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UPI
3 days ago
- Politics
- UPI
Ukraine's Zelensky seeks cease-fire meeting next week
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday called for a high-level meeting with Russian officials next week to discuss ending the war with Russia. File Photo by Turkish Presidential Press Office/EPA-EFE July 19 (UPI) -- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wants cease-fire negotiations with Russia next week and said he would be willing to meet directly and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Ukrainian officials have proposed cease-fire negotiations next week, and Russian officials confirmed their receipt of the proposal for a high-level talk, CNN reported on Saturday. "We need to do everything possible to achieve a cease-fire," Zelensky told Ukrainians Saturday during his daily address. "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," he added. "Ukraine is ready for such a meeting." That meeting could be between Putin and Zelensky, the BBC reported. Ukraine's call for cease-fire negotiations comes after Russia attacked 10 Ukrainian cities and other locales during the overnight hours from Friday into Saturday. Russia launched more than 340 explosive drones and decoys and 35 ballistic missiles at targets in Ukraine, many of which the Ukrainian military said it intercepted. President Donald Trump on Sunday announced the United States will sell Patriot missile-defense systems to NATO, which will provide them to Ukraine. Trump also threatened to impose 100% tariffs on Russia if Putin does not end its war against Ukraine within 50 days. Russian and Ukrainian officials last met in Istanbul in early June, but that meeting ended quickly with no cease-fire agreement.
UPI
05-07-2025
- Politics
- UPI
3 Turkish mayors arrested, accused of corruption
Three Turkish mayors have been arrested as part of what some say is a crackdown on political opponents of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. File Photo by the Turkish Presidential Press Office/EPA-EFE July 5 (UPI) -- Three Turkish mayors who are members of a political party that opposes Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan were arrested on corruption charges Saturday morning. The three mayors are Nuhittin Bocek, Abdurrahman Tutdere and Zeydan Karlar and are members of Turkey's Republican People's Party, Politico reported. Karalar is the mayor of Adana, while Tutdere is the mayor of Adiyaman and Bocek the mayor of Antalya. Republican People's Party Chairman Burhanettin Bulut said the arrests are politically motivated, Euronews reported. "Those who use the judiciary as a stick for political revenge do not care about the law, but about protecting their own power," Balu said in a social media post. "We will never submit to this dirty system that strikes a blow to the will of the nation." Police detained Tutdere at his house in Ankara in the morning and then took him to Istanbul. Reports do not say if Karalar or Bocek also were taken to Istanbul. The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office made the arrests as part of its investigation into an alleged criminal organization operating in the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. Erdogan has supported the investigation and similar arrests, which he says are due to political corruption by the respective mayors and others. Hundreds have been detained during recent raids in several of Turkey's largest cities. The first raids were carried out in Istanbul and spread to locations in Izmir Province and other cities.
Japan Today
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Japan Today
Peace breakthrough unlikely as Putin declines to meet Zelenskyy in Turkey
Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey, May 15, 2025. Mustafa Kamaci/Turkish Presidential Press Office/Handout via REUTERS By Tom Balmforth, Vladimir Soldatkin and Huseyin Hayatsever Russia's Vladimir Putin spurned a challenge to meet face-to-face with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Turkey on Thursday, instead sending a second-tier delegation to planned peace talks, while Ukraine's president said his defense minister would head up Kyiv's team. They will be the first direct talks between the sides since March 2022, but hopes of a major breakthrough were further dented by U.S. President Donald Trump who said there would be no movement without a meeting between himself and Putin. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio later echoed that view, telling reporters in the Turkish resort of Antalya that Washington "didn't have high expectations" for the Ukraine talks in Istanbul. Zelenskyy said Putin's decision not to attend but to send what he called a "decorative" line-up showed the Russian leader was not serious about ending the war. Russia accused Ukraine of trying "to put on a show" around the talks. It was not clear when the talks would actually begin. "We can't be running around the world looking for Putin," Zelenskyy said after meeting Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara. "I feel disrespect from Russia. No meeting time, no agenda, no high-level delegation - this is personal disrespect. To Erdogan, to Trump," Zelenskyy told reporters. Zelenskyy said he himself would also not now go to Istanbul and that his team's mandate was to discuss a ceasefire. Ukraine backs an immediate, unconditional 30-day ceasefire but Putin has said he first wants to start talks at which the details of such a truce could be discussed. More than three years after its full-scale invasion, Russia has the advantage on the battlefield and says Ukraine could use a pause in the war to call up extra troops and acquire more Western weapons. Both Trump and Putin have said for months they are keen to meet each other, but no date has been set. Trump, after piling heavy pressure on Ukraine and clashing with Zelenskyy in the Oval Office in February, has lately expressed growing impatience that Putin may be "tapping me along". "Nothing's going to happen until Putin and I get together," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. Rubio, speaking in the Turkish resort of Antalya, later echoed that: "It's my assessment that I don't think we're going to have a breakthrough here until the President (Trump) and President Putin interact directly on this topic." Referring to the current state of the talks as a "logjam", Rubio said he would travel to Istanbul to meet with Turkey's foreign minister and with Ukraine's delegation on Friday. DIPLOMATIC CONFUSION The diplomatic disarray was symptomatic of the deep hostility between the warring sides and the unpredictability injected by Trump, whose interventions since returning to the White House in January have often provoked dismay from Ukraine and its European allies. While Zelenskyy waited in vain for Putin in Ankara, the Russian negotiating team sat in Istanbul with no one to talk to on the Ukrainian side. Some 200 reporters milled around near the Dolmabahce Palace on the Bosphorus that the Russians had specified as the talks venue. The enemies have been wrestling for months over the logistics of ceasefires and peace talks while trying to show Trump they are serious about trying to end what he calls "this stupid war". Hundreds of thousands have been killed and wounded on both sides in the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War Two. Washington has threatened repeatedly to abandon its mediation efforts unless there is clear progress. Asked if Putin would join talks at some future point, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "What kind of participation will be required further, at what level, it is too early to say now." Russia said on Thursday its forces had captured two more settlements in Ukraine's Donetsk region. A spokeswoman for Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pointedly reminded reporters of his comment last year that Ukraine was "getting smaller" in the absence of an agreement to stop fighting. FIRST TALKS FOR THREE YEARS Once they start, the talks will have to address a chasm between the two sides over a host of issues. The Russian delegation is headed by presidential adviser Vladimir Medinsky, a former culture minister who has overseen the rewriting of history textbooks to reflect Moscow's narrative on the war. It includes a deputy defense minister, a deputy foreign minister and the head of military intelligence. Key members of the team, including its leader, were also involved in the last direct peace talks in Istanbul in March 2022 - and Medinsky confirmed on Thursday that Russia saw the new talks as a resumption of those interrupted three years ago. "The task of direct negotiations with the Ukrainian side is sooner or later to achieve long-term peace by eliminating the basic root causes of the conflict," said Medinsky. The terms under discussion in 2022, when Ukraine was still reeling from Russia's initial invasion, would be deeply disadvantageous to Kyiv. They included a demand by Moscow for deep cuts to the size of Ukraine's military. With Russian forces now in control of close to a fifth of Ukraine, Putin has held fast to his longstanding demands for Kyiv to cede territory, abandon its NATO membership ambitions and become a neutral country. Ukraine rejects these terms as tantamount to capitulation, and is seeking guarantees of its future security from world powers, especially the United States. © Thomson Reuters 2025.
