Latest news with #Zelenskyy-Putin
The Hindu
an hour ago
- Politics
- The Hindu
Macron suggests Geneva hosts Putin-Zelenskyy summit as European leaders meet Trump
French President Emmanuel Macron suggested that Geneva could host a peace summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who are set to meet after separate talks with U.S. President Donald Trump. Speaking after he and other European leaders joined the Ukrainian president for high-stakes meetings at the White House on Monday (August 18, 2025), Mr. Macron said the announced Zelenskyy-Putin summit would be held in Europe. 'It will be (hosted by) a neutral country, maybe Switzerland — I'm pushing for Geneva — or another country,' Mr. Macron said in an interview aired Tuesday on French news channel LCI. 'The last time there were bilateral talks, they were held in Istanbul,' he added, referring to the three rounds of lower-level negotiations between Russia and Ukraine held in Turkey between May and July. Mr. Macron said France and Britain would hold a meeting on Tuesday with other Ukrainian allies to 'keep them up to date on what was decided' in Washington on providing security guarantees for Ukraine, a key talking point in the meetings with MR. Trump. 'Right after that, we'll start concrete work with the Americans. So as of tomorrow (Tuesday), our diplomatic advisers, ministers, chiefs of staff begin work on seeing who's ready to do what,' he said. Addressing whether Mr. Zelenskyy would be forced to give up territory to Russia, Mr. Macron said it was 'up to Ukraine'. 'Ukraine will make the concessions it deems just and right,' he said. But 'let's be very careful when we talk about legal recognition', he added. 'If countries... can say, 'we can take territory by force', (that) opens a Pandora's box.'
The Herald Scotland
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
Trump-Putin summit spotlights Alaska's awesome beauty, vulnerabilities
Cold, dark and snowy in the winter, the base gets near round-the-clock sun at summer's peak. More: Trump threatens Russia with 'severe consequences,' teases Zelenskyy-Putin meeting It's a prime midway rest stop for dignitaries, like presidents and cabinet secretaries, on the route from Washington to eastern Asia. The flight from the East Coast to the southern coast of Alaska takes roughly eight hours, about the limit for air crews before mandated rest, and a convenient, secure location to refuel. Long before air travel and a superpower summit, U.S. and Russian leaders haggled over Alaska. In 1867, Secretary of State William Seward secretly negotiated with Russian officials to buy the territory of Alaska for $7.2 million. Derided at the time as Seward's Folly, the deal worked out for the Americans. Alaska - its people, awesome landscape and enormous natural resources - joined the union in 1959. Before statehood, the Army established the base that would become Elmendorf-Richardson in 1940 during the runup to World War II. Since then, soldiers and airmen along with smaller contingents from the Navy and Marine Corps have called the base home. In all, the joint base hosts about 30,000 service members, their family members and civilian employees. Its key location - near Russia and close to Arctic resources eyed by China - has made Elmendorf-Richardson and other Alaskan military installations increasingly valuable to the Pentagon. More personnel and money have been streaming into Alaska in recent years to bolster northern defenses. The base takes part in some of the military's most intricate annual war games, featuring sophisticated weapons like the F-22 fighter. Alaska is the land of superlatives. The state is more than twice the size of Texas; its 46,000 miles of shoreline are more than the lower 48 states combined; Denali's snow-capped peak towers over the interior at more than 20,000 feet. Brown and black bears, moose and wolves, roam tundra and black spruce forests. Temperatures routinely drop to 50 degrees below zero in the interior, where Fort Wainwright sits on the edge of Fairbanks. Dim sunlight smudges skies for only a few hours in the depth of winter. More: An Alaskan army base is the epicenter of military suicides. Soldiers know why Cabin fever can be very real. In the summer, it truly is the Land of the Midnight Sun. Perpetual daylight has its downside, disrupting sleep, leading to irritability - and worse. Alaska routinely ranks among the nation's leaders in alcohol abuse and suicide. In recent years, Alaska's strategic, remote location has exposed its vulnerabilities. Suicide among soldiers spiked to alarming levels. Reporting by USA TODAY revealed a shortage of mental personnel to help them. The Army and Congress intervened, dispatching dozens of counselors and spending millions to improve living conditions for troops there. Suicide rates declined. Efforts by Chinese spies to gain access to Alaskan bases hasn't, however, USA TODAY has reported. The bases contain some of the military's top-end weaponry, sophisticated radars to track potential attacks on the homeland and missiles to intercept them. Russia, too, regularly probes America's northern flank. As recently as July, 22 the North American Aerospace Defense Command detected Russian warplanes operating in the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone. When aircraft enter the zone, they must be identified for national security purposes. The Russian planes remained in international airspace, a tactic they employ regularly. Mildly provocative, the flights are noted by NORAD but not considered a threat. Meanwhile, global warming has thawed permafrost beneath runways and rising water levels have damaged coastal facilities requiring remediation costing tens of millions of dollars. A skeptic of climate change, Trump could view for himself its effects, including cemeteries eroded by rising sea levels disgorging coffins of flu and smallpox victims from more than a century ago. The potential release of ancient pathogens from melting permafrost has captured the Pentagon's attention, too. Alas, Alaska may have been Putin's last, best choice for a summit. His brutal, unprovoked invasion of neighboring Ukraine has made him an international pariah. Denied entry into Europe, he and Trump could not repeat their summit in Helsinki, the capital of Finland that is now a member of NATO - due mainly to the invasion. Luckily for Putin and Trump, Anchorage is a delightful city, cool in midsummer and far from the death and destruction Putin he has wrought in Ukraine.
India.com
02-06-2025
- Politics
- India.com
Operation Spider's Web': How Ukraine's Daring Drone Assault On Russia Could Shape Peace Talks
New Delhi: As smoke still rises from scorched Russian airbases, two delegations make their way to Istanbul - not with olive branches, but with blueprints and battle scars. Ukraine's drone strikes, a long-range assault code-named 'Spider's Web', have sent shockwaves through Russia's strategic air command just hours before peace negotiators sit down for an important second round of talks. The timing is no coincidence. Targeting Russian aviation strongholds as far as 4,000 kilometers from Ukraine's borders, Sunday's drone blitz was hailed by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a "brilliant result" and a historic milestone. Ukraine claims it knocked out over 40 aircraft, including bombers and early-warning planes - the aircraft believed to be central to attacks on Ukrainian cities. But this was no spur-of-the-moment counterstrike. It was the climax of 18 months of covert planning, drone smuggling and precise execution by Ukraine's Security Service. Zelenskyy called it Ukraine's longest-range operation so far and one that 'will be in history books". And now, with the smoke still settling and the world watching, both Kyiv and Moscow are set to meet again in the halls of diplomacy, not the theater of war. What Ukraine Is Bringing to the Table for Peace Talks As the Istanbul negotiations resume today, the mood is anything but hopeful. Ukraine arrives with a detailed peace roadmap, a document obtained by Reuters that lays out a multi-stage path to a ceasefire and, potentially, to an endgame in Europe's most devastating war since the World War-II. Ukraine is going to offer a 30-day ceasefire to halt hostilities and allow humanitarian actions such as prisoner exchanges, the return of Ukrainian children and a proposal for a direct Zelenskyy-Putin summit - a meeting that has long been theorised but never realised. The proposal also aims to expand the scope of diplomacy by involving the United States and European powers and framing the resolution not just as a Ukraine-Russia matter, but a continental turning point with global stakes. But Kyiv is not backing down from its red lines. It reiterates demands for no restrictions on Ukraine's post-war defense capabilities, no recognition of Russian territorial control and full reparations for war damages It can further propose current front-line positions serve as a starting point for territorial talks - a suggestion that could further complicate already fragile diplomacy. Russia's Silence, Medinsky's Hint Russia has so far formally responded to the Ukrainian proposal. Asked about the drone strikes and whether they would impact Monday's discussions, Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky replied, 'Wait for tomorrow.' It signals anything from quiet preparation to explosive retaliation. The Kremlin's recent rhetoric has hinted at openness to a second round of Istanbul talks, even as it grapples with the embarrassment and potential military fallout of Ukraine's drone offensive. For Moscow, Sunday may go down as a 'black day for aviation", as one pro-Russian military blog put it. For Kyiv, it is something closer to a warning shot - a message that Ukraine's hand at the table is not weak and that its reach, both militarily and diplomatically, is growing. Diplomacy in Drones' Shadow It is hard to miss the symbolism. Just as diplomats prepare to exchange paper in Istanbul, unmanned drones, smuggled and hidden in trucks, have delivered a different kind of message across Russian skies. The Istanbul summit is not only about peace terms, it is about leverage. And with Operation Spider's Web, Kyiv is making the case that battlefield innovation can balance political inequality and that even a besieged nation can dictate terms when it plays its cards right. Whether the second round of talks ends in progress or deadlock, the world will be watching. Not just for what is said behind closed doors but for what happens next in the skies above.
