers of Russian exports to discourage them from keeping funds flowing into the Kremlin's war chest, should the conflict continue beyond the 50-day deadline. Until now, the US and its European allies have declined to impose measures that would restrict Russia from exporting its oil and gas elsewhere. Such a move would constitute a dramatic ramping up of Western efforts to back Ukraine as it would likely see Washington and the EU target countries such as China, India and NATO member Turkey, all of whom import huge quantities of Russian energy. In response, leading Russian propagandist Igor Korotchenko said Moscow must use the 50-day period before sanctions are imposed to win the war by dramatically increasing the intensity of attacks across the border. Korotchenko, a former colonel-turned-military analyst and editor-in-chief of National Defence magazine, told state-TV: 'Weakening the potential of the Ukrainian Armed Forces' rear support system will force Ukraine to accept Russia's terms. 'It is necessary to intensify Russian strikes… to the maximum extent possible. Scaling up this approach, we can achieve success.'
Reuters
29 minutes ago
- Reuters
Blaming Trump, Equinor books a $955 million US offshore wind writedown
OSLO, July 23 (Reuters) - Norway's Equinor ( opens new tab booked on Wednesday a $955 million impairment on an offshore wind project in the United States, citing U.S. tariffs and the uncertainty of the U.S. regulatory environment under President Donald Trump. Hopes the industry had harboured that projects in the United States would revive the sector were dashed on Trump's first day back in office in January when he suspended offshore wind leases. Then in April, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum shut down Equinor's Empire Wind development in New York state. He later lifted the stop-work order on the project. For Equinor, however, the damage has been done. On Wednesday, it reported its net operating income for the second quarter fell due to having to book a near-billion dollar impairment on its U.S. offshore wind projects. Equinor CFO Torgrim Reitan said a combination of tariffs, the U.S. administration changing its mind on developing offshore wind, and the removal of tax credits had affected the value of the group's large onshore terminal in South Brooklyn, built to serve offshore wind farm installations. "(The impairment) is driven by regulatory changes in the U.S., particularly related to that investment tax credits have been taken away for new developments. You also have tariffs, and there's also a presidential order stopping permitting of new offshore wind projects," Reitan told Reuters. "It is those new offshore wind projects that drive the impairment, because we have a terminal, the South Brooklyn Marine terminal, where we had assumed two more developments than our own Empire Wind to pay for that. That is now unlikely." Out of the $955 million impairment, $763 million is related to Empire Wind 1 and its South Brooklyn Marine Terminal project, with the remainder related to the lease of the Empire Wind 2 farm, the company said. Equinor, majority-owned by the Norwegian state, had won a federal lease for Empire Wind in 2017 under Trump's first administration and secured approval for its investment plans in 2023 during former President Joe Biden's time in the White House. Tariffs, including on steel, had increased costs on the project by $300 million, Reitan said. Equinor would still receive tax credits for the first phase of Empire Wind, but not for the second one. "Without investment tax credits and without a government that wants it to happen, we are not going to invest in it," said Reitan. The global offshore wind market, once touted by governments as a cornerstone of efforts to cut carbon emissions, has faltered under escalating costs and logistical setbacks. The total book value after the latest impairments was $2.3 billion, Equinor said on Wednesday. With a planned installed capacity of 810 megawatts, Empire Wind 1 could generate enough electricity to power half a million homes a year and was expected to begin operating in 2027. Equinor on Wednesday also reported a decline in core second-quarter results, as expected, due to lower oil prices.
