US president earlier drew criticism after saying Kyiv ‘should have never started’ war; Trump predicts Ukraine will soon sign minerals deal with US. What we know on day 1,095
Donald Trump has reversed course to admit that Russia did in fact invade Ukraine. In an interview with Fox News radio on Friday, he acknowledged Russia had invaded Ukraine on the order of Vladimir Putin, but said Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, and then-US president Joe Biden, should have averted it. “They shouldn’t have let him attack.” The US president had said on Tuesday that Ukraine “should have never started” the war three years ago, prompting criticism domestically and internationally.
Trump predicted a minerals agreement with Ukraine would be “signed hopefully in the next fairly short period of time”. The White House national security adviser, Mike Waltz, said on Friday that Zelenskyy was expected to sign a deal imminently. Zelenskyy said on Friday that Ukrainian and US teams were working on a draft agreement. “I am hoping for … a fair result,” he said. Zelenskyy on Wednesday rejected US demands for $500bn in mineral wealth from Ukraine to repay Washington for wartime aid, saying the US had supplied nowhere near that sum so far and had offered no specific security guarantees.
US negotiators on the minerals deal threatened to cut Ukraine’s access to Starlink, Reuters reported, citing three sources familiar with the matter. Starlink provides crucial internet acces to Ukraine and its military. The issue was raised again on Thursday during meetings between Keith Kellogg, the US special Ukraine envoy, and Zelenskyy, one of the sources said. During the meeting, Ukraine was told it faced losing Starlink if it did not reach a minerals deal, said the source, who requested anonymity to discuss closed negotiations.
Zelenskyy said after a flurry of phone calls with leaders of allied countries that Europe “must and can do much more to ensure that peace is actually achieved” in Ukraine. “It is possible” to achieve an end to the war with Russia since Ukraine and its partners in Europe have “clear proposals”, he added. “On this basis we can ensure the implementation of a European strategy, and it is important that this is done together with America.”
The US has proposed a UN resolution on the war that omits any mention of Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia, diplomatic sources told Agence France-Presse. It appeared to rival a draft resolution produced by Ukraine and its European allies that stresses the need to redouble diplomatic efforts to end the war this year. Washington’s text on Friday called for a “swift end to the conflict” without mentioning Kyiv’s territorial integrity, and was welcomed by Moscow’s ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, as “a good move”.
A Russian drone attack killed a rail worker at a crossing outside Kyiv and falling drone fragments struck a building in the capital, local authorities said on Saturday. Kyiv region officials said the rail worker was killed in Boryspil district to the east. Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said drone fragments fell on private residences in the Solomyanskyi district to the west, triggering a fire and smashing windows in a nearby building. There were no casualties. Air raid alerts were in effect in Kyiv for about three hours.
In Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, Russian forces attacked the town of Huliaipole with a guided bomb, injuring three people, the regional governor said. One person died on Thursday in a attack on a village west of Huliaipole. The accounts of military activity could not be independently verified.
Kellogg has praised Zelenskyy as “the embattled and courageous leader of a nation at war”, striking a dramatically different tone from Donald Trump, who has falsely called Ukraine’s president a “dictator”, reports Luke Harding in Kyiv. Kellogg left Kyiv on Friday after a three-day visit. Posting on social media, he said he had engaged in “extensive and positive discussions” with Zelenskyy and his “talented national security team”.
Keir Starmer will not risk riling Trump by challenging him over his attack on Zelenskyy when the pair finally meet next week, as the British prime minister seeks to cool an escalating transatlantic row, reports Kiran Stacey. Starmer will fly to the US for what could be a defining moment for his leadership, as Europe and the US trade accusations and insults about the origins of the war in Ukraine and the best way to end it. Trump added to the tensions on Friday when he accused Starmer and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, of having done nothing to help end the war.
Russia could agree to using $300bn of sovereign assets frozen in Europe for reconstruction in Ukraine but will insist that part of the money is spent on the fifth of the country that Moscow’s forces control, three sources told Reuters. While Russia-US discussions are at a very early stage, one idea being floated in Moscow is that Russia could propose using a large chunk of the frozen reserves as part of a possible peace deal, according to the sources with knowledge of the matter. Russia and the US held their first face-to-face talks on ending the Ukraine war on 18 February in Saudi Arabia.
A Polish court has handed an eight-year prison term to a Ukrainian man convicted of planning acts of sabotage and arson on Russia’s behalf. The court in the south-western city of Wroclaw on Friday found the 51-year-old man, identified only as Serhyi S, guilty of being part of a criminal ring and of preparing to set fire to various structures in the city. Polish state security officers arrested him in January 2024. Authorities said he was preparing to set fire to a factory. He denied intending sabotage but admitted to accepting orders to commit arson in return for money. Four other people have been charged in the case.
By Theguardian