US President Donald Trump on Friday urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to spare Ukrainian troops that Russia is pushing out of its Kursk region, an appeal Putin said he would honor if they surrendered.
Trump wrote on social media after his envoy, Steve Witkoff, held a lengthy meeting with Putin on Thursday night in Moscow that Trump described as “very good and productive.”
“There is a very good chance that this horrible, bloody war can finally come to an end,” Trump said, referring to a US ceasefire proposal that Ukraine accepted this week and was under consideration by Russia.
Photo: AFP
The US president said Russia’s military had “completely surrounded” thousands of Ukrainian troops in Kursk who were “in a very bad and vulnerable position.”
“I have strongly requested to President Putin that their lives be spared,” he wrote. “This would be a horrible massacre, one not seen since World War II. God bless them all!!!”
Military analysts have said Ukrainian forces in Kursk are almost cut off after rapidly losing ground in what had been their only foothold in Russian territory.
Putin has accused Ukrainian troops of carrying out crimes against civilians in Kursk, something Kyiv denies.
However, the Russian president said he understood the call by Trump to take humanitarian considerations into account.
“In this regard, I would like to emphasize that if [the Ukrainian troops] lay down their arms and surrender, they will be guaranteed life and decent treatment in accordance with international law and the laws of the Russian Federation,” Putin said.
The deputy chairman of Russia’s security council, former president Dmitry Medvedev, wrote on social media that if Ukrainian troops “refuse to lay down their arms, they will all be methodically and mercilessly destroyed.”
However, Kyiv’s military said there was no threat of encirclement, and its troops were pulling back to better positions.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at a G7 meeting in La Malbaie, Canada, said Witkoff was returning to the US from Moscow and there might be discussions about Ukraine over the weekend.
“But we certainly feel like we’re at least some steps closer to ending this war and bringing peace, but it’s still a long journey,” he told reporters.
Kursk became a key theater of the war in August last year when Ukraine turned the tables by grabbing a piece of Russia’s own territory, a potential bargaining chip in future negotiations.
Seven months on, Kursk is once again in the spotlight, as Russian forces attempt to expel the Ukrainians completely and the US urges Russia to agree to a ceasefire in the wider war.
Moscow on Friday said its forces had recaptured another Kursk village, but Ukraine’s general staff said the battlefield situation was largely unchanged.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
RSS