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Indian Express
33 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Trump, disappointed by call with Putin, to speak with Zelenskyy on Friday
US President Donald Trump said early on Friday he came away disappointed from a telephone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin because it does not appear the latter is looking to stop Russia's war against attempts to end Russia's war in Ukraine through diplomacy have largely stalled, and Trump has faced growing calls — including from some Republicans — to increase pressure on Putin to negotiate in earnest. After speaking to Putin on Thursday, Trump plans to speak to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday, he said in remarks to reporters on his return to Washington from a trip to Iowa. 'I'm very disappointed with the conversation I had today with President Putin, because I don't think he's there, and I'm very disappointed,' Trump said. Trump-disappointed-with-putin- 'I'm just saying I don't think he's looking to stop, and that's too bad.' The two leaders did not discuss a recent pause in some US weapons shipments to Kyiv during the nearly hour-long conversation, a summary provided by Putin aide Yuri Ushakov showed. Within hours of their concluding the call, an apparent Russian drone attack sparked a fire in an apartment building in a northern suburb of Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said, indicating little change in the trajectory of the conflict. In Kyiv itself, Reuters witnesses reported explosions and sustained heavy machine-gun fire as air defense units battled drones over the capital, while Russian shelling killed five people in the east. 'I didn't make any progress with him at all,' Trump told reporters on Thursday. Zelenskyy told reporters in Denmark earlier in the day that he hopes to speak to Trump as soon as Friday about the pause in some weapons shipments first disclosed this week. Speaking to reporters as he left Washington for Iowa, Trump said 'we haven't' completely paused the flow of weapons but blamed his predecessor, Joe Biden, for sending so many weapons that it risked weakening US defenses.'We're giving weapons, but we've given so many weapons. But we are giving weapons,' he said. 'And we're working with them and trying to help them, but we haven't (completely stopped). You know, Biden emptied out our whole country giving them weapons, and we have to make sure that we have enough for ourselves.' The diplomatic back-and-forth comes as low stockpiles have prompted the US to pause shipments of certain critical weapons to Ukraine, sources told Reuters earlier, just as it faces a Russian summer offensive and growing attacks on civilian targets. Putin, for his part, has continued to assert he will stop his invasion only if the conflict's 'root causes' have been tackled, making use of Russian shorthand for the issue of NATO enlargement and Western support for Ukraine, including the rejection of any notion of Ukraine joining the NATO alliance. Russian leaders are also angling to establish greater control over political decisions made in Kyiv and other Eastern European capitals, NATO leaders have said. The pause in US weapons shipments caught Ukraine off-guard and has generated widespread confusion about Trump's current views on the conflict, after saying just last week he would try to free up a Patriot missile defense system for use by Kyiv. Ukrainian leaders called in the acting US envoy to Kyiv on Wednesday to underline the importance of military aid from Washington, and caution that the pause in its weapons shipments would weaken Ukraine's ability to defend itself against Russia. The Pentagon's move has meant a cut in deliveries of the Patriot defense missiles that Ukraine relies on to destroy fast-moving ballistic missiles, Reuters reported on Wednesday. Ushakov, the Kremlin aide, said that while Russia was open to continuing to speak with the US, any peace negotiations needed to happen between Moscow and Kyiv. That comment comes amid some signs that Moscow is trying to avoid a three-way format for possible peace talks. The Russians asked American diplomats to leave the room during such a meeting in Istanbul in early June, Ukrainian officials have said. Trump and Putin did not talk about a face-to-face meeting, Ushakov said.
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First Post
an hour ago
- First Post
From biryani to Bharat: How Zohran Mamdani is cooking up chaos, falsehood and division
Zohran Mamdani's blood is Bharatiya, and he may relish a plate of biryani with his hands, but his mind seems consumed by disdain for Bharat and its civilisational identity read more Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, sparked controversy on social media after a video of him eating mutton biryani with his hands went viral. (Images: REUTERS/Mamdani's video screengrab) Culture wars have found a bizarre new battleground — the humble plate of biryani. The trigger? Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, eating mutton biryani with his hands. Overnight, social media was ablaze with a debate on what was the correct way to eat the delicacy: with hands or via cutlery. A significantly large section of people residing in the west of the Atlantic, ironically home to the slogan 'Finger Lickin' Good', rose in fierce defence of cutlery, while many in the East, especially the metropolitans of Bharat — who for decades shamed hand-eating at prestigious venues — rediscovered pride in eating with fingers. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD This absurd battle reveals more than just culinary quirks. It exposes how identity can be weaponised, narratives twisted, and facts bent, all to feed divisive politics. And Zohran Mamdani stands right at this dangerous intersection, appropriating symbolic gestures to project a progressive persona while camouflaging his illiberal, divisive, and grievance-driven agenda. Let's start with his rise. Mamdani, the son of a cerebral filmmaker mother and a socialist academic father, is celebrated in New York's political-socialite circles as a beacon of progressivism; he is hailed for championing the cause of the supposedly voiceless. Yet, scratch beneath this carefully constructed image, and a troubling pattern emerges: Exaggeration, fabrication and, worse, a dangerous tendency to manufacture convenient truth. Last month, the 33-year-old Mamdani called Prime Minister Narendra Modi a 'war criminal' who orchestrated a 'mass slaughter of Muslims'. The result: 'There are no Muslims left in Gujarat,' he claims. This is indeed a sweeping, chilling assertion — except that they both are blatant, dangerous lies. While Prime Minister Modi is a democratically elected leader of the world's largest democracy — not once but three times in a row — Gujarat remains home to over seven million Muslims, nearly 10 per cent of the state's population. Far from being wiped out, Gujarat's Muslims today run 22 per cent of the state's small and medium enterprises, despite forming just 9 per cent of the population. The Tendulkar Committee, set up by the previous Congress-led UPA government, found that only 7.7 per cent of Gujarat's rural Muslims lived below the poverty line — this is phenomenally better than the national average of 26.9 per cent. The Sachar Committee too acknowledged that Gujarat's welfare schemes extended robust support to Muslim communities. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Equally significant is what Mamdani doesn't say. Gujarat, once notorious for periodic communal riots (1969, 1985, 1987, 1992, to name a few), has not seen a single major communal violence in more than two decades. The Supreme Court, after exhaustive investigations, gave Narendra Modi a clean chit in the 2002 post-Godhra violence. But inconvenient truths find no place in Mamdani's narrative. His story needs villains, not nuanced facts. This also explains why he would repeatedly talk about Gujarat, but Godhra would be conspicuous by its absence in his statements. Mamdani wears his opposition to 'Hindutva forces' like a badge of honour, constantly highlighting the plight of minorities (for him, and so many Left-'liberals', minority means Muslim) in Bharat. He is seen to be routinely criticising Bharat's democratic credentials, calling it on multiple occasions a state teetering toward fascism. Yet, he has nothing to say on the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits or the political violence faced by Hindus in West Bengal. The sorry state of minority affairs in Bharat's immediate neighbourhood—Pakistan and Bangladesh — rarely bothers him. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Even his association with Khalistani elements in the West doesn't bother him. He is more than happy to overlook their history of violence — from the Air India Kanishka bombing in 1985, which was the deadliest aviation terror attack before 9/11, to the bombings of Hindu temples across North America in recent years. Why would a New York politician be so invested in demonising Bharat? The answer is as simple as it is cynical. By painting Bharat as a Hindu majoritarian dystopia and Modi as a villain, Mamdani secures instant celebrity status and applause from the global Left-'liberal' ecosystem. What would otherwise require years of grassroots work — conducting mass outreach programmes, building coalitions, and delivering local results — he achieves overnight by positioning himself as a moral crusader against the alleged fascism in a faraway land. This is narrative politics at its most dangerous. It thrives on half-truths, selective empathy, and historical amnesia. Worse, it is designed to perpetuate victimhood. Mamdani's real genius lies not in policy, but in optics. Whether eating biryani with his hands or issuing sweeping pronouncements on another country's internal affairs, he has mastered the art of narrative over substance. It is a reel persona overtaking the real one — a carefully curated act designed to harvest outrage and votes. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Zohran Mamdani's blood may be Bharatiya, and he may relish a plate of biryani with his hands, but his mind seems consumed by disdain for Bharat and its civilisational/Sanatana identity — an idea far more inclusive and diverse than the bleak picture he paints. In the end, the real tragedy is not that a local politician in New York peddles convenient falsehoods and manufactured truths. It is that in doing so, he keeps real wounds from healing, real conversations from happening, and more importantly, real democracies from flowering. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost's views.
Mint
an hour ago
- Mint
VIDEO: Vladimir Putin drops everything to be with Donald Trump, else ‘he could get offended'
Russian President Vladimir Putin interrupted an event and walked off stage to attend US President Donald Trump's phone call. In a viral video, Putin could be seen attending an event when he jokingly said he didn't want to keep Trump waiting — he might take it personally. In a light-hearted moment, Putin said, 'It is awkward to make him [Trump] wait; he could get offended." The audience spurred on with laughter and applause at his remarks. Trump had earlier confirmed he would speak with Putin. Hours later, he said the call yielded no progress on a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire. 'We had a conversation. We talked about many things, including Iran. We also talked about the war in Ukraine. And I am not happy. Today, we made no progress,' Donald Trump said. Reuters quoted a Kremlin aide as saying that Vladimir Putin told Donald Trump in a phone call on Thursday that Moscow will not step back from its goals in Ukraine but that it is still interested in a negotiated settlement to the conflict. Putin reportedly said Russia was ready to keep negotiating but that Moscow remained focused on removing what it calls the "root causes" of the conflict, now well into its fourth year. "Our president said that Russia will achieve the aims it set, that is to say the root causes that led to the current state of affairs," Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said. "Russia will not give up on these aims," he was quoted as saying. "He also spoke of the readiness of the Russian side to continue the negotiation process," Ushakov added, saying the call lasted almost an hour. Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov also said Trump raised the issue of bringing about a swift end to the war in a wide-ranging conversation.
