Ukrainian troops have little hope for peace
|
Ukrainian soldiers on the battlefield express little hope for a diplomatic solution to the war, as US President Donald Trump’s deadline arrived for the Kremlin to make peace and he eyed a possible summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss Moscow’s invasion.
Exasperated that Putin did not heed his calls to stop bombing Ukrainian cities, Trump, almost two weeks ago, moved up his ultimatum to impose additional sanctions on Russia and introduce secondary tariffs targeting countries that buy Russian oil if the Kremlin did not move toward a settlement.
It was unclear what steps Trump intended to take on Friday.
When asked on Thursday whether his deadline would hold, Trump said of Putin: “It’s going to be up to him. We’re going to see what he has to say. It’s going to be up to him. Very disappointed.”
Trump’s efforts to pressure Putin into stopping the fighting have so far delivered no progress.
Russia’s bigger army is slowly advancing deeper into Ukraine at great cost in troops and armour while it relentlessly bombards Ukrainian cities.
Russia and Ukraine stand far apart on their terms for peace.
Ukrainian forces are locked in intense battles along the 1000-kilometre front line that snakes from northeast to southeast Ukraine.
The Pokrovsk area of the eastern Donetsk region is taking the brunt of punishment as Russia seeks to break out into the neighbouring Dnipropetrovsk region.
Ukraine has significant manpower shortages.
Intense fighting is also taking place in Ukraine’s northern Sumy border region, where Ukrainian forces are engaging Russian soldiers to prevent reinforcements from being sent from there to Donetsk.
In the Pokrovsk area of Donetsk, a commander said he believes Moscow isn’t interested in peace.
“It is impossible to negotiate with them. The only option is to defeat them,” Buda, the Spartan Brigade commander, told The Associated Press.
“I would like them to agree and for all this to stop, but Russia will not agree to that. It does not want to negotiate. So the only option is to defeat them,” he said.
In the southern Zaporizhzhia region, a howitzer commander using the call sign Warsaw said troops are determined to thwart Russia’s invasion.
“We are on our land, we have no way out,” he said.
The Kremlin said on Friday that Putin had a phone call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, during which the Russian leader informed Xi about the results of his meeting earlier this week with Trump envoy Steve Witkoff.
Kremlin officials said Xi “expressed support for the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis on a long-term basis”.
Putin is due to visit China next month.
China, along with North Korea and Iran, have provided military support for Russia’s war effort, the US says.
Trump said on Thursday that he would meet with Putin even if the Russian leader would not meet with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
That stoked fears in Europe that Ukraine could be sidelined in efforts to stop the continent’s biggest conflict since World War II.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Friday that Europe should take the lead in efforts to end the conflict.
Orbán said the leaders of Germany and France should go to Moscow “to negotiate on behalf of Europe”.
The White House said it was still working through the details of any potential meetings between Trump and Putin.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said in an assessment Thursday that “Putin remains uninterested in ending his war and is attempting to extract bilateral concessions from the United States without meaningfully engaging in a peace process”.
“Putin continues to believe that time is on Russia’s side and that Russia can outlast Ukraine and the West,” it said.
AP
