World News Random, Random

[ponchi101]

And let's recognize Taiwan too.

[ti-amie]

And let's recognize Taiwan too.

[ti-amie]

Teddy Wilson‬
‪@reportbywilson.bsky.social‬
· 27m
BREAKING: Japan’s meteorological agency said that a powerful earthquake hit near Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula and issued a tsunami advisory for Japan.

Earthquake reportedly registered a preliminary magnitude of 8.0

(via Associated Press)

The earthquake registered 8.7 magnitude, according to the U.S. Geological Survey: earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/...


Tsunami is expected to reach eastern Hokkaido at 10:00am (Japan Standard Time GMT +9 — 9:00pm Eastern Daylight Time / GMT -5) The estimate of maximum wave height is expected to be 1 meter.


JMA Issued a Tsunami Advisory for the Pacific Coast, with Estimated Maximum Wave Height 1 Meter (UPDATE1 )
<p>The Japan Meteorological Agency has issued a tsunami warning, mainly for the Pacific coast, from Hokkaido to Kyushu region. The estimate of maximum wave height is expected to be 1 meter.</p>
japannews.yomiuri.co.jp

[ti-amie]

Steve Herman‬
‪@newsguy.bsky.social‬
· 16m



Tsunami watch for Alaska, Canada’s BC, California - PTWC www.tsunami.gov

[ti-amie]

‪justdeirdre.bsky.social‬
‪@justdeirdre.bsky.social‬
· 9m
Kamchetka, Russia

‪jojo282.bsky.social‬
‪@jojo282.bsky.social‬
· 10m
There have been ten after shocks ranging from 5.2 to 7.0. Guatemala has been active too. Mother Earth is not happy.

[ti-amie]

Unseen Japan

‪@unseenjapan.com‬

Follow
IMMEDIATE WARNING: A tsunami warning for waves up to 3m is in effect for Hokkaido and Honshu, with advisories for other areas of Japan due to an earthquake near Russia. If you are near the coasts, PLEASE LEAVE and seek higher ground inland.
https://buff.ly/3pfgxUc

[ti-amie]

Steve Herman‬
‪@newsguy.bsky.social‬
· 1m



NHK - Tsunami reaches northern Japan.

[ti-amie]

Trump to offer Putin minerals for peace
US president will propose money-making opportunities to encourage Russia to end Ukraine war

Connor Stringer
Deputy US Editor.
Joe Barnes
Brussels Correspondent

Donald Trump is preparing to offer Vladimir Putin access to rare earth minerals to incentivise him to end the war in Ukraine.

The US president will arrive at the much-anticipated meeting with his Russian counterpart on Friday armed with a number of money-making opportunities for Putin.

They will include opening up Alaska’s natural resources to Moscow and lifting some of the American sanctions on Russia’s aviation industry, The Telegraph can reveal.

Proposals include giving Putin access to the rare earth minerals in the Ukrainian territories currently occupied by Russia.

Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, is understood to be among administration figures briefing Mr Trump ahead of his meeting with Putin in Anchorage.

Mr Bessent is exploring the economic trade-offs the US can make with Russia in order to expedite a ceasefire agreement.

Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, Mr Trump said Putin would face “severe consequences” if he did not agree to end the war in Ukraine at their meeting on Friday.

The US leader also revealed his intention to seek an immediate second meeting with Putin, this time involving Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, after their one-on-one talks in Alaska.

Mr Trump said: “If the first one goes ok, we’ll have a quick second one. I would like to do it almost immediately, and we’ll have a quick second meeting between President Putin and President Zelensky and myself, if they’d like to have me there.”

The US president had attended a virtual summit with Mr Zelensky and other European leaders including Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Freidrich Merz as part of a series of calls ahead of the Alaska meeting.

Speaking after the talks, Mr Zelensky said Mr Trump backed security guarantees for Ukraine. “There should be security guarantees,” he told a press conference alongside Mr Merz, the German chancellor.

“President Trump said that he supports this and America’s readiness to take part.”

In the past months, Washington has kept security guarantees – some kind of commitment that America would be willing to enforce the terms of any peace deal – for Ukraine off the table, despite it being a key demand from Kyiv.

The UK, France and Germany have been working towards creating a peacekeeping force without the direct involvement of the Americans but had hoped the US may offer support such as air cover.

Offering an update on the plans following Wednesday’s talks, Sir Keir said his “coalition of the willing” was ready to implement a ceasefire plan as soon as a peace deal was agreed.

The plans “are now ready in a form that can be used if we get to that ceasefire”, the Prime Minister said, adding that “real progress” on security guarantees for Ukraine had been made.

European leaders including Emmanuel Macron, the French president, said the calls with Mr Trump were “positive”. After the calls, Mr Zelensky said Putin was “bluffing” when he said “he does not care about the sanctions and that they’re not working”.

As well as lifting sanctions, The Telegraph can now reveal that the US is preparing to offer Putin other financial incentives to end the war, including access to rare earth minerals in the areas of Ukraine currently occupied by Russia.

Ukraine is thought to hold 10 per cent of the world’s reserves of lithium, used in the production of batteries. Two of its largest lithium deposits are in areas held by Russia, and Putin has staked his claim to the valuable minerals found in the regions his forces occupy.

“There are a range of incentives, in which a potential mineral/rare earth deal could be one,” a source with knowledge of the proposals told The Telegraph.

In May, the US signed a rare earth mineral deal with Kyiv, allowing it to exploit Ukraine’s ample natural resources. Washington will need to establish new mining operations, which could be accelerated by Russian co-operation.

The president’s America First policy has seen him strike several mineral deals since his return to the Oval Office, most notably with Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

(Detailed map at the link)

Other incentives include lifting export bans on parts and equipment needed to service Russian planes, swathes of which have fallen into disrepair.

Western countries have restricted Moscow’s access to crucial spare components and other equipment since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, forcing airlines and the military to cannibalise old aircraft for replacement parts.

Nearly 30 per cent of Russia’s Western-made planes, cut off from maintenance, could be grounded within the next five years, Sergei Chemezov, the head of Rostec, Russia’s state-owned defence conglomerate, suggested this year.

Lifting sanctions on Russian aircraft could prove lucrative for the American manufacturer Boeing. With a fleet of more than 700 planes dominated by Airbus and Boeing, Russian airlines could return to the American suppliers for critical parts and maintenance.

Recent major incidents highlight an urgent need to prevent the fleet degrading. In late July, a Soviet-era Antonov An-24, built in 1976, crashed in the country’s far east, killing all 48 people on board. Days later, the Russian flag carrier Aeroflot grounded dozens of flights following a crippling cyber attack.

Mr Trump is also considering offering Russia opportunities to tap into the valuable natural resources in the strait that separates it from the US. Alaska, separated from Russia by just three miles of the Bering Strait, is estimated to hold significant undiscovered oil and gas reserves, including 13 per cent of the world’s oil.

Developing Russia’s presence in the strait would bolster Putin’s strategic interests in the Arctic region, which accounted for 80 per cent of Russia’s gas production in 2022.

UK government sources told The Telegraph that such incentives could be acceptable to Europe so long as it was not seen as rewarding Russia. “The sense is that it has to be presented to align with public opinion around this, it cannot be seen as a reward for Putin,” one said.

Israel’s occupation of the West Bank could be used as a model for ending the war. Russia would have military and economic control of occupied Ukraine under its own governing body, similar to Israel’s de facto rule of Palestinian territory.

The idea was raised in discussions between Steve Witkoff, Mr Trump’s special envoy and his Russian counterparts, according to The Times.

The White House is tempering expectations ahead of the summit on Friday, portraying it as a “listening exercise” for the president.

“This is really a feel-out meeting, a little bit,” Mr Trump told reporters on Monday, predicting he would know “probably in the first two minutes” if Putin was serious about peace.

European diplomats say there has been no notable change in Putin’s overall war aim, which is to topple Mr Zelensky’s government and replace it with a Moscow-friendly proxy.

The Russian president’s aides described the tete-a-tete primarily as a discussion on “Russian-American relations”, hinting at boosting trade co-operation.

A White House official said: “We do not comment on deliberative conversations that may or may not be happening. From the beginning, the president has been clear about his commitment to ending the bloodshed and achieving a full and comprehensive ceasefire.

“As the president stated, everyone agrees this war must come to a close, and that is what he is working towards.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/202 ... in-alaska/

Some interesting comments:

IB

Ian Bartram
28 min ago
Ukraine's mineral wealth is not Trump's to give away.

Comment by Pseudo Nym.

PN

Pseudo Nym
29 min ago
Trump doesn't seem to understand Putin's mindset or agenda, which is focused on clawing back ex USSR land territory. Putin's goals seem obvious to everyone except Trump.

SV

Sam Vimes
18 min ago
Yet Putin seems to be giving China a ‘free hand’ in recovering former Chinese lands, especially Siberia…where was Putins outrage when China renamed major ‘Russian cities’ back to their historic Chinese names?

[ponchi101]

"How to deal with bullies" for dummies.
Lesson 1: if you yield to the bully, the bully will come back much sooner than later and extort you once more. More yielding will shorten the frequency, and increase the extortion.

---0---
I think I learned that in freshman year in HS?

[ti-amie]

Trump drops ceasefire demand for Ukraine war, tells allies Putin wants land
Trump’s swerve increases pressure on the Ukrainian leader as he heads to the White House on Monday to make his case.

Updated
August 16, 2025 at 3:34 p.m. EDT today at 3:34 p.m. EDT

By Ellen Francis, Siobhán O'Grady, Catherine Belton and David L. Stern

President Donald Trump dropped his demand for a ceasefire in Ukraine and told its president Saturday that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine’s Donbas area in exchange for stopping Russian attacks.

Hours after Trump and Putin met Friday in Alaska, Trump said Ukraine and Russia should go straight to negotiating a settlement, a split with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European allies that aligns the United States with Putin.

Zelensky has rejected Russian demands to cede Ukrainian land. The Ukrainian leader and his European partners, including the leaders of Britain, France and Germany, had lobbied the White House for weeks to demand that Moscow agree to a ceasefire before any negotiations.

Trump’s swerve increases pressure on the Ukrainian leader as he prepares to go to the White House on Monday to make his case. The Europeans are wary of a rushed deal on terms unfavorable to Ukraine that could reshape the continent’s security. Zelensky has said Ukraine cannot negotiate under attack.

After the summit, Trump told Zelensky and other European leaders that in addition to land Russia has seized in the war, Putin wants all of Donbas in exchange for a promise to end the war, according to four people familiar with the discussion. All spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

In years of fighting, Russia has been unable to seize all of Donbas. Russian forces occupy almost all of the Luhansk region of Donbas but only part of the strategic, fortified Donetsk region.

In the phone call, Trump conveyed that he was shifting away from the ceasefire demand and toward reaching a swift deal, which could make the Russian proposal the starting point for talks, two of the people said.

Trump told the Europeans he would be open to providing security guarantees for Ukraine in a deal but the details were unclear, according to two European diplomats. European leaders were invited to join Zelensky and Trump in the White House on Monday, the diplomats said.

The Europeans have said any agreement should protect Ukraine against further Russian attacks. They welcomed comments by Trump that he was open to the “possibility” of U.S. security guarantees.

Before the Alaska summit, European officials expressed guarded optimism that the United States was backing their ceasefire demand. But after the call on Saturday, Trump abandoned it publicly.

“It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Putin has repeatedly rebuffed calls for a ceasefire. He has insisted instead on broader negotiations for a final peace deal. Ukraine and its European allies say such talks would be a stalling tactic for Russia to press its gains.

Trump confirmed in his post that he will meet with Zelensky on Monday.

Zelensky said Saturday that he and Trump had a “long and substantive” conversation, lasting around an hour, before they were joined on the call by European leaders.

He said he would meet with Trump “to discuss all of the details regarding ending the killing and the war,” he said. “Ukraine reaffirms its readiness to work with maximum effort to achieve peace.”

It was important, he said, that European countries and the United States were “involved at every stage to ensure reliable security guarantees” for Ukraine, and there were “positive signals” from Washington that the United States would participate in a security arrangement.

He also repeated his support for Trump’s earlier proposal for a trilateral summit of U.S., Russian and Ukrainian leaders.

Top Putin aide Yuri Ushakov said a trilateral summit was not broached in Alaska.

After the call Saturday, the leaders of France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Poland, Finland and the European Union said they stood “ready to work with” Trump and Zelensky for the trilateral summit “with European support.”

“We are clear that Ukraine must have ironclad security guarantees,” they said in a joint statement.

They said there could be no limitations on Ukraine’s military, no “Russia veto” in its ambitions to join the E.U. or NATO, and that it remained “up to Ukraine to make decisions on its territory.”

They did not mention an insistence on a ceasefire before any negotiations.

The leaders were joined on the call by NATO’s secretary general.

On Zelensky’s last visit to the White House, in February, Trump and Vice President JD Vance accused the Ukrainian leader of blocking a deal. European leaders worked with Zelensky to mend the relationship. Before the Alaska summit, Trump complained that Putin said he wanted to end the war but continued to attack Ukrainian cities.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz suggested some cause for optimism Saturday.

There could be “much more to come, according to the American president — namely, a comprehensive peace agreement,” Merz told German broadcaster ZDF.

Merz called U.S. willingness to participate in security guarantees for Ukraine “good news.”

“But, of course,” he said, “the Europeans, for their part, must contribute to ensuring Ukraine’s security in the long term.”

The summit was seen as a public relations success for Putin, who was welcomed by Trump after years of Western isolation since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Trump told Fox News after the summit that he and Putin “agreed on a lot of points” but that “one or two pretty significant items” remained.

“It’s really up to President Zelensky to get it done,” Trump told Fox News’s Sean Hannity. “I would also say the European nations, they have to get involved a little bit.”

Stern reported in Kyiv and O’Grady reported from Kharkiv. Catherine Belton in London, Michael Birnbaum in Alaska and Kate Brady in Berlin contributed to this report.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/20 ... sia-trump/

[ti-amie]

Russia sees victory as Trump adopts Putin’s approach to ending Ukraine war
In President Donald Trump’s warm red-carpet greeting at the Alaska summit, Russians saw an opening to pull America away from its traditional allies in Europe.

Updated
August 16, 2025 at 3:25 p.m. EDTtoday at 3:25 p.m. EDT

By Francesca Ebel, Robyn Dixon, Ellen Francis, Catherine Belton and Siobhán O'Grady

MOSCOW — For Russia, the results of the Alaska summit between President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin marked a turning point in U.S.-Russian relations underlined by the United States subsequently abandoning its demand for a halt in fighting in Ukraine.

Russian officials and commentators were especially enamored by Trump’s unusually warm red-carpet greeting to Putin on Friday in which they saw an opening to pull America away from its traditional allies in Europe. “A new European and international security architecture is on the agenda and everyone must accept it,” said Andrei Klishas, an influential Russian senator after the summit.

Within hours of the meeting, Trump had discarded his previous position — and that of Ukraine and Europe — that a full ceasefire was required to allow the details of a peace agreement to be hammered out. The move enables Russia to keep fighting without the risk of U.S. sanctions, and puts pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to agree to Russian terms or face open-ended attacks.

After Friday’s summit, Trump told Zelensky and European leaders that Putin had demanded that Ukraine cede all of Donbas, which includes Luhansk and Donetsk regions, and other occupied territory, according a three people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

Trump told them of his shift from a ceasefire to negotiations on a comprehensive peace deal, according to two people familiar with the matter. Trump spoke first to Zelensky before European leaders joined the call.

Russia does not control the roughly 3,500 square miles of Donetsk, a highly reinforced region of strategic importance to Ukraine’s capacity to defend itself from future Russian attacks, military analysts say.

Trump told Zelensky that Putin was “ready to promise” to end the war and not start wars against other nations, in exchange for Donbas and the other Ukrainian territory he has seized, the official said. Zelensky is unwilling to give up any more territory, he added, but Trump wants a fast deal — setting the stage for a potentially difficult clash.

Kyiv insists that handing more territory to Putin would violate Ukraine’s constitution but also embolden Russia to plan further attacks on the rest of Ukraine.

A triumphant Putin told top Russian officials Saturday that the meeting was “very useful” and “in my opinion, it brings us closer to the right decisions.”

Trump’s call to inform Zelensky and European leaders about the summit, which included Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and the leaders of France, Germany, Finland, Italy, Britain, Poland, NATO and the European Commission, was more tense than the phone call between the Europeans and Trump earlier this week, a second official said.

In another setback for Kyiv, the Kremlin on Saturday raised doubts over the one public result of the summit that went some way to meeting Ukrainian demands — Trump’s promise of a three-way meeting between Trump, Putin and Zelensky.

Senior Putin aide Yuri Ushakov said such a meeting had not been discussed, even after Trump referred to it in comments after the summit. The Kremlin has so far firmly resisted any meeting with Zelensky until the very last stages of peace negotiations.

One bright spot for European leaders, however, appears to be a continued American buy-in for some form of security guarantees for Ukraine in the wake of any agreement.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said in a statement Saturday the discussion included “credible and robust” security guarantees for Ukraine, although the framework for doing that would remain outside NATO. The guarantees would be equivalent to NATO’s Article 5 on collective defense, according to the statement, which states that if one nation is attacked, each other nation must treat it as an attack against all, and “take the actions it deems necessary to assist” the attacked nation.

Russian officials and commentators, however, saw the results of the summit as much larger than just the conflict in Ukraine and described it as a global realignment bringing together the world’s two top nuclear powers.

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy secretary of the Russian Security Council, counted out a list of Russian achievements from the Alaska summit, focusing primarily on Putin’s restoration of ties with Washington on an equal basis.

“A full-fledged mechanism of meetings between Russia and the United States at the highest level was restored. Calm, without ultimatums and threats,” he wrote. He celebrated that Putin had given no ground while Trump had stepped back from increasing pressure on Moscow through sanctions, allowing Russia to fight on.

“The meeting proved that negotiations are possible without preconditions and at the same time with the continuation of the special military operation,” he said, using the Kremlin’s term for its invasion of Ukraine.

The Kremlin’s most important achievement, he said, was that “both sides explicitly placed the responsibility for achieving future results in the negotiations on the cessation of hostilities squarely” on Kyiv and Europe.

Trump appeared to have been swayed by the Kremlin’s contention that only a comprehensive peace deal was acceptable — which Putin has so far used to delay efforts to halt the fighting, arguing that the many questions, details and nuances involved would require a great deal of time to negotiate.

“This means that Putin has succeeded in persuading Trump that any effort toward a prompt, unconditional ceasefire will fail,” said Russia analyst Tatiana Stanovaya, of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in an interview.

It also indicated that Putin had convinced Trump of the need to address what Russia calls the “root causes” of the war, she said, a formulation that the Kremlin has used to mean demilitarizing Ukraine and changing its politics — and even to renegotiate Europe’s security architecture.

But Stanovaya said the failure to get a ceasefire raised the question of what Trump would do when Putin continues a war that he feels confident of winning. “We should look at how the situation develops further because Putin will continue the war.”

The Kremlin, which artfully played on up Russia’s nuclear arms and history as a Cold War superpower, appears to have convinced Trump that Ukraine could never win a war against a nuclear power, she wrote in separate remarks on social media.

“Putin, unsurprisingly, underlined Russia’s nuclear strength, which left a strong impression on Trump,” she wrote.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide warned that Putin’s demand to address the “root causes” of the war, was “code for the Russian justification for the illegal invasion of Ukraine,” calling for increased pressure on Russia.

“We know that President Putin wants to split Europe and the United States. With all our allies, we must do everything we can to avoid that,” he said in comments to Norwegian media.

Kaja Kallas, the European Commission foreign policy chief, said that the United States had the power to force Russia to negotiate seriously.

“But the harsh reality is that Russia has no intention of ending this war anytime soon,” she wrote in comments to The Washington Post. “European security is not up for negotiation,” she added.

Putin’s other important wins at Friday’s summit included deflecting, for now, tough new U.S. sanctions that would hamper his capacity to keep waging war on Ukraine and repairing his fraying relationship with Trump.

Trump told Fox News after the meeting that his relationship with Putin was “fantastic,” adding there was no need to go ahead with sanctions at this point.

Pro-Kremlin commentator Sergei Markov said Trump had natural empathy with Putin and natural antagonism with the Europeans and Zelensky — and he was moving closer to Putin.

“It means they are developing good friendly relations. They are both from the same generation. They both respect each other,” he said. While sanctions had not been lifted, “the trend is good. There has been a qualitative transition.”

Putin also succeeded, to some extent, in deflecting pressure to end the war onto Zelensky — rather than keeping it on Russia as the aggressor — with Trump telling Fox News after the summit that Zelensky should “make a deal” now because “Russia’s a very big power. And they’re not.”

But Putin still faces domestic pressures to end the war, with the number of Russian troops being killed, the economy declining, spending on the war sky high, and companies facing bankruptcies due to high interest rates. Russian elites — and the population — are weary of the conflict.

“He is losing very many people. And it is difficult to support the economy. Society is tired. His leaders are tired. He needs to end the war. But he needs to do it on his conditions and here he doesn’t want to make any compromises,” Stanovaya said.

Leaders in Europe and Kyiv were relieved that Trump did not appear to be immediately forcing a deal that would surrender Ukrainian territory to Russia.

Former Swedish prime minister of Carl Bildt said that “from the European point of view the best thing that could be said about the meeting is that it could have been even worse. Combined European efforts blocked at least any deal over the head of the Ukrainians,” he wrote on X.

But he said Trump had suffered “a distinct setback” as Putin once more deflected the full ceasefire he had demanded. “What the world sees is a weak and wobbling America.”

Dixon reported from Riga, Francis from Brussels, Belton from London and O’Grady from Kyiv. David S. Stern in Kyiv contributed to this report.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/20 ... raine-war/

[ti-amie]

[ti-amie]

European leaders will join Zelenskyy’s meeting with Trump at the White House

World Aug 17, 2025 11:46 AM EDT

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — European and NATO leaders announced Sunday they will join President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Washington for talks with President Donald Trump on ending Russia’s war in Ukraine, with the possibility of U.S. security guarantees now on the negotiating table.

European leaders, including heavyweights France, Britain and Germany, are rallying around the Ukrainian leader after his exclusion from Trump’s summit on Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Their pledge to be at Zelenskyy’s side at the White House on Monday is an apparent effort to ensure the meeting goes better than the last one in February, when Trump berated Zelenskyy in a heated Oval Office encounter.

“The Europeans are very afraid of the Oval Office scene being repeated and so they want to support Mr. Zelenskyy to the hilt,” said retired French Gen. Dominique Trinquand, a former head of France’s military mission at the United Nations.

“It’s a power struggle and a position of strength that might work with Trump,” he said.

Special U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff said Sunday that Putin agreed at the meeting in Alaska with Trump to allow the U.S. and European allies to offer Ukraine a security guarantee resembling NATO’s collective defense mandate as part of an eventual deal to end the 3 1/2-year war.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, speaking at a news conference in Brussels with Zelenskyy, said “we welcome President Trump’s willingness to contribute to Article 5-like security guarantees for Ukraine. And the ‘coalition of the willing’ — including the European Union — is ready to do its share.”

Von der Leyen was joined Sunday by French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Finnish President Alexander Stubb in saying they will take part in Monday’s talks at the White House, as will secretary-general of the NATO military alliance, Mark Rutte.

The European leaders’ demonstration of support could help ease concerns in Kyiv and in other European capitals that Ukraine risks being railroaded into a peace deal that Trump says he wants to broker with Russia.

Neil Melvin, director of international security at the London-based Royal United Services Institute, said European leaders are trying to “shape this fast-evolving agenda.” After the Alaska summit, the idea of a ceasefire appears all-but-abandoned, with the narrative shifting toward Putin’s agenda of ensuring Ukraine does not join NATO or even the EU.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that a possible ceasefire is “not off the table” but that the best way to end the war would be through a “full peace deal.”

Putin has implied that he sees Europe as a hindrance to negotiations. He has also resisted meeting Zelenskyy in person, saying that such a meeting can only take place once the groundwork for a peace deal has been laid.

Speaking to the press after his meeting with Trump, the Russian leader raised the idea that Kyiv and other European capitals could “create obstacles” to derail potential progress with “behind-the-scenes intrigue.”

For now, Zelenskyy offers the Europeans the “only way” to get into the discussions about the future of Ukraine and European security, says RUSI’s Melvin.

However, the sheer number of European leaders potentially in attendance means the group will have to be “mindful” not to give “contradictory” messages, Melvin said.

“The risk is they look heavy-handed and are ganging up on Trump,” he added. “Trump won’t want to be put in a corner.”

Although details remain hazy on what Article 5-like security guarantees from the U.S. and Europe would entail for Ukraine, it could mirror NATO membership terms, in which an attack on one member of the alliance is seen as an attack on all.

In remarks made on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Witkoff said Friday’s meeting with Trump was the first time Putin has been had heard to agree to such an arrangement.

Zelenskyy continues to stress the importance of both U.S. and European involvement in any negotiations.

“A security guarantee is a strong army. Only Ukraine can provide that. Only Europe can finance this army, and weapons for this army can be provided by our domestic production and European production. But there are certain things that are in short supply and are only available in the United States,” he said at the press conference Sunday alongside Von der Leyen.

Zelenskyy also pushed back against Trump’s assertion — which aligned with Putin’s preference — that the two sides should negotiate a complete end to the war, rather than first securing a ceasefire. Zelenskyy said a ceasefire would provide breathing room to review Putin’s demands.

“It’s impossible to do this under the pressure of weapons,” he said. “Putin does not want to stop the killing, but he must do it.”

Leicester reported from Le Pecq, France. Associated Press writers Pan Pylas in London, and Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England, contributed to this report.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/euro ... hite-house

[ti-amie]

George Conway ‬
‪@gtconway.bsky.social‬
· 30m

[ponchi101]

If you let Vlad take as much as a hectare from Ukraine, he will attack again in a couple of years.
He is already 72. He does not have much time in his hands anymore.