Latest news with #Putin
Kuwait Times
43 minutes ago
- Politics
- Kuwait Times
US and Russia clash in public as Ukraine war heats up
KOROSTYSHIV: Relatives, friends and other attendees mourn over the coffins of seventeen-year-old Roman Martyniuk, his eleven-year-old sister Tamara Martyniuk and eight-year-old brother Stanislav Martyniuk, who were killed by a Russian missile strike, during a funeral ceremony at a cemetery in Korostyshiv, Zhytomyr region, on May 28, 2025, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. – AFP MOSCOW: The United States and Russia quarreled in public on Wednesday over the intensifying Ukraine war after US President Donald Trump warned that President Vladimir Putin was 'playing with fire' and Moscow massed 50,000 troops near a Ukrainian region. While world leaders bicker over the prospects for peace, the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War Two is heating up fast: swarms of drones are being launched by both sides while Russia is advancing at key points along the front. Trump, in a post on Truth Social, said that Putin was playing with fire and cautioned that 'REALLY BAD' things would have happened already to Russia if it was not for Trump himself. 'What Vladimir Putin doesn't realize is that if it weren't for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened in Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD. He's playing with fire,' Trump said in a Truth Social post on Tuesday. Putin's foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, told a state TV reporter that Trump's remark suggested that he is not well-briefed on the realities of the war. 'Trump is not sufficiently informed about what is really happening in the context of the Ukrainian-Russian confrontation,' Ushakov said. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was clear the Trump administration is making 'considerable efforts towards a peaceful settlement' and that Russia was 'grateful for the mediation efforts of President Trump personally.' 'Just like the United States, Russia has its own national interests, which are above all for us, and they are above all for our president,' Peskov said. After speaking to Trump on May 19 for more than two hours, Putin said that he had agreed to work with Ukraine on a memorandum which would set out the contours of a peace accord including the timing of a ceasefire. Russia, Peskov said, was preparing for the next round of negotiations with Ukraine and to continue contacts with the United States. War heating up With Trump and the Kremlin trading barbs, the war intensified. Russia said it had downed 296 Ukrainian drones over 13 regions overnight while Ukraine said Russia had launched 88 drones and five ballistic missiles. After Russia ejected Ukrainian forces from the western Kursk region, Moscow's forces have pushed over the border into neighboring Sumy region of northeastern Ukraine and taken several villages there. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Russia has gathered 50,000 troops near the northern Sumy region, but added that Kyiv had taken steps to prevent Moscow from conducting a large-scale offensive there. Putin has repeatedly said he wants a 'buffer zone' along Russia's border with Ukraine. Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov said that the US-led NATO military alliance was using the Ukrainian crisis to build up its presence across eastern Europe and the Baltic but that Russia was advancing along the entire front in Ukraine. Putin ordered tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops. Russia currently controls just under one fifth of Ukraine. Though Russian advances have accelerated over the past year, the war is costing both Russia and Ukraine dearly in terms of casualties and military spending. Top Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev, a former president, said Trump should worry more about World War Three, a remark Trump's envoy, Keith Kellogg, said it was reckless. 'Stoking fears of WW III is an unfortunate, reckless comment... and unfitting of a world power,' Kellogg said on X. - Reuters
NHK
an hour ago
- General
- NHK
Russia ready to brief Ukraine on peace memorandum on Monday in Turkey: Lavrov
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says Moscow is ready to brief Ukraine on a peace memorandum next Monday in Turkey. Senior officials from Russia and Ukraine held direct talks in Istanbul on May 16. But there was no progress on negotiations for a ceasefire. Days later, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke with US President Donald Trump over the phone. After their discussion, Putin said Russia was ready to work with the Ukrainian side on a memorandum on a potential peace treaty. Lavrov issued a statement on Wednesday saying the Russian side had promptly developed a memorandum. He said it is ready to present the memorandum to the Ukrainian delegation and provide the necessary explanations during the next round of direct talks in Istanbul on Monday. Lavrov said the memorandum outlines Russia's position on "all aspects of reliably overcoming the root causes of the crisis." The Russian delegation to Turkey will again be led by presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky. Medinsky said in a social media post on Wednesday that he had spoken on the phone with Ukraine's Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, who heads the Ukrainian delegation, and proposed when and where their meeting should take place.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- General
- The Guardian
Ukraine war briefing: Kremlin holds back peace memorandum that it promised Trump
Ukraine has submitted its peace terms and insisted Russia do the same before further talks, which the Kremlin has demanded take place next Monday in Turkey. 'We are not opposed to further meetings with the Russians and are awaiting their memorandum,' said the Ukrainian defence minister, Rustem Umerov. 'The Russian side has at least four more days before their departure to provide us with their document for review. Diplomacy must be substantive, and the next meeting must yield results.' Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said instead that a Russian team 'is ready to present a memorandum to the Ukrainian delegation and provide the necessary explanations during a second round of direct talks in Istanbul on Monday, 2 June'. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, on Wednesday called for Moscow to engage in 'good-faith' talks with Ukraine in a call with Lavrov. Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Wednesday accused Russia of dragging out the peace process and of not wanting to halt its offensive. 'They will constantly look for reasons not to end the war,' he said at a press conference in Berlin alongside the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz. Vladimir Putin promised Donald Trump that Russia would produce the 'memorandum' in conjunction with Ukraine when their much-vaunted phone call took place on 19 May. Donald Trump posted on Tuesday that Putin was 'playing with fire' by continuing to attack Ukraine, but on Wednesday the US president's words sounded more tepid. Trump said he would determine within 'about two weeks' whether Putin was serious about ending the fighting. He was 'very disappointed' but rebuffed calls to impose more sanctions on Moscow: 'If I think I'm close to getting a deal, I don't want to screw it up by doing that.' As Peter Beaumont writes, there has been little or no sign of a deal. Three Ukrainian children, aged 8, 12 and 17 – siblings killed in their beds by a Russian cruise missile – lay side by side in their coffins on Wednesday as a church choir sang in Korostyshiv, about 100km (60 miles) west of Kyiv. They were surrounded by dozens of bouquets. Moscow denies targeting civilians, but abundant evidence shows otherwise. The children's father, still bearing fresh injuries, was released from the hospital to attend the funeral. He and his two surviving children sat beside the coffins. As Zelenskyy visited Germany, the two countries announced that Berlin will help finance long-range weapons production on Ukrainian soil, Kate Connolly writes. The deal appears at least in part to be a workaround to German concerns about being labelled a 'warmonger' if it provides its far-reaching Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine. The expectation is that Berlin will supply Ukraine with the technical components to build and maintain its own long-range weaponry, including rockets and cruise missiles, with a range of up to 2,500km. Neither leader would detail the specific weapons that would be manufactured in Ukraine, saying it was prudent to keep the information as secretive as possible. Zelenskyy said he expected the first weapons to be ready by June 2026. Contrary to some perceptions, Germany has long supported Kyiv and is the second-biggest deliverer of weapons after the US. On the battlefield, Zelenskyy said Russia was amassing more than 50,000 troops on the frontline around the north-east Sumy border region, where Moscow's army claims to have captured a number of settlements as it seeks to establish what Putin has called a 'buffer zone' inside Ukrainian territory. Ukraine said a heavy wave of drone attacks into Russia on Wednesday struck several of the Kremlin's weapon production sites.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump appears to set Putin 'two-week' deadline on Ukraine
US President Donald Trump has appeared to set a two-week deadline for Vladimir Putin, threatening a different response if the Russian counterpart was still stringing him along. As the Kremlin escalated its attacks on Ukraine, Trump was asked in the Oval Office on Wednesday if he thought Putin wanted to end the war. "I can't tell you that, but I'll let you know in about two weeks," Trump told reporters, the latest amid a string of critical public remarks made by Trump about Putin. Since Sunday, Trump has written multiple posts on social media saying that Putin has gone "absolutely crazy" and is "playing with fire" after Russia intensified its attacks on Ukraine. The bombardments by Russia are said to have been some of the largest and deadliest attacks since the start of the war, now in its fourth year. Russian strikes in Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, killed at least 13 people and injured dozens more, including children, over the weekend. And by Wednesday, the attacks had shown no signs of slowing down. In Trump's remarks about the escalation of violence and whether he thinks Putin is serious about ending the war, Trump said: "I'll let you know in about two weeks. "Within two weeks. We're gonna find out whether or not (Putin is) tapping us along or not. "And if he is, we'll respond a little bit differently." The comments are a sign of Trump's growing frustration, as the White House's repeated efforts to negotiate a deal between Russia and Ukraine appear ever more futile. This includes a recent two-hour phone call between Trump and Putin, after which the US president said the discussions went "very well". Putin walked away from the call saying he was ready to work with Ukraine on a "memorandum on a possible future peace agreement". That call was one week before Russia launched hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles towards Ukraine's capital, according to Ukraine's air force. And a memorandum has yet to be produced by Russia. So far, Trump's threats have not appeared to concern Moscow sufficiently for it to concede to his demands. Trump has not delivered on previous such threats. Since taking office, Trump has only taken action against Ukraine, as Washington sought to steer the countries to Trump's demand for a truce. This included an eight-day suspension of US military assistance and intelligence sharing with Kyiv in March. Meanwhile the US administration has not publicly demanded any significant concessions from Russia. The White House rejects accusations of appeasing Moscow or failing to enforce its will, pointing out that all the Biden-era sanctions remain in force against Russia. But so far its mediation approach appears to have made the Kremlin more, not less, empowered. After the latest attacks, Trump wrote on Truth Social that "something has happened" to Putin, which the Kremlin said were comments made "connected to an emotional overload". Russia's attacks on Ukraine continued in the days afterwards. Trump then escalated his criticism. On Tuesday, he said Putin was "playing with fire" and that "lots of bad things" would have happened to Russia if it were not for Trump's involvement. A Kremlin aid responded to the latest Trump Truth Social post by saying: "We have come to the conclusion that Trump is not sufficiently informed about what is really happening." Putin aide Yury Ushakov told Russian state TV channel Russia-1 that Trump must be unaware of "the increasingly frequent massive terrorist attacks Ukraine is carrying out against peaceful Russian cities." On Wednesday, Germany's new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, told Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky that Berlin will help Kyiv produce long-range missiles to defend itself from Russian attack. The Kremlin has warned that any decision to end range restrictions on the missiles that Ukraine can use would be a dangerous change in policy that would harm efforts to reach a political deal. In the face of Russia's recalcitrance, Trump has frequently softened his demands, shifting the emphasis from his original call for an immediate 30-day ceasefire, to which only Ukraine agreed, to more recently demanding a summit with Putin to get what he says would be a breakthrough. Putin and his foreign minister Sergei Lavrov have upped their demands from earlier positions since the US restored contacts with the Russians in February. These have included a demand that Ukraine cede parts of its own country not even occupied by Russia and that the US recognises Crimea as a formal part of Russia. Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Moscow, calls this a "poison pill" introduced by Russia: Creating conditions Kyiv could never agree to in order to shift blame onto Ukraine in Trump's eyes. The war has claimed tens of thousands of lives and left much of Ukraine's east and south in ruins. Moscow controls roughly one-fifth of the country's territory, including Crimea, which it annexed in 2014. Zelensky has accused Moscow of delaying the peace process and said they were yet to deliver a promised memorandum of peace terms following talks in Istanbul. Peskov insisted the document was in its "final stages."
Irish Independent
2 hours ago
- Politics
- Irish Independent
The Irish Independent's View: Trump tries to save face over weakness towards Putin
After Mr Trump issued a stern rebuke to Vladimir Putin, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev dismissed the criticism with this sinister warning: 'Regarding Trump's words about Putin 'playing with fire' and 'really bad things' happening to Russia. I only know of one REALLY BAD thing, WWIII. I hope Trump understands this!' US special envoy Keith Kellogg said: 'Stoking fears of World War III is an unfortunate, reckless comment and unfitting of a world power.' But Putin has been giving Mr Trump the runaround, and shamelessly so. He could scarcely conceal his laughter as Washington continually talked up the potential for peace and the 'great' progress made. Putin has ramped up the war machine. Ukraine has warned that Russia is planning a summer offensive to capture the eastern region of Donetsk. At the same time, it is pinning down Ukrainian forces with attacks in Kharkiv and Sumy. President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia has gathered 50,000 troops in the region for the assault. Unless Russia is stopped, he said, it will seek to keep going beyond the Donetsk region and take a much larger chunk of his country. To date, Mr Trump has turned a blind eye to every provocation and act of defiance that Moscow could offer. Analysts have warned that Moscow is taking Washington's inaction as acquiescence. Putin has become ever more brazen as a result. Many analysts are baffled as to how Mr Trump could have been so easily strung along for the last four months. We're going to find out whether or not he's tapping us along or not, and if he is, we'll respond a little differently There comes a point when blind indulgence begins to look like weakness – hardly a good look for the 'leader of the free world'. But having tut-tutted indulgently, there are finally signs – if only to spare his blushes – that Mr Trump is about to take a harder line. He is said to be considering new sanctions against Russia. He may also step up military support for Kyiv's defences and green-light extra European assistance. This is regarded as a far more effective way to resolve the conflict than anything tried so far. 'We're going to find out whether or not he's tapping us along or not, and if he is, we'll respond a little differently,' Mr Trump said. So long as Putin feels he can prevail militarily, he will not do a deal to end the war. There is a misconception that when it comes to putting the bite on Russia, Washington only has rubber dentures, but this is not true. Washington has sharp teeth, but has chosen not to use them. If Mr Trump is to save face – and, more importantly, secure a peace deal – he must recognise that Putin only ever responds to strength.
