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Russia has given its first response to Donald Trump’s ultimatum calling on Vladimir Putin to engage in peace talks or see his Ukraine invasion end “the hard way”.
Writing on his Truth Social platform days after re-entering the White House, the US president threatened to intensify sanctions and tariffs against Russia unless Mr Putin agrees to end “this ridiculous war”.
In its initial response, the Kremlin insisted it saw nothing particularly new in Mr Trump’s threats, with spokesperson Dmitry Peskov insisting that Moscow was ready for an equal and mutually respectful dialogue with the US.
Ukraine’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha praised Mr Trump’s remarks as sending a “strong signal” to Moscow, while president Volodymyr Zelensky’s sanctions commissioner told The Independent that there are at least 10 areas he believes Mr Trump can look to target with sanctions.
It came as Western officials claimed that some 4,000 of the estimated 11,000 North Korean troops sent to fight alongside Russia had been killed or wounded in just three months of fighting.
Andy Gregory23 January 2025 21:30
Andy Gregory23 January 2025 21:00
It was a month into Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Russian forces had withdrawn from around Kyiv and in their wake Bel Trew and her team stumbled on a body by an abandoned Russian camp.
His hands were tied. He had been burned and shot in the back. Soldiers said he was a teenager.
As Bel tried to find out who he was and what had happened, she uncovered a nightmare world: a nation struggling to find thousands of its missing and to identify its dead.
Andy Gregory23 January 2025 20:30
Andy Gregory23 January 2025 20:00
Andy Gregory23 January 2025 19:30
Serge in his blue anorak, Olena in her black faux fur jacket – an inconspicuous couple on a trip in Kyiv to show their daughter the capital they did so much to save three years ago.
Their clandestine work as part of self-starting groups of volunteers, heroic by the standards of any war, turned back two invading Russian convoys as they converged on Kyiv in 2022. Serge and a small group of comrades, veterans of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine, took on Putin’s invaders in hit-and-run raids using pickup trucks and weapons they found in a warehouse in Sumy province.
Now Donald Trump is threatening to turn the course of history against Ukraine, by cutting US military support to the embattled nation. This could ultimately allow Vladimir Putin to hang on to the 20 per cent of the country Russia has already taken as part of a future peace deal forced on Kyiv.
“We can’t have a peace deal of any kind with Russia,” Serge said on Saturday, two days before Mr Trump’s inauguration. “If we freeze the front lines then Putin will just re-arm and invade again. And now Russia is better equipped, has better tactics, knows how the weapons we’ve had from Nato work. He won’t stop and so neither will the killing.”
Our world affairs editor Sam Kiley reports:
Andy Gregory23 January 2025 19:00
Donald Trump has announced that he will be asking Saudi Arabia and OPEC to bring down the cost of oil and said he would be asking Riyadh to increase a planned US investment package to $1trn from an initial $600bn.
“If the price came down, the Russia-Ukraine war would end immediately. Right now, the price is high enough that that war will continue – you got to bring down the oil price,” the US president told the World Economic Forum in Davos by video link.
Andy Gregory23 January 2025 18:30
Ukraine has praised Donald Trump’s threat to Vladimir Putin to end the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “the hard way” using tariffs and sanctions as sending a “strong signal” to the Kremlin.
Read our full wrap of today’s events here:
Andy Gregory23 January 2025 18:00
Donald Trump has said that US efforts to secure a peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine are now hopefully underway, but gave no details.
“It’s so important to get that done. That is an absolute killing field … it’s time to end it,” he told the World Economic Forum in Davos by video link.
Andy Gregory23 January 2025 17:30