Russia pounds Ukraine, boosts army as world braces for Putin-Trump talks
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that Putin is not earnest about peace as the Russian army continues to pound away at Ukraine.
'There is no indication whatsoever that the Russians have received signals to prepare for a post-war situation,' Zelenskyy said, citing recent intelligence, in his Monday evening address to the Ukrainian people. 'On the contrary, they are redeploying their troops and forces in ways that suggest preparations for new offensive operations.'
European leaders have also warned US President Donald Trump against trading away Ukrainian land.
'Until Russia agrees to a full and unconditional ceasefire, we should not even discuss any concessions,' said Kaja Kallas, the European Union's foreign policy chief.
On Wednesday, EU states forming the Coalition of the Willing, a military grouping including some of Europe's largest militaries, warned that 'international borders must not be changed by force' and that if Russia did not agree to an immediate ceasefire, more economic sanctions should be imposed on Moscow.
Putin and Trump will talk one-on-one first, with only translators present, before participating in meetings with delegates, a Russian official said on Thursday, adding that there will be a joint news conference later on in the day.
As Russia confirmed the Alaska meeting, its army pounded away at Ukraine, seizing the village of Yablunivka in the eastern Donetsk region on Saturday.
Some 535 Russian drones and missiles rained on Ukraine during the week of August 7-13. Ukraine intercepted just under two-thirds of them; and Moscow's forces launched eight missiles against Ukraine, five of which got through its defences.
The Alaska summit
Putin aide Yuri Ushakov announced the Alaska summit on August 7, a day after Putin met with Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and suggested it.
The statement led to immediate confusion within the Trump White House. An unnamed administration official denied it, saying a Putin-Zelenskyy meeting would have to happen first.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio seemed to agree, telling the Fox entertainment network, 'Obviously, the Ukrainians have a right to be part of this process. We have to find a compromise between both sides so that the chief mediator, President Trump, can step in and make it happen.'
But on Monday, Trump said that Zelenskyy was not invited to Alaska. Nor were Ukraine's European allies.
Trump has stoked fears before among Ukrainian and European officials that he would elbow them aside to partition Ukraine in a great power deal with Russia.
During Monday's news conference, Trump offered conflicting information about whether that was still his intention, on the one hand saying, 'I am going to call up President Zelenskyy and the European leaders, right after the meeting, and tell them what kind of a deal…,' then interrupting himself and saying, 'I'm not going to make a deal. It's not up to me to make a deal'.
Both Trump and Rubio intimated that Putin had shared with them his red lines.
'I think for maybe the first time since this administration began, we have concrete examples of what Russia might require to end the war,' Rubio said, without giving details of the Kremlin's demands.
'There will be some land swapping going on,' Trump said. 'I know that through Russia and through conversations with everybody.'
Zelenskyy publicly pitted himself against the Alaska summit. In July alone, he said, Russia dropped more than 5,100 guided aerial bombs, more than 3,800 drones and nearly 260 missiles on Ukraine.
Ukrainian Commander in Chief Oleksandr Syrskii said that during July, Russian forces 'tried to advance along almost the entire line of contact'.
He also revealed that the Russian armed forces were managing to out-recruit their losses.
Despite sustaining heavy losses of 33,000 troops last month, Syrskii said, 'The enemy is increasing its grouping by 9,000 people every month.'
Russia plans to form 10 new divisions by the end of the year, two of which have already been created, said Syrskii.
'Therefore,' he concluded, 'we have no choice but to continue mobilisation measures, improve combat training, and strengthen the drone component of our troops'.
What's Putin's game?
Zelenskyy on Saturday said that Putin wanted the part of the Donetsk region that Russia does not occupy, in addition to keeping the Luhansk region.
Bloomberg on Friday cited unnamed sources as confirming that Russia had made this demand for Ukraine's east.
'He was allowed to take Crimea, and this led to the occupation of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions,' Zelenskyy said on Saturday, referring to Russia's annexation of Crimea in January 2014, and his open support for pro-Moscow separatists in Ukraine's east. 'We will not allow this second attempt to partition Ukraine.'
Russia claims all of Luhansk and Donetsk, as well as the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions, but only controls Luhansk. Roughly a quarter of the other three regions remain in Kyiv's hands.
The free portion of Donetsk is particularly important, said the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, because it contains a 50km (30-miles) long 'fortress belt' of heavily fortified cities: Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhivka and Konstyantynivka.
Seizing them would be a 'multi-year effort', the ISW said, because Ukraine had been investing in their defence since recapturing them from Russian control in 2014.
Similarly, the city of Zaporizhzhia, which lies in the unoccupied portion of the region, has been heavily fortified, and the unoccupied part of Kherson is separated from the Russian front line by the wide Dnipro river, the ISW said.
Ceding all these territories to Russia would weaken Ukraine's ability to defend its remaining areas, the ISW said.
'Potential Ukrainian defensive lines in this area would run through open fields, and natural obstacles such as the Oskil and Siverskyi Donets rivers are too far east to serve as defensive positions,' it said.
On Saturday, Ukraine and the EU presented a plan to US officials outlining mutual territorial concessions and NATO membership for what remained of Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Ukraine's deep strikes
Putin has in the past suggested a partial ceasefire on deep strikes, while preserving front-line hostilities.
Some observers have suggested that this would suit Russia because Ukraine has been successful at interdicting its supply lines and wearing down its defence industrial base and energy infrastructure.
On Saturday, Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) said a long-range strike set fire to a Russian drone warehouse in the Republic of Tatarstan, where Russia has built a large factory producing Iranian-designed Shahed drones.
Ukraine's military intelligence agency also said that sabotage operations had caused explosions at a Russian anti-aircraft missile base in Afipsky, in the Krasnodar Krai border region.
Ukraine also claimed to have struck oil refineries in Saratov and the Komi Republic on Sunday.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Al Jazeera
an hour ago
- Al Jazeera
As Trump splits from India, is the US abandoning its pivot to Asia?
New Delhi, India – When United States President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin meet in Alaska on Friday, their summit will be followed closely not only in both those countries, Europe and Ukraine – but also more than 10,000km (6,200 miles) away, in New Delhi. Since the end of the Cold War, India has juggled a historically strong relationship with Russia and rapidly blossoming ties with the US. New Delhi's relations with Washington grew particularly strong under the presidencies of George W Bush and Barack Obama, and remained that way during Trump's first term and under Joe Biden. At the heart of that US warmth towards India, say analysts, was its bet on New Delhi as a balancing force against Beijing, as China's economic, military and strategic heft in the Asia Pacific region grew. With Soviet communism history, and China, the US's biggest strategic rival, Washington increased its focus on Asia – including through the Quad, a grouping also including fellow democracies India, Australia and Japan. But a decade after Obama famously described the US and India as 'best partners', they appear to be anything but. Trump has imposed a 50 percent tariff on Indian imports, among the highest on any country's products. Half of that penalty is for India's purchases of Russian oil during its ongoing war with Ukraine – something that the Biden administration encouraged India to do to keep global crude prices under control. Meanwhile, China – which buys even more Russian oil than India – has received a reprieve from high US tariffs for now, as Washington negotiates a trade deal with New Delhi. That contrast has prompted questions over whether Trump's approach towards China, on the one hand, and traditional friends like India on the other, marks a broader shift away from the US pivot to Asia. Troubles for India, and Modi Since the early 2000s, successive governments in New Delhi have embraced closer ties with Washington, with its stocks rising in the US as an emerging strategic partner in security, trade and technology. Trump made that relationship personal – with Modi. During Trump's first term, he shared the stage twice in public rallies with Modi, as they also exchanged frequent bear hugs and described each other as friends. But none of that could save New Delhi when Trump hit India with tariffs only matched by the levies issued against goods from Brazil. 'The tariff moves have triggered the most serious rupture in the US-India relations in decades,' said Milan Vaishnav, the director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. For months after Trump threatened tariffs on Indian imports, New Delhi tried to placate the US president, refusing to get drawn into a war of words. That has now changed, with India accusing the US of hypocrisy – pointing out that it still trades with Russia, and that Washington had previously wanted New Delhi to buy Russian crude. 'One thing is clear: Trust in the United States has eroded sharply in recent days, casting a long shadow over the bilateral relationship,' Vaishnav told Al Jazeera. To Praveen Donthi, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, the crisis in the relationship also reflects a dramatic turn in the personal equation between Modi and Trump. The state of ties, he said, is 'a result of a clash of personalities between President Trump and Prime Minister Modi'. India has previously faced the threat of US sanctions for its close friendship with Russia, when it decided to buy S-400 missile defence systems from Moscow. But in 2022, under the Biden administration, it secured a waiver from those proposed sanctions. 'Not long ago, India could avoid sanctions despite purchasing S-400 weapon systems from Russia. However, now, India's policy of multi-alignment clashes with President Trump's transactional approach to geopolitics,' said Donthi. To be sure, he pointed out, America's Cold War history of bonhomie with Pakistan has meant that 'a certain distrust of the US is embedded in the Indian strategic firmament'. The Trump administration's recent cosiness with Pakistan, with its army chief visiting the US this year, even getting a rare meeting with the president at the White House, will likely have amplified those concerns in New Delhi. But through ups and downs in India-US ties over the years, a key strategic glue has held them close over the past quarter century: shared worries about the rise of China. 'A certain bipartisan consensus existed in the US regarding India because of its long-term strategic importance, especially in balancing China,' said Donthi. Now, he said, 'the unpredictable Trump presidency disrupted the US's approach of 'strategic altruism' towards India'. It is no longer clear to Asian partners of the US, say experts, whether Washington is as focused on building alliances in their region as it once said it was. Turn from Asia Under the Obama administration in 2011, the US adopted what was known as the 'Rebalance to Asia' policy, aimed at committing more diplomatic, economic and military resources to the Asia Pacific region, increasingly seen as the world's economic and geopolitical centre of gravity. This meant deeper engagement with treaty allies like Japan, South Korea, and Australia, strengthening security ties with emerging partners such as India and Vietnam, and pushing forward trade initiatives like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The idea was to shape a regional order that could balance China's rise. During Trump's first term, the economic leg that gave the pivot its weight hollowed out. The US withdrawal from the TPP in early 2017 removed the signature trade pillar, leaving behind a strategy that leaned heavily on military cooperation and less on binding economic partnerships. Yet, he refrained from the bulldozing negotiations that have shaped his approach to tariffs, even with allies like Japan and South Korea, and from the kind of tariffs Trump has imposed now on India. 'There is currently a period of churn and uncertainty, after which clarity will emerge,' Donthi said. 'There might be some cautious rebalancing in the short term from the Asian powers, who will wait for more clarity.' India, which, unlike Japan and South Korea, has never been a treaty ally to the US – or any other country – might already be taking steps towards that rebalancing. Russia-India-China troika? Faced with Trump's tariff wrath, India has been engaged in hectic diplomacy of its own. Its national security adviser, Ajit Doval, visited Moscow earlier this month and met Putin. Foreign Minister S Jaishankar is scheduled to travel to the Russian capital later this month. Also in August, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is expected to visit New Delhi. And at the end of the month, Modi will travel to China for a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, his first trip to the country in seven years. India has also indicated that it is open to considering the revival of a Russia-India-China (RIC) trilateral mechanism, after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov proposed the platform's resurrection. The concept of trilateral cooperation was first proposed in the 1990s and formally institutionalised in 2002, an idea Lavrov credited to the late Yevgeny Primakov, former chair of the Russian International Affairs Council. Although the RIC met regularly in the years following its creation, there has been a gap in recent times, with the last meeting of RIC leaders in 2019, on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan. India's Modi faces some 'very difficult choices', said Michael Kugelman, a senior fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation. 'Clearly, India is not going to turn on Russia, a very special partner. And India does not turn on its friends.' But doubling down on its strategic independence from the US – or multi-alignment, as India describes it – could come with its costs, if Trump decides to add on even more tariffs or sanctions. 'The best outcome for India immediately is the Russians and Ukrainians agree to a ceasefire,' said Kugelman, 'because at the end of the day, Trump is pressuring India as a means of pressuring Russia.' Even as questions rise over Washington's pivot to Asia under Trump, such a rebalance will not be easy for countries like India, say experts. Ultimately, they say, the US will find its longtime partners willing to return to the fold if it decides to reinvest in those relationships. The cost of a rebalance An RIC troika would ultimately be 'more symbolic than substantive', Kugelman said. That's because one of the sides of that triangle is 'quite small and fragile: India-China ties'. While there have been 'notable easing of tensions' in recent months, 'India and China remain strategic competitors,' added Kugelman. After four years of an eyeball-to-eyeball standoff along their Himalayan border, they finally agreed to withdraw troops last year, with Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping meeting in Kazan. But 'they continue to have a long disputed border', Kugelman said, and trust between the Asian giants remains low. Vaishnav of the Carnegie Endowment agreed. 'There may be opportunistic venues and moments where the countries' interests converge. But I think, beyond defence and energy, Russia has little to offer India,' he said. 'With China, while we may see a thaw in economic relations, it's difficult to see a path to resolving broader security and geostrategic disputes.' Jon Danilowicz, a retired diplomat who worked in the US State Department, said that a total breakdown of the US-India partnership is in neither's interest. 'The cooperation in other areas will continue, perhaps with less open enthusiasm than had been the case in recent years,' he said. Meanwhile, the Trump tariffs could help Modi domestically. 'Trump's hardball tactics could bolster Modi's domestic standing. They highlight Washington's unreliability, allowing Modi to frame himself as standing firm in the face of the US pressure,' said Vaishnav. Modi had been facing pressure from the opposition over the ceasefire with Pakistan after four days of military hostilities in May, after 26 civilians were killed in an attack by gunmen in Kashmir in April. The opposition has accused Modi of not going harder and longer at Pakistan because of pressure from Trump, who has claimed repeatedly that he brokered the ceasefire between New Delhi and Islamabad – a claim India has denied. 'Any further appearance of yielding – this time to the US – could be politically costly. Resisting Trump reinforces Modi's image as a defender of national pride,' added Vaishnav. Many analysts have said they see Trump's tariffs also as the outcome of as-yet unsuccessful India-US trade talks, with New Delhi reluctant to open up the country's agriculture and dairy sectors that are politically sensitive for the Indian government. Almost half of India's population depends on farming for its livelihood. Modi has in recent days said that he won't let the interests of Indian farmers suffer, 'even though I know I will have to pay a personal cost'. 'He is demonstrating defiance to the domestic electorate,' said Donthi, of the International Crisis Group. Ultimately, though, he said, both India and the US would benefit if they strike a compromise that allows them to stop the slide in ties. 'But the warmth and friendliness won't be present, and this will be evident for some time,' Donthi said.
Al Jazeera
2 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Why did Russia sell Alaska to the United States?
United States President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin are set to meet in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday to discuss how to end the war in Ukraine. On Wednesday, following a virtual meeting with European leaders including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump warned of 'severe consequences' if Putin refuses to accept a ceasefire after more than three years of war. The venue for the high-profile meeting is Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, a US military installation on the northern edge of Alaska's most populous city. Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson is Alaska's largest military base. The 64,000-acre outfit is a key US site for Arctic military drills and readiness. When Trump visited the base during his first term, in 2019, he said the troops there 'serve in our country's last frontier as America's first line of defence'. But that wasn't always the case. Indeed, the US government actually bought Alaska from Russia – separated by just 90km (55 miles) at the narrowest point of the Bering Strait – in 1867. At a news briefing on August 9, Russian presidential assistant Yuri Ushakov pointed out that the two countries are neighbours. 'It seems quite logical for our delegation simply to fly over the Bering Strait and for such an important … summit of the leaders of the two countries to be held in Alaska,' Ushakov said. When did Russia assume control of Alaska? When Russian Tsar Peter the Great dispatched the Danish navigator Vitus Bering in 1725 to explore the Alaskan coast, Russia already had a high interest in the region, which was rich in natural resources – including lucrative sea otter pelts – and sparsely populated. Then, in 1799, Emperor Paul I granted the 'Russian-American Company' a monopoly over governance in Alaska. This state-sponsored group established settlements like Sitka, which became the colonial capital after Russia ruthlessly overcame the native Tlingit tribe in 1804. Russia's Alaskan ambitions, however, quickly faced numerous challenges – the vast distance from then-capital St Petersburg, harsh climates, supply shortages, and growing competition from American explorers. As the US expanded westward in the early 1800s, Americans soon found themselves toe to toe with Russian traders. What's more, Russia lacked the resources to support major settlements and a military presence along the Pacific coast. The history of the region then changed dramatically in the mid-19th century. Why did Russia sell Alaska after the Crimean War? The Crimean War (1853-1856) started when Russia invaded the Turkish Danubian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, modern-day Romania. Wary of Russian expansion into their trade routes, Britain and France allied with the ailing Ottoman Empire. The war's main theatre of battle became the Crimean Peninsula, as British and French forces targeted Russian positions in the Black Sea, which connects to the Mediterranean through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits – previously controlled by the Ottoman Empire. After three years, Russia humiliatingly lost the war, forcing it to reassess its colonial priorities. According to calculations by Advocate for Peace, a journal published by the American Peace Society in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Russia spent the equivalent of 160 million pounds sterling on the war. Meanwhile, due to overhunting, Alaska yielded little profit by the mid-1800s. Its proximity to British-controlled Canada also made it a liability in any future Anglo-Russian conflict. By the early 1860s, Tsar Alexander II concluded that selling Alaska would both raise funds Russia desperately needed and prevent Britain from seizing it in a future war. The US, which had continued to expand across the continent, emerged as a willing buyer, leading to the 1867 Alaska Purchase. How was the sale received in the US? After the American Civil War ended in 1865, Secretary of State William Seward took up Russia's longstanding offer to buy Alaska. On March 30, 1867, Washington agreed to buy Alaska from Russia for $7.2m. For less than 2 cents an acre (4 metres), the US acquired nearly 1.5 million sq km (600,000 square miles) of land and ensured access to the Pacific northern rim. But opponents of the Alaska Purchase, who saw little value in the vast ice sheet, persisted in calling it 'Seward's Folly' or 'Seward's Icebox'. 'We simply obtain by the treaty the nominal possession of impassable deserts of snow, vast tracts of dwarf timbers… we get… Sitka and the Prince of Wales Islands. All the rest is waste territory,' wrote the New York Daily Tribune in April 1867. But in 1896, the Klondike Gold Strike convinced even the harshest critics that Alaska was a valuable addition to US territory. Over time, the strategic importance of Alaska was gradually recognised, and in January 1959 Alaska finally became a US state. What's its economy like now? By the early 20th century, Alaska's economy began to diversify away from gold. Commercial fishing, especially for salmon and halibut, became a major industry, while copper mining boomed in places like Kennecott. Then, during World War II, the construction of military bases brought infrastructure improvements and population growth. The most transformative moment, however, came in 1968 with the discovery of vast oil reserves at Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic coast. Oil revenues became the cornerstone of Alaska's economy, funding public services as well as the Alaska Permanent Fund, which pays annual dividends – via returns on stocks, bonds, real estate, and other assets – to residents. These payments, known as the Permanent Fund Dividend, will ensure that Alaska's oil wealth continues to benefit residents even after reserves run out. This system has allowed Alaska to have no state income tax or state sales tax, a rarity in the US. More recently, tourism has surged in Alaska, drawing visitors to the state's national parks and glaciers. Today, Alaska has transformed from a ridiculed purchase into a resource-rich state, built on a mix of natural resource extraction, fishing and tourism. Meanwhile, despite Alaska's history of trading land like currency, President Zelenskyy will hope that Friday's meeting between Trump and Putin does not come at the expense of Ukrainian territory.
Qatar Tribune
6 hours ago
- Qatar Tribune
No joint statement planned after Trump-Putin summit, says Kremlin
MoscowcTypeface:> No joint statement is planned after the summit between Russian leader Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday. 'No, nothing is to be expected, nothing has been prepared, and it is unlikely that there will be any document,' Peskov told the Russian news agency Interfax. 'Given that there will be a joint press conference, the president will of course outline the scope of the agreements and arrangements that can be reached,' he added, speaking ahead of Friday's summit in the US state of Alaska. Peskov said it would be a mistake to try to anticipate the outcome of the meeting at this stage. He added that the summit had been prepared at very short notice. He later told Russian state television that Trump has an extremely unusual approach to the most difficult issues - something, he said, that is highly appreciated in Moscow and by Putin personally. Ukraine's point of view should be taken into account 'in subsequent stages,' Peskov said. 'At present, this is a Russian-US meeting at the highest level.' (DPA)
