President Vladimir Putin updated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on his upcoming talks with US president Donald Trump in Alaska this week, the Kremlin said on Tuesday. North Korea’s state news agency KCNA later reported the two leaders’ call without mentioning the meeting scheduled on Friday between Putin and Trump. Putin expressed appreciation for North Korea’s help in “liberating” the Kursk region in western Russia in the war against Ukraine and “the bravery, heroism and self-sacrificing spirit displayed by service personnel of the Korean People’s Army”, KCNA said, and the two leaders pledged to strengthen cooperation. North Korea has sent more than 10,000 troops to support Russia’s campaign in western Russia in the Ukraine conflict and is believed to be planning another deployment, according to a South Korean intelligence assessment.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Ukraine could not agree to a Russian proposal to give up more of his country’s territory in exchange for a ceasefire because Moscow would use what it gained as a springboard to start a future war. Speaking to journalists in the run-up to the Trump-Putin summit, and a day before a virtual meeting with US and European leaders, Zelenskyy said he believed Putin wanted to dominate his country because he “does not want a sovereign Ukraine”.
Zelenskyy is to hold virtual talks with European leaders and Trump on Wednesday ahead of the Alaska summit, in which they will discuss ways of putting pressure on Russia and preparing for potential peace negotiations, according to Germany. On Tuesday all EU leaders apart from Hungary signed a statement appealing to Trump, saying that any “solution” must protect Ukrainian and European security interests.
Ukraine’s leader, who confirmed he would not be at the Alaska summit, said he wanted Putin to agree to a ceasefire on the current frontlines and for both sides to return all prisoners of war and missing children, before any discussion about territory and the future security of the country. “Any question of territory cannot be separated from security guarantees,” he said.
Zelenskyy also said Friday’s summit would in effect postpone new US sanctions on Russia, which Trump had promised to impose if Putin refused to halt his war, and called the talks a “personal victory” for Putin. “First, he will meet on US territory, which I consider his personal victory. Second, he is coming out of isolation because he is meeting on US territory. Third, with this meeting, he has somehow postponed sanctions,” Zelenskyy said. The Ukrainian president also said he had received a “signal” from US envoy Steve Witkoff that Russia might agree to a ceasefire, without elaborating. “This was the first signal from them,” Zelenskyy said.
The White House said the Alaska summit would be a “a listening exercise for the president”. “Only one party that’s involved in this war is going to be present, and so this is for the president to go and to get, again, a more firm and better understanding of how we can hopefully bring this war to an end,” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said. “This is a listening exercise for the president.”
Zelenskyy said Russia was taking heavy casualties of about 1,000 a day, with 500 killed and 500 wounded on Monday, because it relies heavily on infantry assaults to break Kyiv’s defensive lines. Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s casualties on the same day were much smaller – a total of 340 – “18 killed and 243 wounded, with 79 missing in action”.
Russian forces have made a sudden thrust into eastern Ukraine near the coal mining town of Dobropillia, a move that may be an attempt to increase the pressure on Kyiv to give up land ahead of the summit with Trump. Ukraine’s authoritative DeepState war map showed on Tuesday that Russian forces had advanced by at least 10 km (six miles) north in two prongs in recent days, part of their drive to take full control of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. Zelenskyy warned Russia was planning new ground assaults on at least three different areas of the front line.
Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency said on Tuesday its drones hit a building containing long-range Shahed attack drones in Russia’s Tatarstan region, 1,300 km (800 miles) from Ukraine. The SBU said this was the second such strike in four days, and that videos filmed by local residents there confirmed the facility had been hit. It was not possible to independently confirm the report.
UN secretary-general António Guterres warned Russia on Tuesday that he has significant concerns about patterns of certain forms of sexual violence by their armed and security forces, according to a report seen by Reuters. Guterres wrote that he was “gravely concerned about credible information of violations by Russian armed and security forces and affiliated armed groups” primarily against Ukrainian prisoners of war, in 50 official and 22 unofficial detention facilities in Ukraine and Russia.
