US President Donald Trump on Friday urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to spare Ukrainian troops that Russia is pushing out of its Kursk region, an appeal Putin said he would honor if they surrendered.
Trump wrote on social media after his envoy, Steve Witkoff, held a lengthy meeting with Putin on Thursday night in Moscow that Trump described as “very good and productive.”
“There is a very good chance that this horrible, bloody war can finally come to an end,” Trump said, referring to a US ceasefire proposal that Ukraine accepted this week and was under consideration by Russia.
Photo: AFP
The US president said Russia’s military had “completely surrounded” thousands of Ukrainian troops in Kursk who were “in a very bad and vulnerable position.”
“I have strongly requested to President Putin that their lives be spared,” he wrote. “This would be a horrible massacre, one not seen since World War II. God bless them all!!!”
Military analysts have said Ukrainian forces in Kursk are almost cut off after rapidly losing ground in what had been their only foothold in Russian territory.
Putin has accused Ukrainian troops of carrying out crimes against civilians in Kursk, something Kyiv denies.
However, the Russian president said he understood the call by Trump to take humanitarian considerations into account.
“In this regard, I would like to emphasize that if [the Ukrainian troops] lay down their arms and surrender, they will be guaranteed life and decent treatment in accordance with international law and the laws of the Russian Federation,” Putin said.
The deputy chairman of Russia’s security council, former president Dmitry Medvedev, wrote on social media that if Ukrainian troops “refuse to lay down their arms, they will all be methodically and mercilessly destroyed.”
However, Kyiv’s military said there was no threat of encirclement, and its troops were pulling back to better positions.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at a G7 meeting in La Malbaie, Canada, said Witkoff was returning to the US from Moscow and there might be discussions about Ukraine over the weekend.
“But we certainly feel like we’re at least some steps closer to ending this war and bringing peace, but it’s still a long journey,” he told reporters.
Kursk became a key theater of the war in August last year when Ukraine turned the tables by grabbing a piece of Russia’s own territory, a potential bargaining chip in future negotiations.
Seven months on, Kursk is once again in the spotlight, as Russian forces attempt to expel the Ukrainians completely and the US urges Russia to agree to a ceasefire in the wider war.
Moscow on Friday said its forces had recaptured another Kursk village, but Ukraine’s general staff said the battlefield situation was largely unchanged.
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