Latest news with #Ukraine crisis
The Independent
9 hours ago
- Business
- The Independent
Putin calls Brics allies to debrief them on his Trump summit
Russian president Vladimir Putin called the leaders of India, Brazil and South Africa to brief them about his summit with Donald Trump in Alaska, in what is being seen as an attempt to rally major Brics economies facing some of the harshest US tariffs. The Kremlin said Mr Putin spoke to Indian prime minister Narendra Modi on Monday, briefing him on the outcome of Friday's meeting with the US president. The two leaders 'discussed the prospects for a long-term settlement of the crisis in Ukraine', the Kremlin readout said, adding that they agreed to continue the dialogue on this issue. Mr Modi described Mr Putin as his 'friend' and thanked him for 'sharing insights on his recent meeting with President Trump in Alaska '. ' India has consistently called for a peaceful resolution of the Ukraine conflict and supports all efforts in this regard. I look forward to our continued exchanges in the days to come,' he wrote on X on Monday evening. India is facing significant pressure from the Trump administration over its continued imports of energy from Russia during the Ukraine war. Mr Trump has doubled tariffs on Indian exports to the country, increasing them to 50 per cent by next week. Mr Putin also called Brazil 's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Monday, another Brics nation facing a 50 per cent tariff alongside India. The Brazilian president's office said Mr Lula and Mr Putin had a 30-minute-long conversation. Mr Lula confirmed that he and the Russian president discussed the Alaska meeting. He described the talks with Mr Putin as 'positive' and 'acknowledged Brazil 's involvement in the Group Friends for Peace', an initiative to include supposedly neutral countries – including China, one of Russia's closest allies – to find a resolution for the Ukraine crisis. "President Lula reaffirmed Brazil's support for all efforts aimed at a peaceful resolution to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine," it added. South African president Cyril Ramaphosa said the Russian leader 'expressed satisfaction' with his meeting with Mr Trump and urged for 'compromise on key issues for lasting peace.' The Kremlin said Mr Ramaphosa 'expressed support for the diplomatic efforts' on Ukraine. Mr Putin also spoke to Mr Modi, Mr Lula and Chinese president Xi Jinping earlier this month after the announcement of Mr Trump's meeting with the Russian president. Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa and China are the founding members of Brics, an economic and political bloc often seen as a counterweight to the West. Although the three-hour Trump-Putin meeting – the longest face-to-face meeting between the two leaders – was described as 'productive' by both sides, it failed to deliver a ceasefire in Ukraine. Tensions between Washington and the Brics bloc have escalated in recent weeks after Mr Trump announced a sweeping hike in trade tariffs. While India and Brazil face the steepest duties at 50 per cent, South Africa has been hit with a 30 per cent tariff. China, under a temporary trade truce, currently faces a 30 per cent tariff – with the risk of further increases if negotiations fail.
Al Arabiya
5 days ago
- Politics
- Al Arabiya
Ukraine strikes on Russia kill one, wound 10 others: Governor
A Ukrainian drone strike on an apartment block killed one person and wounded 10 others in southwestern Russia, the region's acting governor said early Friday. Governor Alexander Khinshtein said he went to the apartment building damaged in the strike in Kursk. 'Unfortunately, a 45-year-old woman died on the spot,' he said on Telegram, adding that the number of wounded had risen to 10, including a teenager. The attack came as Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump are to meet on Friday in Alaska for a summit that the Kremlin said would focus on 'the resolution of the Ukraine crisis'. Russia has made gains on the ground ahead of the summit, with its forces claiming on Thursday to have captured the village of Iskra and the small town of Shcherbynivka in Ukraine's Donetsk region. The latest drone attack came after Russia and Ukraine exchanged 84 prisoners each, both sides said, the latest in a series of swaps that has seen hundreds of POWs released so far this year. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was not invited to the Alaska summit, which he has denounced as a reward to Putin, and has refused Trump's calls to surrender territory.
Washington Post
5 days ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
Even before Alaska summit, Putin is redrawing global order to his liking
Even before talks begin, President Vladimir Putin's meeting with President Donald Trump at a U.S. military base in Alaska on Friday is advancing the Russian's goal of redrawing the global security order, as the two men revive a great-power system in which a few big countries call the shots. Putin set the scene last week after meeting Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff, when he ruled out meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky until certain conditions were met — conditions that he said remained 'far off.' Trump agreed and dismissed Zelensky's attendance, even as the future of his nation — and its 40 million citizens — hangs in the balance. Zelensky had been in many meetings in 3½ years — since the start of Russia's invasion — Trump said Monday, and 'nothing happened. I mean, do you want somebody that's been doing this for 3½ years?' A tête-à-tête summit, on U.S. soil, was not Putin's only important win. He also diverted, for now, Trump's threat of tough economic sanctions against Russian oil and deflected Trump's calls for a ceasefire. On Monday, Trump was back to blaming Zelensky for the war — echoing Putin — although Trump seemed more conciliatory in a videoconference with Zelensky and European leaders Wednesday. The Alaska meeting's optics reinforce Putin's long-held goal of rebuilding Russia as one of a handful of major global powers with rightful spheres of influence, and it delivers on his short-term tactical objective of a one-on-one meeting to woo and manipulate Trump. A former senior Kremlin official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, called the Alaska summit 'a golden opportunity' for Putin, adding: 'And of course a visit to the U.S. is a massive victory.' Another person with close ties to the Kremlin, said the summit was 'a real chance to put an end to this' and that the meeting had been designed to 'soothe the Russian elites, for whom this war is a disgrace, and want everything to get back to normal.' Former senior Russian diplomat Boris Bondarev, who resigned over the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, said Putin had offered so little that it was difficult to see why Trump agreed to meet. He said it appeared to be a Kremlin ploy to divert Trump from sanctions, just as Putin diverted Trump's call for a ceasefire in May by proposing peace talks in Istanbul that delivered nothing. While Trump has lately criticized Putin's attacks on Ukrainian cities, he has not imposed sanctions or any other pressure on Russia beyond rhetoric. Trump told reporters on Wednesday there would be 'very severe' consequences if Putin continued the war after the Alaska meeting, although he has made similar threats before without following up. 'It's a bad idea for Trump to host this meeting,' Bondarev said, questioning the purpose and benefit. 'First he said, 'I want to meet with Vladimir and we will make a deal somehow.'' But then, he added, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the meeting was to find out what Putin wants, when 'it's totally visible what the other side wants.' Putin has long made clear that he is demanding that Ukraine surrender four resource-rich regions and recognize Russia's 2014 illegal invasion and annexation of Crimea. Putin also wants Ukraine barred from NATO membership and its military constrained to the point it would have little use. Rubio said Tuesday that meeting Putin was 'not a concession' but a 'feel-out meeting.' 'A meeting is what you do to kind of figure out and make your decision,' Rubio contended, adding an echo of Trump's assertion that the chances of success would be clear early on. Meetings between U.S. and Russian presidents — leaders of the nations with the world's largest nuclear arsenals — are normally exquisitely choreographed, highly negotiated events, in which concrete 'deliverables' are agreed upon well in advance and nothing is left to chance. Putin's attacks on Zelensky's legitimacy as recently as Aug. 1, and his depictions of Ukraine as a corrupt and artificial state, firmly place the Ukrainian on a lower plane, worthy of a meeting only when he accepts Russia's terms. 'Putin would like to present it to Trump like this: that with you, Donald, we know how things are done, and all these people from Europe and this Zelensky boy, this nasty boy, shouldn't be involved,' Bondarev said. 'They don't know what to do. They don't know what they want. We know what we want, so let's agree. Maybe Trump can be flattered like this.' Trump, perhaps unwittingly, reinforces the narrative. At a news conference Monday, he seemed to portray two tough men working out a deal together, dismissing Zelensky's input and claiming that European leaders 'very much rely on me. If it wasn't for me, this thing would never get solved until the last person breathing is dead.' Trump expressed strong dissatisfaction with Zelensky, whom he seemed to blame for the fighting: 'I get along with Zelensky, but I disagree with what he's done — very, very severely disagree. This is a war that should have never happened,' he said. He complained about Zelensky citing the barriers in Ukraine's constitution to changing borders. 'He's got approval to go into war, kill everybody, but he needs approval to do a land swap,' Trump said. Trump, however, did not mention that Russia quick wrote the invaded and illegally annexed Ukrainian regions into its constitution in a bid to prevent their return. Boasting that Putin told him how 'tough' he was, Trump called Russia 'tough' too, and he described Putin's invasion as a reflection of the Russian character. 'It's a warring nation,' Trump said. 'That's what they do. They fight a lot of wars.' Zelensky, he warned, had to accept 'some land swapping' that would be 'for the good of Ukraine' but also 'some bad stuff for both.' Roderich Kiesewetter, a member of the German parliament from Chancellor Friedrich Merz's center-right Christian Democratic Union, said the exclusion of Europe and Ukraine from the meeting in Alaska meant the end of the West, in the sense of a collective alliance of the United States, European Union nations and NATO allies. ''The West' as an emotional or ethical term — it's over,' Kiesewetter said. 'That's my main concern.' His other fear, he added, is the fate of Ukrainians. Putin has other opportunities in Alaska, with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov stating Tuesday that a key Moscow objective is to 'normalize' relations with the U.S., a reference to the Kremlin's goal of ending sanctions, restoring direct flights and enabling U.S.-Russia business deals. Russia also wants to deflect blame onto Ukraine for Trump's failure so far to end the war, according to analysts, in the hope that the Trump administration could halt intelligence support to Ukraine just as it has slowed weapons deliveries. With recent Russian battlefield advances, Putin is confident that victory is with reach, according to Russian analysts, and he is disinclined to compromise, despite huge Russian casualties. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates that the number of Russians killed or wounded will reach 1 million over the summer. But the former senior Kremlin official said that Putin no longer cares about the human cost of the war, calling him 'very thick-skinned.' 'He is like a turtle,' the former official said. 'This does not touch him anymore.' War fatigue appears to be setting in on all sides. The official said most people within the Kremlin oppose the war but are afraid to tell Putin. 'Everyone is scared of Putin. People do not want to talk about compromising because they all need to show that they are patriots,' he said. As for the summit, the former official said: 'I have low expectations. … They will either have to give an ultimatum to Ukraine, or walk away with very little achieved.' Siobhán O'Grady in Kyiv contributed to this report
