Politics
Trump says Putin may not want to make a deal on Ukraine
- Trump says will gauge Putin’s actions over next two weeks.
- Zelenskiy hails summit with Trump as a step towards peace.
- Russia launches largest attack this month amid peace talks.
US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he hoped Russia’s Vladimir Putin would move forward on ending the war in Ukraine but conceded that the Kremlin leader may not want to make a deal at all, adding this would create a “rough situation” for Putin.
In an interview with the Fox News “Fox & Friends” programme, Trump said he believed Putin’s course of action would become clear in the next couple of weeks. Trump again ruled out American troops on the ground in Ukraine and gave no specifics about the security guarantees he has previously said Washington could offer Kyiv under any post-war settlement.
“I don’t think it’s going to be a problem (reaching a peace deal), to be honest with you. I think Putin is tired of it. I think they’re all tired of it, but you never know,” Trump said.
“We’re going to find out about President Putin in the next couple of weeks … It’s possible that he doesn’t want to make a deal,” said Trump, who has previously threatened more sanctions on Russia and nations that buy its oil if Putin does not make peace.
Ukraine and its European allies have been buoyed by Trump’s promise of security guarantees to help end the war during an extraordinary summit on Monday but face many unanswered questions, including how willing Russia will be to play ball.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hailed the talks at the White House as a “major step forward” towards ending Europe’s deadliest conflict in 80 years and setting up a trilateral meeting with Putin and Trump in the coming weeks.
Zelenskiy was flanked by the leaders of allies including Germany, France and Britain at the summit. His warm rapport with Trump contrasted sharply with their disastrous Oval Office meeting in February.
But the path to peace remains deeply uncertain and Zelenskiy may be forced to make painful compromises to end the war, which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Analysts say more than 1 million people have been killed or wounded in the conflict.
Russian attacks
While the Washington talks allowed for a temporary sense of relief in Kyiv, there was no let-up in the fighting. Russia launched 270 drones and 10 missiles in an overnight attack on Ukraine, the Ukrainian air force said, the largest this month. The energy ministry said Russia had targeted energy facilities in the central Poltava region, home to Ukraine’s only oil refinery, causing big fires.
However, Russia also returned the bodies of 1,000 dead Ukrainian soldiers on Tuesday, Ukrainian officials said. Moscow received 19 bodies of its own soldiers in return, according to the state-run TASS news agency.
“The good news (from Monday’s summit) is that there was no blow-up. Trump didn’t demand Ukrainian capitulation nor cut off support. The mood music was positive and the trans-Atlantic alliance lives on,” John Foreman, a former British defence attache to Kyiv and Moscow, told Reuters.
“On the downside, there is a great deal of uncertainty about the nature of security guarantees and what exactly the US has in mind.”
Ukraine’s allies held talks in the so-called “Coalition of the Willing” format on Tuesday, discussing additional sanctions to crank up the pressure on Russia. The grouping has also agreed that planning teams will meet US counterparts in the coming days to advance plans for security guarantees for Ukraine.
NATO military leaders were expected to meet on Wednesday to discuss Ukraine, with US General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expected to attend the meeting virtually, officials told Reuters.
“We are now actively working at all levels on the specifics, on what the architecture of the guarantees will look like, with all members of the Coalition of the Willing, and very concretely with the United States,” Zelenskiy said on X.
‘Tiptoeing around Trump’
Russia has made no explicit commitment to a meeting between Putin and Zelenskiy. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that Moscow did not reject any formats for discussing peace in Ukraine but any meeting of national leaders “must be prepared with utmost thoroughness”.
Putin has said Russia will not tolerate troops from the NATO alliance in Ukraine. He has also shown no sign of backing down from demands for territory, including land not under Russia’s military control, following his summit with Trump last Friday in Alaska.
Neil Melvin, director, International Security at the Royal United Services Institute think-tank, said Russia could drag out the war while trying to deflect US pressure with a protracted peace negotiation.
“I think behind this there’s a struggle going on between Ukraine and the Europeans on one side, and the Russians on the other, not to present themselves to Trump as the obstacle to his peace process,” Melvin said.
“They’re all tiptoeing around Trump” to avoid any blame, he said, adding that on security guarantees, “the problem is that what Trump has said is so vague it’s very hard to take it seriously”.
WASHINGTON: The White House has said that President Donald Trump is in good health, even as people continue to question how his age may affect his performance as the country’s most powerful man.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday that a recent MRI conducted on President Trump was preventative in nature and revealed that he was in good cardiovascular health.
Speaking to reporters at a press briefing at the White House, Leavitt said men of Trump’s age benefited from such screenings.
‘President Trump’s cardiovascular imaging was perfectly normal, no evidence of arterial narrowing, impairing blood flow or abnormalities in the heart or major vessels,’ Leavitt said of the 79-year-old president.
‘The heart chambers are normal in size. The vessel walls appear smooth and healthy, and there are no signs of inflammation or clotting. Overall, his cardiovascular system shows excellent health. His abdominal imaging is also perfectly normal,’ Leavitt said.
Trump underwent a magnetic resonance imaging scan during a recent medical evaluation, but did not disclose the purpose of the procedure, which is not typical for standard check-ups. The lack of details raised questions about whether full information regarding the president’s health is being released in a timely fashion by the White House.
Trump is sensitive about his age and well-being. He personally attacked a female New York Times reporter on social media last week over a story she co-wrote examining the ways that Trump’s age may be affecting his energy levels.
Politics
Tajikistan says five Chinese nationals killed in cross-border attacks from Afghanistan in past week
- China advises companies, personnel to evacuate border area.
- Embassy says Chinese citizens targeted in armed attack on Sunday.
- Another border attack on Friday killed three citizens: embassy.
Five Chinese nationals have been killed and five more injured in Tajikistan in attacks launched from neighbouring Afghanistan over the past week, Tajik authorities and China’s embassy in the Central Asian country said on Monday.
China’s embassy in Dushanbe, the capital, advised Chinese companies and personnel to urgently evacuate the border area.
It said that Chinese citizens had been targeted in an armed attack close to the Afghan border on Sunday. On Friday, it said that another border attack — which Tajik authorities said had involved drones dropping grenades — had killed three Chinese citizens.
Tajikistan, a mountainous former Soviet republic of around 11 million people with a secular government, has tense relations with the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan. It has previously warned of drug smugglers and illicit gold miners working along the remote frontier.
China, which also has a remote, mountainous border with Tajikistan, is a major investor in the country.
There was no immediate response on Monday from the authorities in Afghanistan to the Tajik statement.
But Afghanistan’s foreign ministry last week blamed an unnamed group, which it said was out to create instability, and said it would cooperate with Tajik authorities.
Tajik President Emomali Rahmon’s press service said on Monday that Rahmon had met with the heads of his security agencies to discuss how to strengthen border security.
It said that Rahmon “strongly condemned the illegal and provocative actions of Afghan citizens and ordered that effective measures be taken to resolve the problem and prevent a recurrence of such incidents.”
Tajikistan endured a brutal civil war in the 1990s after independence from Moscow, during which Rahmon initially rose to power. The country is closely aligned with Russia, which maintains a military base there.
Millions of Tajiks, a Persian-speaking nation, live across the border in Afghanistan, with Tajikistan historically having backed Afghan Tajiks opposed to the Taliban.
A man in India’s south brutally killed his estranged wife at a women’s hostel and took a selfie with her dead body, according to NDTV.
The victim, identified as Sripriya, employed at a private firm in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, had separated from her husband, Balamurugam, who was from Tirunelveli.
Police said the suspect arrived at the hostel on Sunday afternoon, concealing a sickle in his clothes, and was seeking to meet her.
They had an argument soon after the couple met, and the feud turned into a violent attack by Balamurugan, who drew the sickle and hacked the woman to death.
Furthermore, the police said he then took a selfie with her body and shared it on his WhatsApp status, accusing her of “betrayal”.
The incident spread panic and chaos in the hostel.
Following the brutal murder, the suspect did not escape from the spot but waited until the police arrived, and he was arrested at the crime scene. The murder weapon was recovered.
The initial investigation suggested that he suspected his wife of being in a relationship with another man.
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