.jpeg)
Trump
says he and Putin will discuss land and powerplants in Ukraine ceasefire talks
Trump says
negotiators have already discussed ‘dividing up certain assets’ and that he
will talk to Putin on Tuesday
Guardian
staff and agencies
Mon 17 Mar
2025 05.13 GMT
US President
Donald Trump said he plans to discuss ending the war in Ukraine with Russian
President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday and that negotiators had already discussed
“dividing up certain assets”.
“I’ll be
speaking to President Putin on Tuesday. A lot of work’s been done over the
weekend,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One during a late flight back to
the Washington area from Florida.
“We want to
see if we can bring that war to an end. Maybe we can, maybe we can’t, but I
think we have a very good chance,” Trump said.
Trump is
trying to win Putin’s support for a 30-day ceasefire proposal that Ukraine
accepted last week, as both sides continued trading heavy aerial strikes
through the weekend and Russia moved closer to ejecting Ukrainian forces from
their months-old foothold in the western Russian region of Kursk.
“We will be
talking about land. We will be talking about power plants,” Trump said, when
asked about concessions. “I think we have a lot of it already discussed very
much by both sides, Ukraine and Russia. We are already talking about that,
dividing up certain assets.”
The comments
came hours after his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, said that the Russian
president “accepts the philosophy” of Trump’s ceasefire and peace terms.
Witkoff told
CNN that discussions with Putin over several hours last week had been
“positive” and “solution-based”.
But he
declined to confirm when asked whether Putin’s demands included the surrender
of Ukrainian forces in Kursk, international recognition of Ukrainian territory
seized by Russia as Russian, limits on Ukraine’s ability to mobilise, a halt to
western military aid, and a ban on foreign peacekeepers.
Putin said
on Thursday that he supported a truce but outlined numerous details that need
to be negotiated before the deal can be completed.
Moscow has
among other things firmly opposed the deployment of European troops to provide
security guarantees for Ukraine after any eventual ceasefire.
On Sunday,
French President Emmanuel Macron said Russia’s permission was not needed,
noting that Ukraine was a sovereign state. “If Ukraine requests allied forces
to be on its territory, it is not up to Russia to accept or reject them,” he
said in remarks quoted by several French newspapers.
Later on
Sunday Russia’s deputy foreign minister Alexander Grushko said that any
long-lasting peace treaty on Ukraine must meet Moscow’s demands.
“We will
demand that ironclad security guarantees become part of this agreement,”
Izvestia cited Grushko as saying. “Part of these guarantees should be the
neutral status of Ukraine, the refusal of Nato countries to accept it into the
alliance.”
Regarding
the possibility of European troops in Ukraine, he said “It does not matter
under what label Nato contingents were to be deployed on Ukrainian territory:
be it the European Union, Nato, or in a national capacity … If they appear
there, it means that they are deployed in the conflict zone with all the
consequences for these contingents as parties to the conflict.
Putin has
said his military incursion into Ukraine was because Nato’s creeping expansion
threatened Russia’s security. He has demanded that Ukraine drop its Nato
ambitions, that Russia keeps control of all Ukrainian territory seized, and
that the size of the Ukrainian army be limited.
He also
wants western sanctions eased and a presidential election in Ukraine, which
Kyiv says is premature while martial law is in force.
Also on
Sunday, Moscow said that US secretary of state Marco Rubio had called his
Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov to discuss “concrete aspects of the
implementation of understandings” agreed at a US-Russia summit in Saudi Arabia
last month.
February’s
Riyadh gathering was the first high-level meeting between the United States and
Russia since Moscow launched its invasion in February 2022.
“Sergei
Lavrov and Marco Rubio agreed to remain in contact,” the Russian foreign
ministry said, with no mention of the US-suggested ceasefire.
State
department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said on Saturday that the pair had
“discussed the next steps” on Ukraine, and “agreed to continue working towards
restoring communication between the United States and Russia”.
The
Lavrov-Rubio call came hours after the UK hosted a virtual summit on Ukraine,
at which prime minister Keir Starmer accused Putin of “dragging his feet” on
the ceasefire.
“The ‘yes,
but’ from Russia is not good enough,” Starmer said, calling for a stop to the
“barbaric attacks on Ukraine once and for all”.
The
diplomatic developments came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he
had replaced the chief of general staff of the armed forces.
According to
a communique, Anatoliy Bargylevych has been replaced by Andriy Gnatov, who “has
been tasked with increasing the efficiency of the management.”
“He is a
combat guy,” Zelenskyy said of Gnatov. “His task is to bring more combat
experience, the experience of our brigades in planning operations, defensive
and offensive, as well as more active development of the corps system,” he
added.
The
Ukrainian military, which has grown since mobilising to repel Russia’s February
2022 invasion, is in the process of reorganising its army corps to improve
coordination.
Defence
minister Rustem Umerov said on his Facebook page: “We are systematically
transforming the Armed Forces of Ukraine to enhance their combat effectiveness.
“This
involves restructuring the command system and implementing clear standards.”
Gnatov, he said, had “more than 27 years of military experience”.
Bargylevych
has been appointed as the chief inspector of the defence ministry, he added.
Reuters and
Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário