US President Donald Trump is to speak today with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a possible pivot point in efforts to end the war in Ukraine and an opportunity for Trump to continue reorienting US foreign policy.
Trump disclosed the upcoming conversation to reporters while flying from Florida to Washington on Air Force One on Sunday evening, while the Kremlin confirmed Putin’s participation yesterday morning.
“We will see if we have something to announce maybe by Tuesday. I will be speaking to President Putin on Tuesday,” Trump said. “A lot of work’s been done over the weekend. We want to see if we can bring that war to an end.”
Photo: EPA-EFE
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed the plans for the two leaders to speak today, but declined to give details, saying that “we never get ahead of events” and “the content of conversations between two presidents are not subject to any prior discussion.”
European allies are wary of Trump’s affinity for Putin and his hardline stance toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who faced sharp criticism when he visited the Oval Office a little more than two weeks ago.
Although Russia failed in its initial goal to topple Ukraine with its invasion three years ago, it still controls large swaths of the country.
Photo: AP
Trump said land and power plants are part of the conversation around bringing the war to a close.
“We will be talking about land. We will be talking about power plants,” he said, a process he described as “dividing up certain assets.”
US special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff last week visited Moscow to advance negotiations.
Russia illegally annexed four Ukrainian regions after launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the east and the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in the southeast of the country — but does not fully control any of the four. Last year, Putin listed Kyiv’s withdrawal of troops from all four regions as one of the demands for peace.
In 2014, the Kremlin also annexed Crimea from Ukraine.
In the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region, Moscow controls the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant — the largest in Europe. The plant has repeatedly been caught in the crossfire since the invasion. The International Atomic Energy Agency has frequently expressed alarm about the plant amid fears of a potential nuclear catastrophe.
After a brief lull in drone fire last week, both sides appeared to have stepped up attacks yesterday.
Ukrainian forces launched a drone attack on southern Russia, sparking a blaze at an oil refinery, while Moscow launched a barrage of nearly 200 drones against Ukraine.
About 500 people in the southern Ukrainian region of Odesa lost power because of the attacks, and one person was wounded there, Governor Oleg Kiper said, adding that several buildings were damaged, including a pre-school.
Putin last week said he would back a ceasefire, but only if it led to “long-term peace and addresses the root causes of the crisis.”
Among Putin’s demands are that Ukraine never join the NATO military alliance, that European peacekeepers not be deployed on Ukrainian territory, and that Moscow be allowed to keep all the land it currently occupies.
Since Russia seized Crimea in 2014 and launched its full-scale offensive against Ukraine in February 2022, Moscow now controls about one-fifth of Ukraine.
Zelenskiy has pushed back at Putin’s demands, saying the Russian leader does not really want peace.
NATIONAL SECURITY: The Chinese influencer shared multiple videos on social media in which she claimed Taiwan is a part of China and supported its annexation Freedom of speech does not allow comments by Chinese residents in Taiwan that compromise national security or social stability, the nation’s top officials said yesterday, after the National Immigration Agency (NIA) revoked the residency permit of a Chinese influencer who published videos advocating China annexing Taiwan by force. Taiwan welcomes all foreigners to settle here and make families so long as they “love the land and people of Taiwan,” Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) told lawmakers during a plenary session at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei. The public power of the government must be asserted when necessary and the Ministry of
Proposed amendments would forbid the use of all personal electronic devices during school hours in high schools and below, starting from the next school year in August, the Ministry of Education said on Monday. The Regulations on the Use of Mobile Devices at Educational Facilities up to High Schools (高級中等以下學校校園行動載具使用原則) state that mobile devices — defined as mobile phones, laptops, tablets, smartwatches or other wearables — should be turned off at school. The changes would stipulate that use of such devices during class is forbidden, and the devices should be handed to a teacher or the school for safekeeping. The amendments also say
EMBRACING TAIWAN: US lawmakers have introduced an act aiming to replace the use of ‘Chinese Taipei’ with ‘Taiwan’ across all Washington’s federal agencies A group of US House of Representatives lawmakers has introduced legislation to replace the term “Chinese Taipei” with “Taiwan” across all federal agencies. US Representative Byron Donalds announced the introduction of the “America supports Taiwan act,” which would mandate federal agencies adopt “Taiwan” in place of “Chinese Taipei,” a news release on his page on the US House of Representatives’ Web site said. US representatives Mike Collins, Barry Moore and Tom Tiffany are cosponsors of the legislation, US political newspaper The Hill reported yesterday. “The legislation is a push to normalize the position of Taiwan as an autonomous country, although the official US
CHANGE OF TONE: G7 foreign ministers dropped past reassurances that there is no change in the position of the G7 members on Taiwan, including ‘one China’ policies G7 foreign ministers on Friday took a tough stance on China, stepping up their language on Taiwan and omitting some conciliatory references from past statements, including to “one China” policies. A statement by ministers meeting in Canada mirrored last month’s Japan-US statement in condemning “coercion” toward Taiwan. Compared with a G7 foreign ministers’ statement in November last year, the statement added members’ concerns over China’s nuclear buildup, although it omitted references to their concerns about Beijing’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong. Also missing were references stressing the desire for “constructive and stable relations with China” and
RSS