Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that the US was making “sincere efforts” to halt the war in Ukraine and suggested Moscow and Washington could agree a nuclear arms deal as part of a wider effort to strengthen peace during his meeting with Donald Trump in Alaska on Friday. Speaking to his most senior ministers and security officials in televised comments he said that the US was “making, in my opinion, quite energetic and sincere efforts to stop the hostilities, stop the crisis and reach agreements that are of interest to all parties involved in this conflict”.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov however warned that it would be a big mistake to predict the outcome of the upcoming summit, the Interfax news agency reported. Peskov said there were no plans to sign any documents after the summit in the Alaska city of Anchorage, Interfax said.
Trump said he believed Putin was ready to make a deal on Ukraine, but his suggestion the Russian leader and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy could “divvy things up” was likely to have caused alarm some in Kyiv. The US president implied there was a 75% chance of the Alaska meeting succeeding, and that the threat of economic sanctions may have made Putin more willing to seek an end to the war. Trump insisted that he would not let Putin get the better of him in Friday’s meeting, telling reporters: “I am president, and he’s not going to mess around with me. “I’ll know within the first two minutes, three minutes, four minutes or five minutes … whether or not we’re going to have a good meeting or a bad meeting.
The Russian president will set out to woo his US counterpart and dangle financial incentives for siding with Moscow over Ukraine at their summit on Friday, Pjotr Sauer reports. On Thursday, Putin’s adviser Yuri Ushakov said the leaders would discuss the “huge untapped potential” in Russia-US economic relations. “An exchange of views is expected on further developing bilateral cooperation, including in the trade and economic sphere,” Ushakov said. “This cooperation has huge and, unfortunately so far, untapped potential.”
European leaders praised Trump on Thursday for agreeing to allow US military support for a force they are mustering to police any future peace in Ukraine – a move that vastly improves the chances of success for an operation that could prove essential for the country’s security. The leaders said Trump offered American military backup for the European “reassurance force” during a call they held with him ahead of his planned summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday. They did not say what the assistance might involve, and Trump himself has not publicly confirmed any support.
UK prime minister Keir Starmer welcomed Zelenskyy to London on Thursday in a show of British support for Ukraine ahead of the Alaska summit. The two embraced warmly outside Starmer’s offices at 10 Downing Street without making any comments. Around an hour later, Starmer walked Zelenskyy back to his waiting car, and the two leaders shared another embrace as the Ukrainian president departed.
Donetsk governor Vadym Filashkin said that Ukrainian troops had stabilised the battlefield in an area of eastern Ukraine where Russian forces had made a sudden push this week to pierce Ukrainian defences. Ukraine said small groups of Russian infantry had thrust 10 kilometres (six miles) toward its main defensive line near the town of Dobropillia, raising fears of a wider breakthrough that would further threaten key cities. The advance appeared aimed at pressuring Kyiv to give up land in pursuit of peace three-and-a-half years into Russia’s invasion of its neighbour. “The situation in the Dobropillia sector has stabilised,” Filashkin wrote the Telegram messaging app. “Thanks to the heroic efforts of our Defence Forces, the frontline is reliably holding.”
However Ukraine on Thursday ordered more evacuations in the east, from a town close to where Moscow made its breakthrough. “We began the mandatory evacuation of families with children from the town of Druzhkivka,” said Donetsk regional military administration head Vadym Filashkin, adding that four more villages near the town were also ordered to evacuate. He added that 1,879 children were remaining in the settlements. Earlier on Thursday, Russian forces claimed to have captured the village of Iskra and the small town of Shcherbynivka in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, which the Kremlin claimed to have annexed in September 2022.
The US Agency for International Development did not monitor the uses of 5,175 Starlink terminals sent to Ukraine, with nearly half of the operational units ending up in areas fully or partly held by Moscow, according to a report by the agency’s internal watchdog. USAID’s inspector general found that the agency failed to keep track of the terminals of Elon Musk’s satellite internet service because it had accepted a higher risk of misuse due to “the complex wartime environment” and Ukraine’s urgent need for them. The report did not say how those terminals ended up in those areas, who had them or the purposes for which they were used.
Russia and Ukraine exchanged 84 prisoners each on Thursday, both sides said, the latest in a series of swaps that has seen hundreds of PoW released so far this year. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on social media that among the exchanged prisoners were “both military personnel and civilians”, some of whom had been “held by the Russians since 2014, 2016, and 2017”. He said “defenders of Mariupol” were also part of the swap, referring to a Ukrainian port city that fell to Russian forces in 2022 after a nearly three-month siege.
Russia has put Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on its list of “undesirable” organisations, effectively banning the media watchdog from operating in the country, Moscow’s justice ministry register showed on Thursday. Under a controversial law passed in 2015, but rarely used before its offensive on Ukraine, Russia can ban overseas organisations deemed a threat to national security.
Russian State Duma chair Vyacheslav Volodin met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during an official visit to Pyongyang, the Russian parliament said on Thursday. Volodin, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, conveyed greetings from the Russian leader and thanked Kim for North Korea’s support of Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine.
