Under New Leadership, OAS Is Determined to Show Progress on Haiti
In an interview, Organization of American States Secretary General Albert Ramdin described finding a solution for Haiti as a 'moral obligation.'
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2 hours ago
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Ukraine calls for talks with Russia next week
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called for talks with Russia next week to push forward ceasefire talks amid growing US pressure on Moscow to reach a deal. Ukraine's Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Rustem Umerov, proposed the a meeting with the Russian side for next week, Zelensky said during his daily address on Saturday. 'The dynamics of the negotiations must improve. We need to do everything possible to achieve a ceasefire. The Russian side must stop avoiding decisions regarding prisoner exchanges, the return of children, and the cessation of killings,' Zelensky said. 'A meeting at the leadership level is essential to genuinely secure peace. Ukraine is ready for such a meeting,' he added. Russian state media outlet TASS reported that a source close to Russia's negotiating team confirmed that they had received Kyiv's proposal for a meeting. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Russian media on Sunday that Russia is 'ready to move quickly' on achieving a peace deal with Ukraine, but its 'main goal' was to achieve its 'objectives.' Russian President Vladimir Putin 'has repeatedly expressed his desire to transition the Ukrainian settlement process into a peaceful track as soon as possible. It's a lengthy process that requires effort, and it's not simple. And most likely, this is increasingly being understood in Washington,' Peskov told Russian state media journalist Pavel Zarubin. The last round of ceasefire talks in Istanbul ended swiftly in early June, with Russian and Ukrainian delegates meeting for barely over an hour before calling it quits. According to Russian state media, Russia put forward maximalist territorial demands as part of their preconditions for a ceasefire. Ukraine has previously refused to consider any territorial concessions in exchange for peace. Zelensky's call for talks arrives just after US President Donald Trump offered Putin a 50-day window to achieve a ceasefire before the US implements high tariffs on Russian goods, alongside 'secondary tariffs' on goods from countries that purchase Russian oil. 'We're going to be doing very severe tariffs if we don't have a deal in 50 days,' Trump said during a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office earlier this week. 'I use trade for a lot of things,' Trump added. 'But it's great for settling wars.' Trump has expressed increasing frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent weeks, even complaining that Putin's assurances about ceasefire progress are 'bullshit.' Yet Western analysts and Ukrainian officials say that the president's 50-day-window is unlikely to deter Putin from accelerating Russia's summer offensive in the coming weeks. Moreover, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has dismissed Trump's threatened tariffs as mere bluster. 'Fifty days – it used to be 24 hours,' Lavrov said. 'It used to be 100 days; we've been through all of this.' Daria Tarasova-Markina contributed reporting.
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2 hours ago
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Russia insists on achieving Ukraine goals despite Trump's ultimatum
Russia is open to peace with Ukraine, but achieving its goals remains a priority, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Sunday, days after U.S. President Donald Trump gave Moscow a 50-day deadline to agree to a ceasefire or face tougher sanctions. Peskov and other Russian officials have repeatedly rejected accusations from Kyiv and its Western partners of stalling peace talks. Meanwhile, Moscow continues to intensify its long-range attacks on Ukrainian cities, launching more drones in a single night than it did during some entire months in 2024, and analysts say the barrages are likely to escalate. Russian President Vladimir Putin 'has repeatedly spoken of his desire to bring the Ukrainian settlement to a peaceful conclusion as soon as possible. This is a long process, it requires effort, and it is not easy,' Peskov told state television in an interview. 'The main thing for us is to achieve our goals," he said. 'Our goals are clear.' The Kremlin has insisted that any peace deal should see Ukraine withdraw from the four regions that Russia illegally annexed in September 2022, but never fully captured. It also wants Ukraine to renounce its bid to join NATO and accept strict limits on its armed forces — demands Kyiv and its Western allies have rejected. In his nightly address on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that his officials have proposed a new round of peace talks this week. Russian state media on Sunday reported that no date has yet been set for the negotiations, but said that Istanbul would likely remain the host city. Truce or sanctions Trump threatened Russia on July 14 with steep tariffs and announced a rejuvenated pipeline for American weapons to reach Ukraine, hardening his stance toward Moscow after months of frustration following unsuccessful negotiations aimed at ending the war. The direct Russia-Ukraine negotiations in Istanbul resulted in several rounds of prisoner exchanges but little else. The U.S. president said that he would implement 'severe tariffs' unless a peace deal is reached within 50 days. He provided few details on how they would be implemented, but suggested they would target Russia's trading partners in an effort to isolate Moscow in the global economy. In addition, Donald Trump said that European allies would buy 'billions and billions' of dollars of U.S. military equipment to be transferred to Ukraine, replenishing the besieged country's supplies of weapons. Included in the plan are Patriot air defense systems, a top priority for Ukraine as it fends off Russian drones and missiles. Doubts were recently raised about Trump's commitment to supply Ukraine when the Pentagon paused shipments over concerns that U.S. stockpiles were running low. Drone strikes Elsewhere, Ukraine's air force said that it shot down 18 of 57 Shahed-type and decoy drones launched by Russia overnight into Sunday, with seven more disappearing from radar. Two women were wounded in Zaporizhzhia, a southern Ukrainian region partly occupied by Russia, when a drone struck their house, according to the regional military administration. Two more civilians were wounded in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv province, after a drone slammed into a residential building, local Ukrainian officials said. Later Sunday, drones struck a leafy square in the center of Sumy, wounding a woman and her 7-year-old son, officials said. The strike also damaged a power line, leaving around 100 households without electricity, according to Serhii Krivosheienko, of the municipal military administration. Meanwhile, Russia's Defense Ministry said that its forces shot down 93 Ukrainian drones targeting Russian territory overnight, including at least 15 that appeared to head for Moscow. At least 13 more drones were downed on the approach to the capital on Sunday, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said. One drone struck a residential building in Zelenograd, on the outskirts of Moscow, damaging an apartment, but caused no casualties, he said. ___ Follow AP's coverage of the war in Ukraine at
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3 hours ago
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Opinion - An opening for Lebanon-Israel peace
A career in American diplomacy in the Middle East is a humbling affair. Whenever you heard well-meaning American officials speak of the birth pangs of a 'new Middle East,' you knew it was time to update the embassy's evacuation plans and re-stock its bunkers. And if anyone in charge spoke of peace in Lebanon of all places, you knew to supplement the evacuation plans with an IQ test for anyone so detached from reality. For the history of American-Lebanese relations is one strewn with inflated expectations and deflated ambition. And not a few corpses. This time, it could be different. I spent almost two weeks in Beirut and Jerusalem on the eve of the Israel-Iran '12-day war.' Compared to my previous 40 years visiting and living in those two cities, I sensed something new: an opportunity for true peace. Not just a cease-fire, not just an armistice, but the potential for a lasting peace agreement between Israel and Lebanon. Some people on both sides countered that I was crazy. But no one made a good case as to why it is impossible. After all, there is an old Lebanese adage, 'Lebanon will not be the first Arab state to make peace with Israel, but it will not be the last.' As the regimes in Syria and Iran took over Lebanese decision-making on such matters from the 1980s until just a few months ago, that concept became something of a joke. Iranian clerics and Syria's Assad family, through their Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, were the ones making life and death decisions of war and peace for all Lebanese. They were happy to stoke war with Israel in south Lebanon while they themselves stayed above the fray. For two decades after the Israel Defense Forces withdrew from south Lebanon in 2000 (verified by the UN), Hezbollah kept the military pressure on Israel to serve these foreign interests, while the Lebanese people bore the burden. Israel and America have changed that equation. Hezbollah as a fighting force has collapsed, the Assad family now graces Moscow not Damascus, and Tehran is in survival mode, unable to defend its own air space, let alone project power. The result is a once in a lifetime diplomatic opportunity for Lebanon and Israel. Timing can be crucial in statecraft and diplomacy; the moment to move toward peace between these two states is now. Lebanon is no longer held hostage to foreign interests and American influence is high. The emotional leap toward peace is daunting for some after so many decades of death and destruction. But the actual issues in play are not. There is no territorial dispute. Israelis seek security, not Lebanese soil. After the Israel Defense Forces withdrawal, Hezbollah distorted and exploited colonial-era border anomalies to keep alive the pretext of 'resistance to occupation,' anomalies which few in Lebanon take seriously today. The real issue is security. Full implementation of the 2024 cease-fire would help, but it may not happen in a political vacuum. The cease-fire calls for the complete disarmament of Hezbollah 'starting in' the area between the border with Israel and the Litani River, an 18-mile wide swath. During the first six months of the agreement, the Lebanese Armed Forces — equipped and trained by American counterparts for years to prepare for this moment — has progressed. But it has neither completed the task in the deep south nor begun elsewhere where Hezbollah maintains arms. If Lebanese officials do not keep their side of the cease-fire and disarm Hezbollah, the Israel Defense Forces will likely do it for them, at a price to the authority of the state and its leaders. It will not just be a humiliation to those leaders, but a tragedy for all concerned if they fail to grasp the opportunity to regain full sovereign control of their state. Yet the dilemma for the Lebanese is in part political. Even with the Iranians out of the equation, fear of reigniting sectarian tension and conflict has an almost paralytic effect on Lebanese decision-making. Having benefited for so long from Hezbollah's arms and state-within-a-state behavior, Lebanese Shia now fear payback, whether from Israelis or other Lebanese sectarian communities with whom there is uneasy coexistence. A context of peace — beyond the absence of war — can be instrumental. Few Lebanese I met could imagine a horizon with Israel beyond a return to the 1949 armistice. Yet that agreement was never suspended — nor did it ever prevent wars in Lebanon or violations of its sovereignty by Israelis, Palestinians, Syrians or Iranians. Others recoiled from a UAE-style normalization. Yet the nature of a peace agreement can be determined by the parties and need not be modeled on the Abraham Accords. A peace agreement will have the solidity to convince the people of south Lebanon that their future is in safe hands — those of an army upholding a peace treaty as durable as those of Egypt and Jordan with Israel. And to be honest, it is the only way to boost confidence and security sufficiently for the return of investments, expatriate deposits, and tourism not just to stabilize south Lebanon, but rebuild a nation suffering one of the worst financial crises of modern times. A moment exists for active, disciplined, persistent American diplomacy, not just to implement the cease-fire but to work toward real, formal peace and solidify the realignment of regional power that President Trump finalized with recent strikes in Iran. American diplomacy can help remove from contention the many regional problems Iran manipulated, not least of all those in Lebanon. That window of opportunity will not remain open indefinitely. David Hale is a Distinguished Diplomatic Fellow at the Middle East Institute. Hale previously served as U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon, and Special Envoy for Middle East Peace. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Solve the daily Crossword
