How Trump’s Russia-Ukraine peace plan blindsided Europe

The United States has proposed a resolution that would mean Kyiv ceding territory to Moscow, a move that has been met with anger and disbelief in Europe

Ministers in the British government had been warned something big was coming. On Wednesday morning, as John Healey, the defence secretary, prepared to address dozens of his counterparts at Nato headquarters in Brussels, US officials told him President Trump would be speaking later in the day.

As his team theorised about what he could say — checking Trump’s Truth Social platform for any sudden outbursts — none predicated the storm of controversy that came next.

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‘I feel angry and betrayed’: Ukrainians react to Donald Trump’s call to Putin

The first thing Olena Litovchenko thought, when she read the news of Donald Trump’s phone call to Vladimir Putin on Wednesday evening, was that it may finally be time for her to leave Ukraine.

“It feels like Ukraine is being screwed,” said Litovchenko, a personal trainer who was born in Kyiv and has stayed in the city throughout the three years of full-scale war. Believing the prospect of a Ukrainian defeat to be closer after Trump’s call and statements on Wednesday, she thought for the first time that she perhaps ought to leave, for the sake of her daughter. “But then, leave and go where? Europe is most certainly going to be next. Go to Australia? I don’t know. I feel angry and betrayed.”


Hegseth softens stance on Ukraine’s potential NATO membership

BRUSSELS — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday walked back a key piece of his dramatic remarks here at NATO headquarters a day prior, leaving open the possibility of Ukraine joining the military alliance after previously saying the United States does not believe membership for Kyiv is a “realistic outcome” in any peace deal with Russia.

Hegseth’s clarification appeared designed to assuage the backlash, in Washington and in Europe, ignited by his remarks hours before President Donald Trump announced his administration had jump-started negotiations to end the three-year war.

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This is Putin and Trump’s world now

America is no longer interested in underwriting Ukrainian and European security and it’s time for Britain to face this reality

Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.

Since the invasion, that has been an American mantra – the promise not to indulge in Russia’s game of carving up third countries between the two superpowers.
Not any more.

In what Donald Trump called a “highly productive” phone call, he and Vladimir Putin “agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately”.

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Hegseth calls Ukraine’s peace goals ‘unrealistic’ in meeting with allies

The U.S. defense secretary said any deal to end the fighting must come with international oversight of the boundary between Russian and Ukrainian forces — and no NATO membership for Kyiv.

BRUSSELS — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday called Ukraine’s desire to recover all of the territory it has lost to Russia since 2014 an “unrealistic objective,” pledging that the Trump administration will pursue peace negotiations to end the two nations’ war while pointedly shaping them at the outset.

“Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more pain and suffering,” Hegseth said. Any peace deal, Hegseth added, must come with “robust security guarantees,” international oversight of the boundary between Russian and Ukrainian forces, and no NATO membership for Ukraine — something that would require other countries to defend Ukrainian territory in any future conflict.

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Trump says he has spoken to Putin and agreed to negotiate Ukraine ceasefire

Donald Trump has said that he and Vladimir Putin have spoken directly and agreed to begin negotiations to broker a ceasefire to the war in Ukraine.

In a social media post, Trump said that held a “lengthy and highly productive phone call” with Putin and that they agreed to “have our respective teams start negotiations immediately”.

He also said that he and Putin had agreed to visit each other’s nations.

“As we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine,” Trump wrote on TruthSocial. “President Putin even used my very strong Campaign motto of, ‘COMMON SENSE.’ We both believe very strongly in it. We agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other’s Nations.”

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‘Be Cruel’: Inside Russia’s Torture System for Ukrainian POWs

In the weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, the head of St. Petersburg’s prisons delivered a direct message to an elite unit of guards tasked with overseeing the influx of prisoners from the war: “Be cruel, don’t pity them.”

Maj. Gen. Igor Potapenko had gathered his service’s special forces at the regional headquarters to tell them about a new system that had been designed for captured Ukrainians.

Normal rules wouldn’t apply, he told them. There would be no restrictions against violence. The body cameras that were mandatory elsewhere in Russia’s prison system would be gone.

The guards would rotate through Russia’s prison system, serving a month at a time in prisons before other teams took their place. Across the country, other units—from Buryatia, Moscow, Pskov and elsewhere—received similar instructions.

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They welcomed Canada’s open arms. Now Ukrainians worry about future as Russian invasion’s 3rd-year mark nears

Nearly three years since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, some Ukrainians in southwestern Ontario say they’re feeling uneasy about the future and whether they’ll be able to remain in Canada as the war continues.

Close to 300,000 Ukrainians arrived in Canada after Feb. 24, 2022. Ottawa offered them temporary resident status through the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel (CUAET) program, until March 31.


But …

Zelensky Will Enter Peace Talks on Condition U.S. Agrees Total Support

Ukraine will enter into peace talks with President Putin as long as the U.S. and Europe give “more security guarantees” not to “abandon” the country in future, its President says.

President Volodymyr Zelensky told an interviewer he would agree to sit down to “any form of discussion” with Russia as long as his international partners first guaranteed their long-term support to deter future Russian aggression. This would be essential to prevent the Ukraine war simply becoming a frozen conflict that Russia could re-start when convenient to Moscow in the future, as it had been between 2014-2022, he said.

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How the Kim Philby of Kyiv infiltrated Team Zelensky

At a fashionable Moscow address a few blocks from the Russian prime minister’s office stands a gated office complex.

It is on the north bank of the Moskva, just across the river from Stalin’s towering Hotel Ukraine and a few minutes from one of Moscow’s best known Ukrainian restaurants. Those aren’t the only Ukrainian connections in the area.

Inside the complex at 12 Krasnopresnenskaya is the headquarters, secret until now, of an international spy network that infiltrated the highest ranks of President Zelensky’s government.

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‘Trump peace plan for Ukraine’ is ‘leaked’: Ceasefire by Easter, talks with Putin and an end to Zelensky’s NATO dream

US president Donald Trump will try to force Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to agree to a ceasefire with Russia by Easter under a peace plan, according to a report.

Trump, who has long claimed that he would be able to negotiate an ending to the brutal invasion of Ukraine in a single day, is said to be working to end the war within 100 days.

The unconfirmed plans, reported by Ukrainian outlet Strana, have been doing the rounds in ‘political and diplomatic circles’ in Ukraine, and will include a ceasefire by April 20 that would freeze Russia’s steady advance, a ban on Ukraine from joining NATO, and a demand for Kyiv to accept Russian sovereignty on annexed land.

h/t XC

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Zelensky has foul-mouthed on-air meltdown over Tucker Carlson’s claims against him

Volodymyr Zelensky unleashed a foul-mouthed verbal assault on Tucker Carlson who recently accused the Ukrainian President of ruling Ukraine as a dictator.

Zelensky did not hold back while furiously dismissing the political commentator’s claims, which included allegations of silencing Russian-speaking citizens and going so far as murdering political opponents.

Appearing on Piers Morgan Uncensored, Zelensky called Carlson a mouthpiece for Russian President Vladimir Putin, with his frustration boiling over as he delivered an impassioned response, telling the controversial broadcaster to ‘stop working for Putin, stop licking his a**.’

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Drone attack kills youngest British fighter in Ukraine minutes into first mission

A Russian drone attack killed a British teenager on his first combat mission after joining the Ukrainian army.

James Wilton, who had recently turned 18 and was from Huddersfield, is the youngest Briton to have died defending Ukraine from Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

While walking across a field with a group of international fighters delivering supplies to the front line on July 23 last year, he was spotted and chased by three unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

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Scandal: Nearly $100 Billion in Ukraine Aid Is Missing

Foreign aid to Ukraine has become a heated debate with Democrats — and a surprising number of Republicans — insisting that it’s essential for bolstering Ukraine’s defenses against Russia. Joe Biden even went so far as to suggest that Republican resistance to additional aid played a role in the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

All forever wars morph into slush funds with billions siphoned.

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Patriot missiles from Israel sent to Ukraine through US, official says

About 90 Patriot missiles from Israel are being sent to Ukraine in a transfer facilitated by the United States, according to a US defense official.

The missiles had been in storage in Israel, which operated Patriot air defense systems for more than 30 years before retiring them in April. Discussions about transferring the missiles from Israel to Ukraine have been ongoing since last summer, when Biden administration officials were hopeful the effort might allow the unused missiles to be sent to Kyiv to aid in its war with Russia.

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‘The clock is ticking’ for 106,000 displaced Ukrainians in Canada

Iuliia Slabinska sent her son to study in Canada in 2021, months before Russia launched a war against their homeland, Ukraine. He was just turning 16.

In August 2022 — six months after the Russian invasion — she, her husband and younger daughter arrived in Langley, B.C., under the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel program. The CUAET program offered temporary refuge to almost 300,000 displaced Ukrainians with work and study permits, before it shut down last March.

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Suspected Sabotage of Deep-Sea Cable Triggers First NATO-Led Response

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization mounted its first coordinated response to the suspected sabotage campaign against critical infrastructure, after another underwater data cable was severed in the Baltic Sea.

NATO vessels raced to the site of a damaged fiber-optic cable in Swedish waters on Sunday morning, where a trio of ships carrying Russian cargo, including one recently sanctioned by the U.S., were nearby. All three vessels are now being investigated as part of a probe into suspected sabotage of the fiber optic cable, according to several European officials. One ship was detained Sunday.

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