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RNZ News
an hour ago
- RNZ News
Putin's demand to Ukraine: give up Donbas, no NATO and no Western troops, sources say
By Guy Faulconbridge , Reuters Russian President Vladimir Putin. Photo: AFP / Andrew Caballero-Reynolds Vladimir Putin is demanding that Ukraine give up all of the eastern Donbas region, renounce ambitions to join NATO, remain neutral and keep Western troops out of the country, three sources familiar with top-level Kremlin thinking told Reuters. The Russian president met Donald Trump in Alaska on Friday for the first Russia-US summit in more than four years and spent almost all of their three-hour closed meeting discussing what a compromise on Ukraine might look like, according to the sources who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Speaking afterwards beside Trump, Putin said the meeting would hopefully open up the road to peace in Ukraine - but neither leader gave specifics about what they discussed. In the most detailed Russian-based reporting to date on Putin's offer at the summit, Reuters was able to outline the contours of what the Kremlin would like to see in a possible peace deal to end a war that has killed and injured hundreds of thousands of people. In essence, the Russian sources said, Putin has compromised on territorial demands he laid out in June 2024, which required Kyiv to cede the entirety of the four provinces Moscow claims as part of Russia: Dontesk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine - which make up the Donbas - plus Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south. Kyiv rejected those terms as tantamount to surrender. In his new proposal, the Russian president has stuck to his demand that Ukraine completely withdraw from the parts of the Donbas it still controls, according to the three sources. In return, though, Moscow would halt the current front lines in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, they added. Russia controls about 88 percent of the Donbas and 73 percent of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, according to US estimates and open-source data. Moscow is also willing to hand over the small parts of the Kharkiv, Sumy, and Dnipropetrovsk regions of Ukraine it controls as part of a possible deal, the sources said. Putin is sticking, too, to his previous demands that Ukraine give up its NATO ambitions and for a legally binding pledge from the US-led military alliance that it will not expand further eastwards, as well as for limits on the Ukrainian army and an agreement that no Western troops will be deployed on the ground in Ukraine as part of a peacekeeping force, the sources said. Yet the two sides remain far apart, more than three years after Putin ordered thousands of Russian troops into Ukraine in a full-scale invasion that followed the annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and prolonged fighting in the country's east between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops. Ukraine's foreign ministry had no immediate comment on the proposals. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has repeatedly dismissed the idea of withdrawing from internationally recognised Ukrainian land as part of a deal, and has said the industrial Donbas region serves as a fortress holding back Russian advances deeper into Ukraine. "If we're talking about simply withdrawing from the east, we cannot do that," he told reporters in comments released by Kyiv on Thursday (local time). "It is a matter of our country's survival, involving the strongest defensive lines." Joining NATO, meanwhile, is a strategic objective enshrined in the country's constitution and one which Kyiv sees as its most reliable security guarantee. Zelenskiy said it was not up to Russia to decide on the alliance's membership. The White House and NATO didn't immediately respond to requests for comment on the Russian proposals. Political scientist Samuel Charap, chair in Russia and Eurasia Policy at RAND, a US-based global policy think-tank, said any requirement for Ukraine to withdraw from the Donbas remained a non-starter for Kyiv, both politically and strategically. "Openness to 'peace' on terms categorically unacceptable to the other side could be more of a performance for Trump than a sign of a true willingness to compromise," he added. "The only way to test that proposition is to begin a serious process at the working level to hash out those details." Russian forces currently control a fifth of Ukraine, an area about the size of the American state of Ohio, according to US estimates and open-source maps. The three sources close to the Kremlin said the summit in the Alaskan city of Anchorage had ushered in the best chance for peace since the war began because there had been specific discussions about Russia's terms and Putin had shown a willingness to give ground. "Putin is ready for peace - for compromise. That is the message that was conveyed to Trump," one of the people said. The sources cautioned that it was unclear to Moscow whether Ukraine would be prepared to cede the remains of the Donbas, and that if it did not then the war would continue. Also unclear was whether or not the United States would give any recognition to Russian-held Ukrainian territory, they added. A fourth source said that though economic issues were secondary for Putin, he understood the economic vulnerability of Russia and the scale of the effort needed to go far further into Ukraine. Trump has said he wants to end the "bloodbath" of the war and be remembered as a "peacemaker president". He said on Monday he had begun arranging, opens new tab a meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders, to be followed by a trilateral summit with the US president. "I believe Vladimir Putin wants to see it ended," Trump said beside Zelenskiy in the Oval office. "I feel confident we are going to get it solved." Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday that Putin was prepared to meet Zelenskiy but that all issues had to be worked through first and there was a question about Zelenskiy's authority to sign a peace deal. Putin has repeatedly raised doubts about Zelenskiy's legitimacy as his term in office was due to expire in May 2024 but the war means no new presidential election has yet been held. Kyiv says Zelenskiy remains the legitimate president. The leaders of Britain, France and Germany have said they are sceptical that Putin wants to end the war. Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff was instrumental in paving the way for the summit, and the latest drive for peace, according to two of the Russian sources. Witkoff met Putin in the Kremlin on August 6 with Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov. At the meeting, Putin conveyed clearly to Witkoff that he was ready to compromise and set out the contours of what he could accept for peace, according to two Russian sources. If Russia and Ukraine could reach an agreement, then there are various options for a formal deal - including a possible three-way Russia-Ukraine-US deal that is recognised by the U.N. Security Council, one of the sources said. Another option is to go back to the failed 2022 Istanbul agreements, where Russia and Ukraine discussed Ukraine's permanent neutrality in return for security guarantees from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, the sources added. "There are two choices: war or peace, and if there is no peace, then there is more war," one of the people said. - Reuters
RNZ News
2 hours ago
- RNZ News
Trump hails 'total victory' as US court quashes US$464m civil penalty
By Gregory Walton , with Aurelia End , AFP A hefty civil penalty against Donald Trump has been thrown out by a US court, even though the judgment against him still stands. Photo: ANNA MONEYMAKER A US court threw out a $464 million (NZ$797m) civil penalty against President Donald Trump imposed by a judge who found he fraudulently inflated his personal worth, calling the sum "excessive" but upholding the judgment against him. Judge Arthur Engoron ruled against Trump in February 2024 at the height of his campaign to retake the White House, which coincided with several active criminal prosecutions that the Republican slammed as "lawfare". "It was a Political Witch Hunt, in a business sense, the likes of which no one has ever seen before," Trump said on his Truth Social platform on Thursday (US time), adding that "everything I did was absolutely CORRECT and, even, PERFECT". When Engoron originally ruled against Trump, he ordered the mogul-turned-politician to pay $464m (NZ$797m), including interest, while his sons Eric and Don Jr were told to hand over more than $4m (NZ$6.9m) each. The judge found that Trump and his company had unlawfully inflated his wealth and manipulated the value of properties to obtain favourable bank loans or insurance terms. Alongside the financial hit to Trump, the judge also banned him from running businesses for three years, which the president repeatedly referred to as a "corporate death penalty". On Thursday (local time), five judges of the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court upheld the verdict, but ruled that the size of the fine was "excessive" and that it "violates the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution". The Eighth Amendment prohibits excessive or cruel punishments and penalties. State Attorney General Letitia James is promising to appeal the decision. Photo: AFP State Attorney General Letitia James, who brought the initial case, vowed to take Thursday's ruling to the state's highest court, the New York Court of Appeals. Thursday's appeals court ruling "affirmed the well-supported finding of the trial court: Donald Trump, his company, and two of his children are liable for fraud," James added. Following the initial verdict, Trump subsequently sought to challenge the civil ruling as well as the scale and terms of the penalty, which has continued to accrue interest while he appeals. He repeatedly condemned the case and the penalty as politically motivated. His son Don Jr termed the appellate court ruling a "massive win!!!". "New York Appeals Court has just THROWN OUT President Trump's $500+ Million civil fraud penalty! It was always a witch hunt, election interference, and a total miscarriage of justice... and even a left leaning NY appeals court agrees! NO MORE LAWFARE!" he wrote on X. During hearings, conducted without a jury under state law, Trump accused then-president Joe Biden of driving the case, calling it "weaponization against a political opponent who's up a lot in the polls". As the case was civil, not criminal, there was no threat of imprisonment. Trump's economic advisor Peter Navarro said at the White House Thursday that "James is another one that belongs in jail," referring to the New York attorney general. "The Democrats really overplayed their hand on this because they thought they could take Donald Trump out," he said. - AFP
NZ Herald
3 hours ago
- NZ Herald
AI marketing presentation start-up Aether, cofounded by TikTok NZ boss, raises $4m, signs big clients
In its first few months, Aether has signed 18 clients, including ASX-listed firms, as it hit an annual recurring revenue rate of $600,000 while still under the radar. Early customers include Kiwibank and the Australian operation of the US-based multinational Edgewell Personal Care (whose brand stable includes Wilkinson Sword, Banana Boat, Playtex and Stayfree). And it's just signed a 'seven-figure deal' with a global fast-moving consumer goods firm with 22,000 marketing staff. Why would they not just, say, ask Copilot to create a PowerPoint, or take advantage of any of the various GenAI (generative artificial intelligence) bots that let you create presentations with natural language prompts? Creating a presentation using Aether. Gruber said the GenAIs are designed for a general audience of millions, or billions, while Aether has been honed from the ground up for marketing presentations and the likes of quarterly business reviews, monthly performance reports, campaign reports, agency briefs and knowledge management – tasks that traditionally drain resources and delay decision-making. Among its party tricks, Aether doesn't just create static decks. A presentation is 'live' – automatically refreshing when underlying data synched to it is updated. Gruber said it addresses widespread 'organisational amnesia' where a big company spends large amounts on research only for it to be forgotten or underutilised. Pound (who has also joined the board) said Aether is aimed at the top end of town. Many of its early customers have more than 5000 staff and large in-house marketing teams. Aether is aimed at making it easier for staff (including non-marketing staff) to access source materials, then easily turn them into a presentation, he added. New+Improved co-founder and Aether director Simon Pound says big companies can spend millions on marketing research, but sometimes lack the tools for all staff to easily access it and turn it into presentations. Photo / Jason Oxenham 'AI allows us to not only make faster, on-brand, well-formatted documents and presentations, but it also means the millions of dollars of research, strategy and proprietary data like sales, customer or market data to be brought to bear on every piece of work, in a way no human ever could,' Pound said. 'Aether generates insightful and presentation-ready storylines from large and complex files, saving our team hours on data synthesis and summation,' Dave Took, Edgewell's Asia-Pacific head of consumer insights, said. Creating a presentation using Aether. Gruber held senior roles with Google and Meta in Germany before setting up TikTok's operations in the country. In 2023, he shifted to New Zealand to set up TikTok's first office here. 'My wife is a Kiwi,' he said. Co-founder Ursula von Keisenberg, Aether's Melbourne-based co-founder, previously served as ANZ managing director at Timely and emerging markets sales lead at Xero Asia. The team also includes head-of-customer Rosanna Dedecius (until recently with Datacom) and Sydney-based product and strategy chief Daniel Alexander-Head, formerly a regional sales manager with US brand-building software firm Qualtrics. The seed raise will be used to accelerate product development and expand the global team, currently spread across Australia and New Zealand. Although he's previously worked for Big Tech, Gruber said a start-up vibe is nothing new. When he established TikTok's beachhead in Germany, with 10 staff, he was one of eight starting the same day. And when he set up the social media giant's New Zealand office, in Auckland, he had to do everything from scratch, from ordering tables and chairs to mapping the local chief marketing office landscape then making cold calls. Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald's business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.
