Turkey's Erdogan, Syria's Sharaa hold talks in Istanbul
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan was holding talks with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa in Istanbul on Saturday (May 24), news channel CNN Turk and state media said, broadcasting video of the two leaders greeting each other. Ciara Lee reports.
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The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
Zelensky launched a string of daring raids against Russia. He's proving to Trump that Ukraine has the cards after all
First came dozens of armed drones launched from trucks traveling deep inside Russia, swarming over military airfields across the country and raining down nuclear-capable long-range bombers. Then, two days later, a massive underwater bomb targeted a key bridge linking occupied Crimea to the Russian mainland. The two daring raids by Ukrainian special forces have stunned the Kremlin, bolstered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and sent shockwaves through defense departments around the world. But there has been an uncharacteristic silence from the White House, and its usually verbose inhabitants. Donald Trump, who during an infamous Oval Office showdown in February told Zelensky that he didn't 'have the cards' to keep up the fight against Russia, and JD Vance, who in the same meeting asked the Ukrainian president if he had 'said thank you, once' for Washington's support, have not said a word about one of the most significant setbacks to Russia's military in decades. John Bolton, Trump's former national security advisor, told The Independent he was 'surprised that there has been no public Trump comment, given his propensity to comment on almost anything.' When The Independent asked the White House if Zelensky might have had some cards up his sleeve that the president hadn't known about, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump 'remains positive at the progress" the two sides have made in U.S.-brokered peace talks that just ended in Istanbul, Turkey. 'But he also is a realist, and he realizes these are two countries that are at war and have been for a long time because of his predecessor's weakness and incompetence,' she added. Despite the U.S. role in brokering those talks, Ukraine did not inform the White House of the attacks in advance. The strikes took out many of the Russian bombers that have been firing barrages of missiles on Ukrainian cities over the past few weeks, but they also destroyed a number of its nuclear-capable strike force that might have threatened the United States. That led many to ask on social media, with just a hint of irony, if JD Vance had said thank you to the Ukrainian president. In any case, there was plenty for Vance and Trump to comment on. So why the silence? The operation, which has been dubbed 'Russia's Pearl Harbor,' may have brought home some uncomfortable truths for the president. Trump has repeatedly insisted that Ukraine is on an inevitable path to destruction, or at risk of starting World War III, if it does not agree to a U.S.-brokered surrender that would see Ukraine give up most of the land that Russia currently occupies. Ukraine's victories over the past few days have decisively undermined that notion, dealing a strategic and symbolic blow to Russia's military strength and striking deep into the country's interior. Trump has also spent an enormous amount of political capital trying to bring the war to an end, specifically by attempting to enforce terms on Ukraine that it couldn't possibly accept. Those peace talks have been accompanied by a heavy Russian bombing campaign against Ukrainian cities. Ukraine's willingness to fight on stands in the way of that aim, which has angered Trump and Vance. Michael Weiss, a Ukraine expert and editor of Insider, an investigative media outlet focused on Russia, said there really wasn't much Trump could say after the last few days. 'Yesterday, a Ukrainian intel officer messaged me asking the same question. Why is Trump so quiet? I told him, well — what's he going to say? The Ukrainians are starting World War III and making sure Russia won't be able to fight it half as well?' he told The Independent. 'More seriously, I suspect he knows his peace gambit is DOA. Now, even Mike Johnson is pro-sanctions. Pressure is building to penalise Moscow. If he walks away from it all, Ukraine has just shown it won't be helpless or incapacitated,' he added. The attack coming as a surprise to the White House is significant. It's clear Zelensky does not trust the U.S. with sensitive information on account of the abrupt pro-Russia spin Trump has put on American policy towards Kyiv since returning to power in January. Some members of the Trump administration are vehemently anti-Ukraine in part because they see Russia as a sympathetic nationalist-run power exerting itself in the face of NATO expansion and American-led hegemony. Many MAGA influencers were quick to attack Ukraine for the raids, fearing a Deep State plot to drag the U.S. deeper into the war. This anti-Ukraine view reaches as high as the office of the Vice President, who intervened to blow up an Oval Office meeting between Trump and Zelensky in February by casting the Ukrainian leader as ungrateful and disrespectful to his American patrons. While Democrats and some anti-Trump Republicans have long claimed there's a similar patron-client relationship between Trump and Putin dating back to Russia's efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election on Trump's behalf, people close to Trump have suggested the matter is far less complex. The president, The Independent understands, sees Russia as a strong country and Putin as a strong leader — a 'winner,' in his own parlance. But the audacity and ingenuity of this weekend's Ukrainian attacks may have — for now — positively influenced his opinion of Zelensky. Put simply, it's because Ukraine's success makes Moscow look less like a winner and more like the thing Trump hates above all else: a loser. Indeed, Zelensky indicated that the strikes were intended as such. '[W]hen we do show our strength, we do it justly, striking military targets. We show it not only to the Russian aggressors, but also to those of our allies who were once strong supporters but have started to waver, Zelensky wrote on X on Monday. Weiss believes that the last few days might have demonstrated to Trump that Ukraine is not done fighting yet. 'So long as the U.S. sells arms directly or allows third-party transfers from the Europeans, Kyiv will be in okay shape,' he said. 'Air defense is critical, and this is why knocking out 20 per cent of Russia's cruise missile-firing aircraft was such a master stroke. Why hit arrows when you can kill the archer?'
Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
Scaring Putin is the only route to a just peace
Nobody in their right mind thought Putin would come to the latest round of peace talks in Istanbul with any seriousness. And so it has proven. His demands are straight out of Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko's negotiating playbook: demand the maximum, present ultimatums and do not give one inch. Putin's terms for a final settlement are no different from his diktats from the start, including international recognition of Moscow's occupation of the four regions he considers Russian territory, and a guarantee Ukraine never joins any international alliances. Even Putin's pathways to a temporary ceasefire require withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from all of the four regions, demobilisation of the armed forces, cessation of international military aid and electing a new government. In other words: total capitulation, with Ukraine surrendering its sovereignty, partitioned, isolated, disarmed and a Russian puppet government in Kyiv. That doesn't mean negotiations shouldn't continue in the hope of achieving less punitive terms. The Ukrainian government has already signalled it would be ready to accept the temporary occupation of territory Russia has already captured. But it is hard to see how Putin will climb down from his maximalist position without significant changes on the battlefield or to the economic situation. President Trump tried a softball approach with Putin, extending the prospect of major economic benefits through a return to normalisation in US-Russia relations. Putin hasn't bought that even though he has ham-fistedly attempted to mollify Trump and encourage him to abandon Ukraine with his disingenuous ploy of engaging in negotiations. Trump obviously sees right through that. He said he was 'p----d off' by Putin's proposal that Ukraine should be placed under external administration with elections overseen by the UN. The US now needs to try a different approach. Trump can say he did everything he could to end the bloodshed in the first months of his presidency but Putin's intransigence now demands different tactics. What would those tactics be? Continue to hold out an olive branch while doubling down on US military backing to Ukraine and pressuring European allies to do the same thing. It was Biden's faltering leadership that allowed most West European countries as well as the US to do the least they could get away with. That needs to change and we've already seen how Trumpian hectoring can compel Europeans to boost their own defence spending, both in his first term and even more in his second. Renewing US commitment to Nato would also help encourage European leaders. It would send a powerful message to Putin too, whose overriding strategic objective is dividing the West. We need to move on from providing Ukraine with just enough to defend themselves but never enough to prevail. The effort required to drive Russia back out of Ukraine is probably too much to expect, but the point would be to enable Kyiv to do even more damage to Russian forces to compel Putin to reconsider his current calculation that he can grind Ukraine down and outlast the West's support. Among the most harmful constraints Biden imposed on Ukraine was forbidding use of US-supplied weapons to attack Russian sovereign territory. That was the consequence of his fear of Russian escalation, both against Ukraine and Nato countries. It allowed Putin to continue to shield the Russian population from the conflict, keeping it limited to a 'special military operation'. Kyiv didn't play ball though, firing home-made drones into Russia and even mounting the first invasion of its territory since the Second World War. The latest breathtaking drone attack on Russia, which destroyed a large chunk of its strategic air force on the ground shows what can be done. Some say the US and European countries should distance themselves from that, dreading Moscow's retaliation. But irrespective of the diplomatic position they choose to take, they should do the opposite, by giving Ukraine what it needs to carry out further strikes to undermine Russian military capability, drive the war home to the population and humiliate Putin. Trump should start to do real economic damage to Russia. Much can be achieved by more effective military action to increase weapons and equipment loss rates, potentially forcing Putin to transition the economy to a full war footing. The half-hearted sanctions against Russia have not been good enough and European countries have paid more to Russia for hydrocarbons than they have given in aid to Ukraine. We need to turn the screws by tougher measures against the Russian energy sector, finally detaching Moscow from the international banking system and disrupting the ghost tanker fleet that has allowed oil revenues to surge. A bitter blow would also be landed by seizing the entirety of Russia's $330 billion of frozen assets in Western countries to pay for the war, or at least plan to do so subject to negotiations.
Reuters
4 hours ago
- Reuters
Israeli military says two projectiles crossed from Syria towards Israel
CAIRO, June 3 (Reuters) - The Israeli military said on Tuesday that two projectiles crossed from Syria towards Israel and fell in open areas. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the projectiles. Syria's new rulers repeatedly said they did not want their country to pose any threat to its neighbors including Israel. Syria and Israel have recently engaged in direct talks to ease tensions as Israel continued to target Syrian military infrastructure.
