Zelensky calls for ceasefire talks with Russia next week
Ukraine's Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Rustem Umerov, has already proposed the next meeting with the Russian side for next week, Zelensky said during his daily address on Saturday.
'The dynamics of the negotiations must improve. We need to do everything possible to achieve a ceasefire. The Russian side must stop avoiding decisions regarding prisoner exchanges, the return of children, and the cessation of killings,' Zelensky said.
'A meeting at the leadership level is essential to genuinely secure peace. Ukraine is ready for such a meeting,' he added.
Meanwhile, Russian state media outlet TASS reported that a source close to Russia's negotiating team confirmed that they had received Kyiv's proposal for a meeting.
The last round of ceasefire talks in Istanbul ended swiftly in early June, with Russian and Ukrainian delegates meeting for barely over an hour before calling it quits. According to Russian state media, Russia put forward maximalist territorial demands as part of their preconditions for a ceasefire. Ukraine has previously refused to consider any territorial concessions in exchange for peace.
Zelensky's call for talks arrives just after US President Donald Trump offered Russian President Vladimir Putin a 50-day window to achieve a ceasefire before the US implements high tariffs on Russian goods, alongside 'secondary tariffs' on goods from countries that purchase Russian oil.
'We're going to be doing very severe tariffs if we don't have a deal in 50 days,' Trump said during a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office earlier this week.
'I use trade for a lot of things,' Trump added. 'But it's great for settling wars.'
Trump has expressed increasing frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent weeks, even complaining that Putin's assurances about ceasefire progress are 'bullshit.'
Yet Western analysts and Ukrainian officials say that the president's 50-day-window is unlikely to deter Putin from accelerating Russia's summer offensive in the coming weeks. Moreover, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has dismissed Trump's threatened tariffs as mere bluster.
'Fifty days – it used to be 24 hours,' Lavrov said. 'It used to be 100 days; we've been through all of this.'
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'Anxious Generation' Author Jonathan Haidt Shares New Worries About Kids — and Why You Should Be Concerned (Exclusive)
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That means when kids come in, they put their phone in a locked pouch, or a locker, and get it back at the end of the day. But many states and schools are doing something that's not very good: They banned phones only during instructional time. They do that because they're afraid of parents who say, 'I have to reach my student all the time.' But when class ends, kids lunge for their phones. And for the first 15 minutes of the next class, they're thinking about the drama going on. Phone bans during class time do nothing to help kids make friends. They do nothing to reduce the mental illness issue. It has to be bell-to-bell. I've never heard of a school that did it all day and regretted it or went back. PEOPLE: Critics of your book say you ignore the possible benefits of screen I recently found a horrifying statistic, which is that 40% of American 2-year-olds have their own iPad. A touchscreen device is not like television. Humans have always raised their children with stories. This is how culture is passed on. A TV screen is a reasonably good way of presenting stories. If your five-year-old watches a 90-minute movie on TV with an older sibling or with you, there's nothing wrong with that. The opposite is iPad time. The kid learns, "Might there be something more interesting if I swipe?" If this starts at age two, your kids lose the ability to pay attention to anything if it's boring for even a moment. By the time kids get to middle school, if they've been swiping and seeing micro stories that aren't really stories, a lot of damage has been done to their ability to pay attention. Us college professors all say the same thing: Kids can't read books anymore. Some of our students say they can't even watch a movie. It's too long. Our attention is being shattered. Let children's frontal cortex develop before you expose them to this. It's damaging an entire generation. And you should never give a child an iPhone as their first phone. You should work your way up. 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