Ukraine | Pakistan

Russian forces have made a sudden thrust into eastern Ukraine near the coal mining town of Dobropillia, a move that may be an attempt to increase the pressure on Kyiv to give up land as the United States and Russian presidents prepare to meet. Ukraine’s authoritative DeepState war map showed on Tuesday that Russian forces had advanced by at least 10 kilometres north in two prongs in recent days, part of their drive to take full control of Ukraine’s Donetsk region. The advance is one of the most dramatic in the last year, although military analysts said the Russians were using small groups of soldiers to try to establish footholds and that it was uncertain if they could maintain their positions in the face of a Ukrainian pushback. DeepState said the Russians had surged forward near three villages on a section of the frontline associated with the Ukrainian towns of Kostyantynivka and Pokrovsk, which Moscow is trying to encircle by exploiting Kyiv’s lack of manpower. “The situation is quite chaotic, as the enemy...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday warned that “decisions without Ukraine” would not bring peace and ruled out ceding territory to Russia. “Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier,” he said on social media, as United States President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin prepare to hold a summit next week in Alaska to discuss peace in Ukraine. “Any decisions against us, any decisions without Ukraine, are also decisions against peace. They will achieve nothing,” he said, adding that the war “cannot be ended without us, without Ukraine”. Zelensky said Ukraine was “ready for real decisions that can bring peace” but said it should be a “dignified peace”, without giving details. Later, Zelensky wrote in a post on X that he exchanged views on a “diplomatic solution” to the conflict with French President Emmanuel Macron. Expressing gratitude for France’s support, the Ukrainian leader wrote: “Ukraine, France, and all our partners are ready to work as productively as possible fo...

A top aide to United States President Donald Trump on Sunday accused India of effectively financing Russia’s war in Ukraine by purchasing oil from Moscow, after the US leader escalated pressure on New Delhi to stop buying Russian oil. “What he (Trump) said very clearly is that it is not acceptable for India to continue financing this war by purchasing the oil from Russia,” said Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff at the White House and one of Trump’s most influential aides. Miller’s criticism was some of the strongest yet by the Trump administration about one of the United States’ major partners in the Indo-Pacific. “People will be shocked to learn that India is basically tied with China in purchasing Russian oil. That’s an astonishing fact,” Miller said on Fox News programme ‘Sunday Morning Futures’. The Indian Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Indian government sources told Reuters on Saturday that New Delhi will keep purchasing oil from Moscow despite US threats....

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan yesterday reiterated its firm support for a peaceful resolution of Ukraine conflict.

United States President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the US would start imposing tariffs and other measures on Russia “10 days from today” if Moscow showed no progress toward ending its more than three-year-long war in Ukraine. Trump first announced on Monday that he was shortening the initial 50-day deadline he set a month ago for action from Moscow, and mentioned a new deadline of 10 to 12 days. On Tuesday, he told reporters he had not heard a response from Russia. Speaking aboard Air Force One, Trump said he was not worried about the potential impact of Russian sanctions on the oil market or prices, vowing to boost domestic oil production to offset any impact. “I don’t know if it’s going to affect Russia, because [Russian President Vladimir Putin] wants to, obviously, probably keep the war going,” Trump said. “But we’re going to put on tariffs and the various things that you put on.” The US president, who has in the past spoken about having a good relationship with Putin, has grown increasingly frustr...

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday that Kyiv has sent Moscow an offer to hold another round of peace talks next week, and that he wanted to speed up negotiations for a ceasefire. Ukraine and Russia have held two rounds of talks in Istanbul over the past five months. They have agreed to swap […]

Ukraine’s parliament appointed the country’s first new prime minister in five years on Thursday, part of a major cabinet overhaul aimed at revitalising wartime management as prospects for peace with Russia grow dim. Yulia Svyrydenko, 39, has been tasked by President Volodymyr Zelensky with boosting domestic weapons production and reviving Ukraine’s loan-dependent economy. In a speech to parliament, Zelensky said he expected his new government to increase the share of domestic weapons on Ukraine’s battlefield to 50 per cent from 40pc within six months. He also singled out deregulation and expanding economic co-operation with allies as other key aims of the biggest government reshuffle since Russia’s February 2022 invasion. Svyrydenko, an experienced technocrat who had served as first deputy prime minister since 2021, pledged to move “swiftly and decisively”. “War leaves no room for delay,” she wrote on X. “Our priorities for the first six months are clear: reliable supply for the army, expansion of domestic we...

US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that Ukraine should not target Moscow, after the Kremlin charged that a new US plan to supply weapons to Kyiv along with sanctions threats against Russia would delay peace efforts.US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that Ukraine should not target Moscow, after the Kremlin charged that a new US […]

President Vladimir Putin intends to keep fighting in Ukraine until the West engages on his terms for peace, unfazed by Donald Trump’s threats of tougher sanctions, and his territorial demands may widen as Russian forces advance, three sources close to the Kremlin said. Putin, who ordered Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of fighting in the country’s east between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops, believes Russia’s economy and its military are strong enough to weather any additional Western measures, the sources said. Trump on Monday expressed frustration with Putin’s refusal to agree to a ceasefire and announced a wave of weapons supplies to Ukraine, including Patriot surface-to-air missile systems. He also threatened further sanctions on Russia unless a peace deal was reached within 50 days. The three Russian sources, familiar with top-level Kremlin thinking, said Putin will not stop the war under pressure from the West and believes Russia — which has survived the t...

U.S. President Donald Trump announced new weapons for Ukraine on Monday, and threatened sanctions on buyers of Russian exports unless Russia agrees a peace deal, a major policy shift brought on by frustration with Moscow’s ongoing attacks on its neighbor. But Trump’s threat of sanctions came with a 50-day grace period, a move that was […]

United States President Donald Trump and Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte announced a plan on Monday to rearm Ukraine with missiles and other weaponry in its fight to fend off Russian invaders and warned of severe tariffs if Moscow does not end the war. The announcement by the two leaders followed weeks of frustration on the part of Trump with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to make an agreement to end the conflict. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has made frequent appeals to Trump and Nato leaders for more weapons. Under the deal, Trump said the US will supply weapons that will be paid for by Nato countries. Rutte said massive numbers of weapons would be sent, including missiles, as part of a first wave of equipment. “It’s a full complement with the batteries,” Trump said when asked whether he would send Patriot missiles specifically. “We’re going to have some come very soon, within days … a couple of the countries that have Patriots are going to swap over and will replace the Patri...

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un offered Moscow his full support for its war in Ukraine during talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Pyongyang state media said on Sunday. Lavrov’s visit to North Korea was the latest in a series of high-profile trips by top Moscow officials as both countries deepen military and political ties amid Russia’s offensive against Kyiv. Pyongyang sent thousands of troops to Russia’s Kursk region to oust Ukrainian forces and has also provided the Russian army with artillery shells and missiles. Moscow said Lavrov’s talks with Kim were held in a “warm comradely atmosphere”. Lavrov expressed “sincere gratitude to Pyongyang” for its role in Kursk and support of Russia’s operation, the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement. Moscow also said the two sides “agreed” that the West was to blame for “the growing tension” on the Korean peninsula. The ministry earlier posted a video on Telegram of the two men shaking hands and greeting each other with a hug. It said the talks w...

President Asif Ali Zardari on Friday called for promoting Pakistan’s trade and investment relations with the Czech Republic and Ukraine as Pakistan’s ambassadors-designate for both countries called on him here.

Russia targeted Ukraine with a record 728 drones overnight, shortly after US President Donald Trump pledged to send more defensive weapons to Kyiv and aimed unusually direct criticism at Russian President Vladimir Putin. Ukrainian air defence units destroyed almost all the drones, including through electronic jamming systems, Ukraine’s air force said on the Telegram messaging app. The attack, which follows a series of escalating air assaults on Ukraine in recent weeks, showed the need for “biting” sanctions on the sources of income Russia uses to finance the war, including on those who buy Russian oil, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Telegram. Trump said on Tuesday he was considering supporting a bill in the Senate that would impose steep sanctions on Russia, including 500 per cent tariffs on nations that buy Russian oil, gas, uranium and other exports. “We get a lot of ‘b******t’ thrown at us by Putin … He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless,” Trump said at a cabinet m...

Russian President Vladimir Putin told United States President Donald Trump in a phone call on Thursday that Moscow wants a negotiated end to the Ukraine war, but will not step back from its original goals, a Kremlin aide said. In a wide-ranging conversation that also covered Iran and the Middle East, Trump “again raised the issue of an early end to military action” in Ukraine, the aide, Yuri Ushakov, told reporters. “Vladimir Putin, for his part, noted that we continue to seek a political and negotiated solution to the conflict,” Ushakov said. Putin briefed Trump on the implementation of agreements reached between Russia and Ukraine last month to exchange prisoners-of-war and dead soldiers, Ushakov said, and told him that Moscow was ready to continue negotiations with Kyiv. “Our president also said that Russia will achieve the goals it has set: that is, the elimination of the well-known root causes that led to the current state of affairs, to the current acute confrontation, and Russia will not back down from...

Ukraine appealed to the United States for clarity on Wednesday after it was caught off guard by a White House announcement that Washington was halting some arms shipments to the war-battered country. The Ukrainian defence ministry, which is deeply dependent on US arms, said it had not been notified about the reduction in aid announced one day earlier. Moscow revelled in the decision, saying it could bring the end of the war closer. Any slowdown in US support could harm Kyiv’s ability to fend off escalating Russian aerial bombardments or frontline gains. Kyiv has long feared halts to US aid after Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, having criticised the tens of billions of dollars in support and weapons sent by his predecessor, Joe Biden. “It will [be] even more scary, even more painful, and even more civilians will suffer,” Kyiv resident Yevgenia Prysiazhna told AFP, referring to an uptick in overnight drone and missile attacks on Ukraine. “I really hope that this is a temporary decision,” th...

Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Putin on Tuesday spoke by telephone for the first time in over two-and-a-half years, with the French president urging a ceasefire in Ukraine but the Russian leader hitting back that the West was to blame for the conflict. One week after a ceasefire ended Israel’s 12-day war with Iran, the two […]

A Russian missile attack on Ukraine’s southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region on Tuesday killed at least nine people, damaged civilian infrastructure and wounded dozens of train passengers, officials said. The two-wave strike killed seven in the regional capital of Dnipro, said governor Serhiy Lysak, where the blast wave also shattered train carriage windows and showered passengers with broken glass. Nearly 70 people, including 10 children, were injured, he said, adding the numbers could still rise. Two people were also killed in the town of Samar, around 10 kilometres from Dnipro, the state emergencies service said. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called on Kyiv’s Western partners to respond to the attack. Nato leaders are currently in The Hague for an alliance summit, where President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hopes to secure more military support against Russia’s full-scale invasion, launched in 2022. “It is a matter of credibility for allies to step up pressure on Moscow,” Sybiha wrote on X. He added that sc...

ST PETERSBURG: Russian President Vladimir Putin quipped on Friday that in his view the whole of Ukraine was “ours” and cautioned that advancing Russian forces could take the Ukrainian city of Sumy as part of a bid to carve out a buffer zone along the border. Putin, who ordered troops into Ukraine in 2022 after eight years of fighting in the country’s east, also said he was not seeking the capitulation of Ukraine or denying its sovereignty, but that Ukraine had to be neutral. Russia currently controls about a fifth of Ukraine, including Crimea, more than 99 per cent of the Luhansk region, over 70pc of the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and fragments of the Kharkiv, Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk regions. Asked about fresh Russian advances, Putin told the St Petersburg International Economic Forum that he considered Russians and Ukrainians to be one people and “in that sense the whole of Ukraine is ours”. Kyiv and its Western allies say Moscow’s claims to four Ukrainian regions and Crimea are illegal, and ...

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that in his view the whole of Ukraine was “ours” and cautioned that advancing Russian forces could take the Ukrainian city of Sumy as part of a bid to carve out a buffer zone along the border. Ukraine’s foreign minister denounced the statements as evidence of Russian “disdain” […]