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Zelenskyy agrees to Trump-Putin meeting without cease-fire, but will Kremlin dictator go along?

Zelenskyy agrees to Trump-Putin meeting without cease-fire, but will Kremlin dictator go along?

I’m with President Trump: “There’s no deal until there’s a deal.” And now that he has changed his stance and is openly siding with Vladimir Putin, despite vehement objections from Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who visited the White House yesterday, a deal seems rather elusive. Putin’s interest in peace is underscored by his continued bombardment of Ukraine, the country he illegally invaded, with the latest round killing 10 people. Which is to say the Kremlin dictator has no conceivable interest in peace, except on his maximalist terms. Look, I’m rooting for Trump. If he can somehow square the circle of this brutal and bloody war, and bring things to an end, he will deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. And Hillary said she’d nominate him. HERE IS THE ‘BIGGEST DIFFERENCE’ BETWEEN ZELENSKYY’S TWO WHITE HOUSE VISITS But the negative reviews of the Alaska sitdown has rankled Trump and prompted him to lash out at Fake News on Truth Social: “If we had the Summit elsewhere, the Democrat run and controlled media would have said what a terrible thing THAT was. These people are sick!” Okay, he doesn’t like the press. Except we now know, thanks to his in-flight comments to Fox’s Bret Baier, that he enjoys the sparring, likening it to a golf game. The reporters are all trying to get him to make a mistake. If he makes no breaking news, he wins. If he does say something that’s breaking news, he didn’t put the ball in the hole and they’ve got him.  I watched Sunday morning as Zelenskyy and top European officials said only Russia can end the war and that Ukraine would not be surrendering the Donbas region, home to more than 200,000 people.   As Gen. Wesley Clark told me on “Media Buzz,” once you get past the Donbas region, it’s a “straight shot” to Kyiv, so the brave Ukrainians, who have held off the far bigger Russian war machine, would be defenseless.  It’s mildly encouraging that media reports say Putin has accepted the need for security forces to protect Ukraine, meaning the Europeans – and the U.S. – would send troops for a peacekeeping unit. When special envoy Steve Witkoff, who was in the room during the Putin session, was asked about Trump’s change of position, I thought he’d deny it, but he didn’t. That confirms the stories are true, and certainly complicates matters. TRUMP SPARS WITH EUROPEAN LEADER DURING UKRAINE TALKS OVER KEY STEP TO PEACE German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said over the weekend that Trump “said himself that a ceasefire was his absolute most important and highest priority. So, it was a joint demand, which isn’t happening now. We would have indeed hoped for a cease-fire first. The Russian side was obviously unwilling to do that.” So what exactly is Putin giving up? Nothing, as far as I can see. Every day without a cease-fire is another day that the indicted war criminal gets to cement his battlefield gains. And, under these circumstances, Trump expects Ukraine’s president to join in a trilateral meeting with him and Putin?  Responding to Fox’s Peter Doocy, Trump said: “I think if everything works out well today, we’ll have a trilat and I think there will be a reasonable chance of ending the war when we do that.”  Zelenskyy, who repeatedly praised Trump–he wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice after getting kicked out of the White House following his meltdown back in February–reminded reporters that “we live under, each day, attacks. You know, that today have been a lot of attacks and a lot of wounded people. And the child was dead, small one, one year and half. “So we need to stop this war, to stop Russia. And we need to support American and European partners that will do our best, for this. So, and I think we show that we are strong people and we supported the idea of the united system of personnel, President Trump to stop this war, to make a diplomatic way of finishing this war. And we are ready for trilateral as presidents.” BACK FROM ALASKA, TRUMP STARTS WEEK WITH CRUCIAL FOREIGN POLICY TALKS OVER UKRAINE WAR Now that stunned me. He’s willing to sit down with Putin and Trump after insisting on a cease-fire first – which was also the president’s position until he flipped and abandoned it after the sitdown with the indicted war criminal? So what was the mood afterward? “I’m optimistic that collectively we can reach an agreement that would deter any future aggression against Ukraine,” Trump said. He added, “I have a feeling you and President Putin are going to work something out.” Zelenskyy “praised the constructive specific meeting,” adding: “There is a lot of people in prison. So we need them back and guarantees which will work for the years. We spoke about it and I showed president a lot of details on the battlefield, on the map.”  But will Putin, who views Zelenskyy as an illegitimate leader, attend? All the chatter about the red carpet and other atmospherics is meaningless. Yes, Zelenskyy wore a suit, albeit a military-style one. We should all be rooting for Trump. Even if he falls short, and the war drags on, it can only end with a negotiated settlement. At one point, Trump broke away from the session and called Putin, rather than waiting till afterwards. Trump posted that this was “a very good early step,” and early may be the operative word. The war could certainly drag on. But it can’t end on the battlefield. We wouldn’t have gotten this far without Trump’s unique preference for leader-to-leader talks, even though he’s now openly siding with Vladimir Putin. Sometimes that produces results and sometimes it doesn’t, as with Kim Jong-un. But it’s given him – and us – a shot. 

Hamas agrees terms for Gaza ceasefire, source tells Al Jazeera

Hamas agrees terms for Gaza ceasefire, source tells Al Jazeera

NewsFeed A Hamas source told Al Jazeera the group has agreed terms for a ceasefire in Gaza, as a step towards ending the war. The plan calls for a 60-day pause in fighting and the release of half of Israeli captives in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. Al Jazeera’s Hamda Salhut reports. Published On 18 Aug 202518 Aug 2025 Adblock test (Why?)

ISIL-backed rebels killed at least 52 people in eastern DR Congo, UN says

ISIL-backed rebels killed at least 52 people in eastern DR Congo, UN says

MONUSCO condemns the attacks by the ADF ‘in the strongest possible terms’, the mission’s spokesperson says. Rebels backed by ISIL (ISIS) have killed at least 52 civilians in the Democratic Republic of the Congo this month, according to the United Nations peacekeeping mission (MONUSCO) in the country, as both the DRC army and Rwandan-backed M23 rebel group accuse each other of violating a recently reached US-mediated ceasefire deal. Attacks by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) targeted the Beni and Lubero territories of the eastern North Kivu province between August 9 and 16, MONUSCO said on Monday, warning that the death toll could rise further. The renewed violence comes as a separate conflict between the DRC army and the M23 group continues to simmer in the east of the country, despite a series of peace treaties signed in recent months. The government and M23 had agreed to sign a permanent peace deal by August 18, but no agreement was announced on Monday. The latest ADF “violence was accompanied by kidnappings, looting, the burning of houses, vehicles, and motorcycles, as well as the destruction of property belonging to populations already facing a precarious humanitarian situation,” MONUSCO said. It condemned the attacks “in the strongest possible terms”, the mission’s spokesperson said. The ADF is among several militias wrangling over land and resources in the DRC’s mineral-rich east. Lieutenant Elongo Kyondwa Marc, a regional Congolese army spokesperson, said the ADF was taking revenge on civilians after suffering defeats by Congolese forces. “When they arrived, they first woke the residents, gathered them in one place, tied them up with ropes, and then began to massacre them with machetes and hoes,” Macaire Sivikunula, chief of Lubero’s Bapere sector, told the Reuters news agency over the weekend. Advertisement After a relative lull in recent months, authorities said the group killed nearly 40 people in Komanda city, Ituri province, last month, when it stormed a Catholic church during a vigil and fired on worshippers, including many women and children. The ADF, an armed group formed by former Ugandan rebels in the 1990s after discontent with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, has killed thousands of civilians and increased looting and killings in the northeastern DRC. In 2002, following military assaults by Ugandan forces, the group moved its activities to neighbouring DRC. In 2019, it pledged allegiance to ISIL. Among the 52 victims so far this month, at least nine were killed overnight from Saturday to Sunday in an attack on the town of Oicha, in North Kivu, the AFP news agency learned from security and local sources. A few days earlier, the ADF had already killed at least 40 people in several towns in the Bapere sector, also in North Kivu province, according to local and security sources. In response to the renewed attacks, MONUSCO said it had strengthened its military presence in several sectors and allowed several hundred civilians to take refuge in its base. At the end of 2021, Kampala and Kinshasa launched a joint military operation against the ADF, dubbed “Shujaa”, so far without succeeding in putting an end to their attacks. Adblock test (Why?)

Trump proposes Putin-Zelenskyy summit in push to end Ukraine war

Trump proposes Putin-Zelenskyy summit in push to end Ukraine war

United States President Donald Trump has announced plans to convene a face-to-face summit between Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his latest bid to end Moscow’s war in Ukraine. Trump’s proposal on Monday came as he hosted Zelenskyy and top European leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, at the White House for high-stakes talks on ending the conflict, which has raged since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Trump said he had “begun arrangements” for the summit after speaking with Putin by phone, and that he would hold a trilateral meeting with his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts following their two-way meeting. “Again, this was a very good, early step for a War that has been going on for almost four years,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform. “Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, are coordinating with Russia and Ukraine.” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte separately confirmed that Putin had agreed to the bilateral meeting, but did not specify a date or location. Zelenskyy, who described his meeting with Trump as a “very good conversation,” told reporters that he was “ready” to meet the Russian leader one-on-one. Moscow did not immediately confirm that it had agreed to a summit, but Russia’s state-run TASS news agency cited presidential aide Yuri Ushakov as saying that Putin and Trump “spoke in favour of continuing direct talks” between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations. Advertisement The proposals for a summit, which would be the first meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy since Moscow’s invasion, came as the fraught issue of security guarantees for Ukraine took centre stage during the talks at the White House. The specifics of what those guarantees would look like remained unclear on Monday. Asked if the US could send peacekeepers to Ukraine, Trump said that European countries would be the “first line of defence”, but that Washington would provide “a lot of help”. “We’re going to help them out also, we’re going to be involved,” Trump said. Trump said on Truth Social later that discussions had focused on which security guarantees would be provided by European countries with “coordination” by the US. Zelenskyy said that the guarantees would be “unpacked” by Kyiv’s partners and formalised within the next week to 10 days. While Trump has ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine, his special envoy, Witkoff, said on Sunday that Putin was open to a security guarantee resembling the 32-member alliance’s collective defence mandate. Under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, an armed attack against any one NATO member nation is considered an attack on all members of the alliance. Speaking on Fox News after Monday’s talks, Rutte called Washington’s commitment to be involved in guaranteeing Ukraine’s security a “breakthrough”, but said the exact nature of that involvement would be discussed over the coming days. Rutte said the discussions had not touched on the possibility of deploying US or European troops. “What we all agree on is that if this war does come to end… it has to be definitive,” Rutte said. Konstantin Sonin, a Russian exile and Putin critic who is a professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, said that meaningful security guarantees for Kyiv would need to include European troops on the ground. “This is all ‘unacceptable’ to Putin, so for European leaders, it is the question how to persuade President Trump that without such guarantees, the war, even if it stops now, will start again in the near future,” Sonin told Al Jazeera. Sonin said that Ukraine had been failed by “written” guarantees for decades, including during Moscow’s 2014 invasion and occupation of Crimea. “Russia has signed many international treaties recognising Ukraine’s sovereignty and borders – including Putin himself signing one such treaty in 2004 – and still violated all of these treaties, both in 2014 and 2022,” Sonin said. “This is all to say that the sticking point is not the language in some documents,” he added. The issue of what territory Kyiv might be asked to give up in a peace deal also remained unclear after the talks at the White House. Advertisement Ahead of the meeting, Trump warned that the return to Ukraine of Russian-occupied Crimea would be off the table in any negotiated settlement. Trump has indicated that a deal to end the war would involve “some swapping, changes in land” between Russia and Ukraine. Russia controls about one-fifth of Ukraine, according to open-source estimates. Ukraine, which took control of a large swath of Russia’s Kursk region during a surprise counter-offensive last year, is not believed to hold any Russian territory at present. Speaking on Fox News, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said both Moscow and Kyiv would have to make concessions for a deal. “Obviously, land or where you draw those lines – where the war stops – is going to be part of that conversation,” Rubio said. “And it’s not easy, and maybe it’s not even fair, but it’s what it takes in order to bring about an end to a war. And that’s been true in every war.” Zelenskyy, who has repeatedly ruled out handing over Ukrainian territory to Moscow, said on Monday that land would be an issue for him and Putin to work out between them. “We will leave the issue of territories between me and Putin,” Zelenskyy told reporters. Adblock test (Why?)