Ukraine<\/a>, had not changed.<\/p>\nTrump\u2019s latest remarks were seen as a modest win for Zelenskyy. The US leader has repeatedly wavered on key aspects of the war, including whether a ceasefire should come before broader peace talks, and at times has appeared to consider Putin\u2019s demands for Ukraine to give up more land.<\/p>\n
Most recently, Trump had dashed Ukraine\u2019s hope he would send Tomahawk missiles to Kyiv after a phone call with Putin.<\/p>\n
Zelenskyy and his senior officials have previously acknowledged that Ukraine is unlikely to regain all of its occupied territory through military means, and they have privately told Washington and European partners they would be open to freezing the frontlines. Still, Zelenskyy\u2019s public endorsement of such a plan marks a notable shift from his earlier stance, when Kyiv vowed to reclaim all land lost to Russia.<\/p>\n
Russia, meanwhile, has made clear that its maximalist position has not changed, appearing to reject Trump\u2019s fresh proposal to freeze battle lines.<\/p>\n
Sergei Lavrov, Russia\u2019s longtime foreign minister, said on Tuesday: \u201cWashington now starts to say that we must stop [the conflict] immediately, that we should no longer discuss anything, that we should stop and let history judge.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moscow has consistently rejected extended ceasefire proposals, arguing they would give Ukraine time to rearm and regroup at a time when Russian forces are making battlefield advances.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou see, simply stopping would mean forgetting the root causes of this conflict,\u201d Lavrov said. Those \u201croot causes\u201d, according to Moscow, refer to its sweeping demands that would undermine Ukraine\u2019s sovereignty \u2013 including full control over the Donbas region, limits on Kyiv\u2019s armed forces and a say in its domestic affairs.<\/p>\n
Russia reportedly reiterated its previous terms for a peace deal with Ukraine in a private communique sent to Washington over the weekend, and again during Monday\u2019s phone call between the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and his Russian counterpart, Lavrov.<\/p>\n
The Kremlin\u2019s maximalist stance has cast doubt over the prospects of a potential Trump-Putin summit in Budapest, an idea touted by the US leader last week after he called Putin.<\/p>\n
Trump now appears wary of repeating the experience of the Alaska summit with Putin this year, which ended abruptly after the Russian leader refused to offer concessions.<\/p>\n
Speaking at the White House on Tuesday, Trump said: \u201cI don\u2019t want to have a wasted meeting. I don\u2019t want to waste time until I see what happens.\u201d Still, he insisted both Putin and Zelenskyy wanted the war to end.<\/p>\n
With uncertainty hanging over any renewed peace efforts, Moscow launched its largest aerial bombardment of Ukraine in two weeks, with waves of missiles and drones striking Kyiv and other cities.<\/p>\n
Nationwide, Russian attacks killed at least six people, including a six-month-old baby, a 12-year-old girl and a woman, officials said. In Kharkiv, a drone strike hit a kindergarten, killing one man and injuring seven others.<\/p>\n
Putin on Wednesday directed drills of the country\u2019s strategic nuclear forces that featured practice missile launches. The chief of the army general staff, Gen Valery Gerasimov, reported to Putin via video link that the drills were intended to simulate \u201cprocedures for authorising the use of nuclear weapons\u201d.<\/p>\n
While the Kremlin insisted the exercises were \u201croutine\u201d, they came amid Moscow\u2019s continued nuclear posturing. Russia earlier lowered the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, aimed at signalling the Kremlin\u2019s readiness to respond aggressively to perceived threats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Volodymyr Zelenskyy has voiced support for Donald Trump\u2019s proposal for Ukraine and Russia to freeze the war at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-218819","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}