Latest news with #peacenegotiations
Russia Today
5 days ago
- Politics
- Russia Today
Ukrainians' mood shifts toward peace
A majority of Ukrainians now support ending the conflict with Russia through peace negotiations as soon as possible, according to a new survey by American pollster Gallup. Gallup reported on Thursday that around 69% of respondents favor a negotiated settlement – a 'nearly complete reversal' from the situation when the conflict escalated in 2022. At that time, 73% supported 'fighting until victory.' 'Support for the war effort has declined steadily across all segments of the Ukrainian population, regardless of region or demographic group,' the report stated. Despite the shift in opinion, few Ukrainians believe the fighting will end soon. Only 25% of respondents said they think active hostilities are likely to stop within the next 12 months, and just 5% consider such an outcome 'very likely.' In contrast, 68% believe it is unlikely that the conflict will end within a year. The findings come amid growing public fatigue in Ukraine, driven by mounting casualties, economic hardship, and an increasingly unpopular draft. The government introduced general mobilization in 2022 and later lowered the conscription age. Last month, Vladimir Zelensky signed a law allowing men over 60 to enlist on a contract basis. Reports of harsh enforcement, desertion, and corruption have further eroded public trust. Zelensky, who once held a 90% approval rating, is now supported by just 52% of the population, with a majority saying he should not seek another term. The decline in trust appears to reflect a broader shift in public sentiment toward diplomacy. According to Gallup, the change comes as peace efforts are beginning to gain new momentum. An in-person meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his American counterpart, Donald Trump, could take place as early as next week, according to the Kremlin. Putin named the UAE as one possible location. The poll also showed growing disillusionment with Ukraine's Western backers, particularly the United States. Approval of American leadership has dropped to 16%, while disapproval has climbed to 73%. Still, 70% of respondents want Washington involved in peace talks, alongside the EU and the UK, which received 75% and 71% support, respectively. Belief in Ukraine's accession to NATO has halved since 2022, and hopes for joining the EU have also declined.
New York Times
6 days ago
- Politics
- New York Times
I've Seen How Russia Is Torturing Prisoners of War
One of the few successes to come out of the recent peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia have been agreements for prisoner swaps. At the end of May, the largest swap since the beginning of the war took place, with each side handing over more than 300 service personnel and civilians. This week President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Telegram that preparations are being made to exchange 1,200 more. There are still thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians — including journalists, activists and residents of the occupied territories — being held in cramped and unsanitary facilities in a network of detention centers across Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia itself. They are held, often incommunicado, in overcrowded facilities where they are physically and psychologically tortured, underfed and denied legal representation and medical care. Some have been returned to their families in body bags. Prisoners on both sides of this conflict have reported being subjected to abuse, despite the humane treatment of prisoners of war being demanded by international law. Based on my findings, only one side employs torture as an integral part of its war policy: Russia. Though Russia has denied that it employs torture, the consistent and widespread nature of witness accounts while in Russian custody — along with Moscow's failure to address the issue — have led me to the conclusion that it can only be a systemic, state-endorsed practice approved at the highest levels. This creates profound distrust in Russia as a negotiating partner. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion over three years ago, I have documented allegations of beatings — by Russian forces and other authorities of Ukrainian prisoners of war as well as civilians — that last for hours, egregious sexual violence, electric shocks, suffocation, sleep deprivation and mock executions. Malnourishment is routine and individuals have reported being hung upside down and held in other stress positions for prolonged periods, sometimes while being beaten. Many of my findings have been supported by those of other international authorities, including the U.N. Commission of Inquiry. The stories are horrifying. Oleksandr Kharlats, a Ukrainian veteran who was detained twice early in the war, described to me in an interview that he was held in a small cell with around eight other men. Mr. Kharlats said he was interrogated six or seven times, sometimes at night and always with the same approach: He would be electrocuted while being forced to hold his arms along his body to intensify the pain. When he fell to the floor with convulsions, he said, soldiers would hit his back with the butts of their machine guns or beat his limbs with batons. Anatoliy Tutov told me that he was interrogated four times during his detention and that these interrogations included repeated electrocutions, beatings and sexualized torture, including a threat to cut off his penis and rape him. After his release, he was diagnosed with bruises on his internal organs, two broken ribs and cracks in several others. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Telegraph
17-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Putin's escalating use of chemical weapons should terrify us all
As president Trump gives Putin 50 days to stop the fighting and come to the peace negotiation table, the Ukrainian frontlines are experiencing an uptick in the use of chemical weapons, according to the EU's top diplomat Kaja Kallas. She was speaking in Brussels, and cited German and Dutch intelligence reports showing that Moscow has used chemical weapons at least 9,000 times since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine – and was now ramping up their use. 'As the intelligence services are saying this is intensifying, I think it's [Russia's use of chemical weapons] of great, great concern,' Kallas said. 'It shows that Russia wants to cause as much pain and suffering so that Ukraine would surrender. And, you know, it's really … unbearable.' The intelligence services report and my own investigations have confirmed the use of chloropicrin, one of the first chemical weapons developed in WWI. This is a choking agent and designed as an incapacitant, but it has proved morbidly effective at killing the Ukraine defenders by flushing them out of trenches and foxholes to be killed in the open by artillery and direct fire. This is the only way Russian invaders have managed to make any progress in the last few months. My concern is that with only 50 days for the Russians to make significant progress in this war, before the date Trump says he will impose devastating tariffs on Putin, they will escalate to far more deadly chemical weapons which could kill thousands. There is credible, if unverified, evidence that Lewisite and possibly nerve agents have also been used by Russian forces. We know the Russians have a chemical weapons programme to develop Novichok nerve agents, the most deadly chemicals ever made on the planet, and used by the Russian secret service to try and assassinate double agent Sergei Skripal in my home city of Salisbury in 2018 – a year after the Russians declared to the UN they had destroyed all their chemical weapons. If the Russians used Novichok, and why would they not, with the apparent indifference from the West and the UN to their use of other chemical weapons, they could kill thousands and possibly take huge tracts of Ukraine in the next 50 days. This would likely be far more effective than a tactical nuclear strike, and without the massive and prolonged contamination issues associated with nuclear fallout which would make the land uninhabitable for years – even to Russians. We urgently need an 'Obama' red line, or rather a solid 'Trump' red line, to ensure that Putin does not use his most deadly chemical weapons to try and take Ukraine this summer. The 'coalition of the willing' in Europe must also do the same to show a unified front to convince the Kremlin that a ceasefire and peace are their only viable options. By ignoring the Obama red line in Syria in 2013, when Assad murdered over 1400 of his own people with the nerve agent Sarin, we enabled proliferation of these abhorrent weapons. Putin saw the West's indifference in 2013 and is presumably the reason he is using them now. They are morbidly brilliant, abhorrent and completely indiscriminate. But if you have no morals or scruples – and Putin has neither – you would use them all the time. Trump can stop their use with a solid red line, and then we all must review the Chemical Weapons Convention and ensure that it is rigorously policed to remove all chemical weapons from the planet. This was what the convention was supposed to do in 1997 when most nations in the world, including the Russians, signed it.
New York Times
21-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Peace in Ukraine Is Harder Than Trump Thought
President Trump once approached the challenge of ending Russia's war in Ukraine as a straight-ahead deal that he could achieve easily. But after months of trying, he's signaling that he might actually walk away. Michael Crowley, who covers U.S. foreign policy for The New York Times, discusses the recent phone call between Mr. Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and what it tells us about how the conflict could end.
