Zelensky says will meet Biden ‘this month’ to present Ukraine ‘victory plan’
Zelensky says will meet Biden ‘this month’ to present Ukraine ‘victory plan’/node/2571251/world
Zelensky says will meet Biden ‘this month’ to present Ukraine ‘victory plan’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he aims to host another international peace summit outlining his vision to end the war in November, to which Russia will be invited. (AFP)
Zelensky says will meet Biden ‘this month’ to present Ukraine ‘victory plan’
Announcement comes as US president to discuss whether or not to let Kyiv fire Western-provided long-range missiles into Russia with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer
Updated 13 September 2024
AFP
KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday that he will meet US leader Joe Biden “this month” to present his “victory plan” on how to end two and a half years of war with Russia.
The announcement came as Biden is due to discuss whether or not to let Kyiv fire Western-provided long-range missiles into Russia with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
“My meeting with President Joe Biden is planned,” Zelensky said at an international conference in Kyiv. “I will present him with a victory plan.”
He gave no specific details on how to end more than 30 months of fighting, saying only that his proposal will involve “a system of interconnected solutions that will give Ukraine enough power — enough to put this war on a course to peace.”
Kyiv has been pressing the West for a green light to use Western weapons to strike into Russia, saying that it could change the course of the war.
Zelensky announced he would meet Biden just over a month into Kyiv’s surprise incursion into the Kursk region, which he had said at the time was partly aimed at forcing Russia into “fair” negotiations.
Zelensky has said he aims to host another international peace summit outlining his vision to end the war in November, to which Russia will be invited.
Russia rejoices at Trump-Putin call as Zelensky rejects talks without Ukraine present
Trump’s change of tack seemed to identify Putin as the only player that matters in ending the fighting and looked set to sideline Zelensky, as well as European governments, in any peace talks
Zelensky said he would not accept any negotiations about Ukraine that do not include his country in the talks
Updated 24 sec ago
AP
Russian officials and state media took a triumphant tone Thursday after President Donald Trump jettisoned three years of US policy and announced he would likely meet soon with Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate a peace deal in the almost three-year war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, said he would not accept any negotiations about Ukraine that do not include his country in the talks. European governments also demanded a seat at the table.
Trump’s change of tack seemed to identify Putin as the only player that matters in ending the fighting and looked set to sideline Zelensky, as well as European governments, in any peace talks. The Ukrainian leader recently described that prospect as “very dangerous.”
Putin has been ostracized by the West since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of its neighbor, and in 2023 the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the Russian leader alleging war crimes.
Trump’s announcement created a major diplomatic upheaval that could herald a watershed moment for Ukraine and Europe.
Russia rejoices at Putin’s spotlight role
Russian officials and state-backed media sounded triumphant after Wednesday’s call between Trump and Putin that lasted more than an hour.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that the “position of the current (US) administration is much more appealing.”
The deputy chair of Russia’s National Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, said in an online statement: “The presidents of Russia and the US have talked at last. This is very important in and of itself.”
Senior lawmaker Alexei Pushkov said the call “will go down in the history of world politics and diplomacy.”
“I am sure that in Kyiv, Brussels, Paris and London they are now reading Trump’s lengthy statement on his conversation with Putin with horror and cannot believe their eyes,” Pushkov wrote on his messaging app.
Russian state news agency RIA Novosti said in an opinion column: “The US finally hurt Zelensky for real,” adding that Trump had found “common ground” with Putin.
Screenshot showing an opinion column on Ria Novosti about the Trump-Putin call.
“This means that the formula ‘nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine’ — a sacred cow for Zelensky, the European Union and the previous US administration — no longer exists. Moreover, the opinion of Kyiv and Brussels (the European Union) is of no interest to Trump at all,” it added.
The pro-Kremlin Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda went even further and published a column stating in the headline that “Trump signed Zelensky’s death sentence.”
“The myth of Russia as a ‘pariah’ in global politics, carefully inflated by Western propaganda, has burst with a bang,” the column said. Zelensky won’t accept talks without Ukraine
In his first comments to journalists since Trump held individual calls first with Putin and then Zelensky, the Ukrainian leader conceded that it was “not very pleasant” that the American president spoke first to Putin. But he said the main issue was to “not allow everything to go according to Putin’s plan.”
“We cannot accept it, as an independent country, any agreements (made) without us,” Zelensky said as he visited a nuclear power plant in western Ukraine.
During the conversation with Trump on Wednesday, Zelensky said, the US president told him he wanted to speak to both the Russian and Ukrainian leaders at the same time.
“He never mentioned in a conversation that Putin and Russia was a priority. We, today, trust these words. For us it is very important to preserve the support of the United States of America,” Zelensky said.
Alarm bells ring in Europe and NATO
Trump appears ready to make a deal over the heads of Ukraine and European governments.
He also effectively dashed Ukraine’s hopes of becoming part of NATO, which the alliance said less than a year ago was an “irreversible” step, or getting back the parts of its territory captured so far by the Russian army. Russia currently occupies close to 20 percent of the country.
The US administration’s approach to a potential settlement is notably close to Moscow’s vision of how the war should end. That has caused alarm and tension within the 32-nation NATO alliance and 27-nation European Union.
Some European governments that fear their countries could also be in the Kremlin’s crosshairs were alarmed by Washington’s new course, saying they must be part of negotiations.
“Ukraine, Europe and the United States should work on this together. TOGETHER,” Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote Wednesday on social media.
EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas said: “It is clear that any deal behind our backs will not work. You need the Europeans. You need the Ukrainians.”
Others balked at Trump’s overtures and poured cold water on his upbeat outlook.
“Just as Putin has no intention of stopping hostilities even during potential talks, we must maintain Western unity and increase support … to Ukraine, and political and economic pressure on Russia,” Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said. “Our actions must show that we are not changing course.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said it was right for Trump to speak to Putin, and Scholz noted that he had done so himself as recently as November. He said “a dictated peace” would never win European support.
“We also will not accept any solution that leads to a decoupling of American and European security,” Scholz said. “Only one person would benefit from that: President Putin.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz answers questions in a ZDF program in Berlin, Germany, on February 13, 2025. (REUTERS)
A Ukrainian soldier is resigned to Trump and Putin talking
A soldier from Ukraine’s 53rd Brigade fighting in the eastern Donetsk region said it was normal for Trump and Putin to speak to each other.
“If dialogue is one way to influence the situation, then let them talk — but let it be meaningful enough for us to feel the results of those talks,” the soldier said, insisting on anonymity due to security risks for her family in occupied Ukrainian territory.
But she was skeptical about the negotiations, given the incompatible demands tabled in the past by Russia and Ukraine.
“The conditions are unacceptable for everyone. What we propose doesn’t work for them, and what they propose is unacceptable for us,” she said. “That’s why I, like probably every soldier here, believe this can only be resolved by force.”
A Ukrainian army officer, who said he’s in touch with more than 40 brigades, said the troops he regularly speaks with don’t want a peace deal at any price even as they are desperate for more Western military aid.
“The stock we currently have, in terms of ammunition, is enough to last two or three weeks, maybe a month,” he told The Associated Press, asking that his name not be used because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media.
“We definitely cannot deal with it on our own,” he added.
Man injured alongside Salman Rushdie in 2022 stabbing attack says he thought it was a prank at first
Updated 3 min 57 sec ago
AP
MAYVILLE, N.Y.: A man injured alongside author Salman Rushdie in a knife attack on a New York lecture stage said Thursday that he tried to stop the assault once he realized it wasn’t a prank and was left with a gash above his eye. It took several stitches to close the cut, Henry Reese, 75, told jurors during the third day of testimony in the trial of Hadi Matar, the 27-year-old New Jersey man charged with trying to kill Rushdie and assaulting Reese. Rushdie on Tuesday described being the target of the unprovoked and near fatal stabbing that began as he and Reese sat down for an armchair conversation as part of the Chautauqua Institution’s daily summer lecture series. Rushdie said he likely survived because of the actions of Reese and other bystanders who tackled and subdued the attacker. Rushdie, 77, was stabbed and slashed in the head, neck, torso, leg and hand and left blinded in one eye. During about an hour on the stand, he described lying in a “lake” of his own blood on the stage and aware he might die. Reese said he initially thought the man he saw running toward Rushdie was part of “a prank.” “At some point it became real, and I got up and tried to stop the attacker,” he testified. A large audience had taken their seats in the institution’s 4,400-seat amphitheater for the talk on keeping writers safe that August 2022 morning. Reese is co-founder of City of Asylum Pittsburgh, part of a network providing refuge for persecuted writers and artists that Rushdie inspired. Rushdie, the author of “Midnight’s Children” and “Victory City,” spent years in hiding after the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called for his death with a fatwa in 1989 following the publication of Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses,” which some Muslims consider blasphemous. But after Iran announced that it would not enforce the decree, Rushdie had traveled freely over the past quarter century. A separate federal indictment alleges Matar, who was not yet born when the fatwa was issued, was motivated by a 2006 speech in which the leader of the militant group Hezbollah endorsed it. A trial on the federal terrorism-related charges will be scheduled in US District Court in Buffalo. The current trial is expected to last at least through next week. Since Monday, jurors also have heard from employees of the Chautauqua Institution and others who either witnessed the attack or immediate aftermath. Matar has kept his head down through much of the testimony, writing on a notepad and occasionally conferring with defense attorneys. Matar is a dual Lebanese-US citizen, born in the US to immigrants. In a jailhouse interview with the New York Post shortly after the attack, he did not refer directly to “The Satanic Verses” but called Rushdie someone “who attacked Islam.” Several times since the trial’s start, Matar has said “Free Palestine” while being led past reporters in or out of the courtroom.
Trump wants denuclearization talks with Russia and China, hopes for defense spending cuts
Trump said he would look to engage in nuclear talks with the two countries once “we straighten it all out” in the Middle East and Ukraine.
Updated 12 min ago
AP
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump said Thursday that he wants to restart nuclear arms control talks with Russia and China and that eventually he hopes all three countries could agree to cut their massive defense budgets in half.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump lamented the hundreds of billions of dollars being invested in rebuilding the nation’s nuclear deterrent and said he hopes to gain commitments from the US adversaries to cut their own spending.
“There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons, we already have so many,” Trump said. “You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.”
“We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things that are actually, hopefully much more productive,” Trump said.
While the US and Russia hold massive stockpiles of weapons since the Cold War, Trump predicted that China would catch up in their capability to exact nuclear devastation “within five or six years.”
He said if the weapons were ever called to use, “that’s going to be probably oblivion.”
Trump said he would look to engage in nuclear talks with the two countries once “we straighten it all out” in the Middle East and Ukraine.
“One of the first meetings I want to have is with President Xi of China, President Putin of Russia. And I want to say, ‘let’s cut our military budget in half.’ And we can do that. And I think we’ll be able to.”
Trump in his first term tried and failed to bring China into nuclear arms reduction talks when the US and Russia were negotiating an extension of a pact known as New START. Russia suspended its participation in the treaty during the Biden administration, as the US and Russia continued on massive programs to extend the life-spans or replace their Cold War-era nuclear arsenals.
Fourth federal judge blocks Trump’s birthright citizenship order
Updated 10 min 34 sec ago
AP
BOSTON: A federal judge in Boston on Thursday blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order that would end birthright citizenship for the children of parents who are in the US illegally, becoming the fourth judge to do so.
The ruling from US District Judge Leo Sorokin came three days after US District Judge Joseph Laplante in New Hampshire blocked the executive order and follows similar rulings in Seattle and Maryland.
Sorokin said in a 31-page ruling that the “Constitution confers birthright citizenship broadly, including to persons within the categories described” in the president’s executive order.
The Boston case was filed by the Democratic attorneys general of 18 states and is one of at least nine lawsuits challenging the birthright citizenship order.
“President Trump may believe that he is above the law, but today’s preliminary injunction sends a clear message: He is not a king, and he cannot rewrite the Constitution with the stroke of a pen,” the attorneys general said in a statement.
In the case filed by four states in Seattle, US District Judge John C. Coughenour said the Trump administration was attempting to ignore the Constitution, with the president trying to change it with an executive order.
A federal judge in Maryland issued a nationwide pause on the order in a separate but similar case involving immigrants rights groups and pregnant women whose soon-to-be-born children could be affected. The Trump administration said Tuesday that it would appeal that ruling to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.
In the Boston case, the attorneys general from 18 states, along with the cities of San Francisco and Washington, D.C., asked Sorokin to issue a preliminary injunction. That means the injunction will likely remain in place while the lawsuit plays out.
They argue that the principle of birthright citizenship is “enshrined in the Constitution,” and that Trump does not have the authority to issue the order, which they called a “flagrantly unlawful attempt to strip hundreds of thousands of American-born children of their citizenship based on their parentage.”
They also argue that Trump’s order would cost states funding they rely on to “provide essential services” — from foster care to health care for low-income children, to “early interventions for infants, toddlers, and students with disabilities.”
At the heart of the lawsuits is the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified in 1868 after the Civil War and the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision. That decision found that Scott, an enslaved man, wasn’t a citizen despite having lived in a state where slavery was outlawed.
The Trump administration has asserted that children of noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore not entitled to citizenship.
Attorneys for the states argue that it does and that it has been recognized since the amendment’s adoption, notably in an 1898 US Supreme Court decision. That decision, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, held that the only children who did not automatically receive US citizenship upon being born on US soil were the children of diplomats, who have allegiance to another government; enemies present in the US during hostile occupation; those born on foreign ships; and those born to members of sovereign Native American tribes.
The US is among about 30 countries where birthright citizenship — the principle of jus soli or “right of the soil” — is applied. Most are in the Americas, and Canada and Mexico are among them.
Trump promises Kyiv involvement in peace talks with Russia
Kremlin says talks would include bilateral track with US
Hegseth says Trump is ‘best negotiator on the planet’
Zelensky: we will not accept agreements made without us
Updated 13 February 2025
Reuters
KYIV/BRUSSELS: US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that Ukraine would be involved in peace talks with Russia, after Kyiv and its European allies warned against a “dirty deal” between Washington and Moscow following Trump’s call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said Ukraine would have a seat at the table during any peace negotiations with Russia over ending the war.
“They’re part of it. We would have Ukraine, and we have Russia, and we’ll have other people involved, a lot of people,” Trump said.
Asked whether he trusts Putin, he said: “I believe that he would like to see something happen. I trust him on this subject.”
The US president also said Russia should be readmitted to the Group of Seven nations.
Russia’s financial markets soared and the price of Ukraine’s debt rose at the prospect of the first talks in years to end Europe’s deadliest war since World War Two.
Trump’s unilateral overture to Putin on Wednesday, accompanied by apparent concessions on Ukraine’s principal demands, raised alarm for both Kyiv and the European allies in NATO who said they feared the White House might make a deal without them.
“We, as a sovereign country, simply will not be able to accept any agreements without us,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said. He said Putin aimed to make his negotiations bilateral with the United States, and it was important that this not be allowed.
The Kremlin said plans were under way for Putin and Trump to meet, possibly in Saudi Arabia. Ukraine would “of course” participate in peace talks in some way, but there would also be a bilateral negotiation track between the United States and Russia, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
The United Arab Emirates has told the United States it wants to host talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, Reuters reported.
European officials took an exceptionally firm line in public toward Trump’s peace overture, saying any agreement would be impossible to implement unless they and the Ukrainians were included in negotiating it.
“Any quick fix is a dirty deal,” European foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said. She also denounced the apparent concessions offered in advance.
“Why are we giving them (Russia) everything that they want even before the negotiations have been started?” said Kallas. “It’s appeasement. It has never worked.”
A European diplomatic source said ministers had agreed to engage in a “frank and demanding dialogue” with US officials — some of the strongest language in the diplomatic lexicon — at the annual Munich Security Conference beginning on Friday.
‘BEST NEGOTIATOR ON THE PLANET’
On Wednesday, Trump made the first publicly acknowledged White House call with Putin since Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion, and then followed it up with a call to Zelensky. Trump said he believed both men wanted peace.
But the Trump administration also said openly for the first time that it was unrealistic for Ukraine to expect to return to its 2014 borders or join the NATO alliance as part of any agreement, and that no US troops would join any security force in Ukraine that might be set up to guarantee a ceasefire.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who unveiled the new policy in remarks at NATO headquarters, said on Thursday the world was fortunate to have Trump, the “best negotiator on the planet, bringing two sides together to find a negotiated peace.”
Kremlin spokesman Peskov said Moscow was “impressed” by Trump’s willingness to seek a settlement.
Russia seized Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula and its proxies captured territory in the east in 2014, before its full-scale invasion in 2022 when it captured more land in the east and south.
Ukraine pushed Russian invaders back from the outskirts of Kyiv and recaptured swathes of territory in 2022, but its outmanned and outgunned forces have slowly ceded more land since a failed Ukrainian counter-offensive in 2023.
Relentless fighting has killed or injured hundreds of thousands of troops on both sides — there is no reliable death toll — and pulverised Ukrainian cities.
Meanwhile, there has been no narrowing of positions on either side. Moscow demands Kyiv cede more land and be rendered permanently neutral in any peace deal; Kyiv says Russian troops must withdraw and it must win security guarantees comparable to NATO membership to prevent future attacks.
Ukrainian officials have acknowledged in the past that full NATO membership may be out of reach in the short term, and that a hypothetical peace deal could leave some occupied land in Russian hands.
But Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Kyiv remained committed to joining NATO, which he said was the simplest and least expensive way the West could provide the security guarantees needed to ensure peace.
“All our allies have said the path of Ukraine toward NATO is irreversible,” said Sybiha.
NATO’s Secretary-General Mark Rutte, a former Dutch Prime Minister adept at smoothing over differences between Europe and Washington, said it was important Moscow understand the West remained united, noting that Ukraine had never been promised a peace deal would include alliance membership.
Some Ukrainians saw Trump’s moves as a betrayal. Myroslava Lesko, 23, standing near a sea of flags in downtown Kyiv honoring fallen troops, said: “It truly looks as if they want to surrender Ukraine, because I don’t see any benefits for our country from these negotiations or Trump’s rhetoric.”
However, Ukrainians have been worn out by three years of war, and many say they are prepared to sacrifice some aims to achieve peace.
Many were frustrated by US policy under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden, who vowed to help Ukraine win all its land back and provided tens of billions of dollars worth of military hardware, but only after delays that Ukrainian commanders say let Russian forces regroup.
Trump, at least, was being forthright about the limits of US support, said Tymofiy Mylovanov, president of the Kyiv School of Economics.
“The difference between Biden and Trump is that Trump says out loud what Biden was thinking and doing about Ukraine,” he said on social media.
