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President Donald Trump’s administration advanced another major US natural gas export project on Wednesday, handing oil companies a win the same day as a White House meeting with industry executives.The Energy Department approved an export authorization for the Venture Global CP2 liquefied natural gas (LNG) export project in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, drawing praise from business groups and withering criticism from environmentalists.The project is the fifth major LNG export venture progressed since Trump returned to the White House, the Department of Energy said in a news release.Energy Secretary Chris Wright touted the project following the late-afternoon White House meeting, which included the CEOs of ExxonMobil, Chevron and other oil giants, according to US media.”We want to bring low cost, affordable, reliable, secure energy to Americans and our allies around the world,” said Wright, who slammed former president Joe Biden’s administration for suspending LNG expansions over environmental concerns.The White House meeting comes as uncertainty around Trump’s trade tariffs and threats stokes concerns about the economy slowing.The oil industry has kept a muted public stance on Trump’s myriad tariff actions, while privately expressing misgivings about the policy.Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told reporters that dialogue on tariffs was “ongoing,” while downplaying the chances that there will be a significant economic impact.Burgum and Wright said they were committed to streamlining permitting of new petroleum projects, addressing the industry’s criticism about lengthy delays due to protests from environmental groups.Environmentalists have attacked projects like the CP2 LNG venture because of the increased pollution affecting communities near such industrial sites, while slamming LNG as exacerbating climate change.”The Trump administration’s conditional approval of CP2 illustrates everything that’s wrong with Trump’s fossil fuel agenda,” said Allie Rosenbluth, US campaign manager for Oil Change International.”It comes on the same day as Trump welcomes oil and gas industry donors to the White House to brag about the favors he’s done them -– clear evidence of who this administration actually serves.”Mahyar Sorour of the Sierra Club called the latest LNG project approval “a disaster for local communities devastated by pollution, American consumers who will face higher costs, and the global climate crisis that will be supercharged by the project’s emissions.”

The US Federal Reserve paused interest rate cuts again on Wednesday and warned of increased economic uncertainty as it seeks to navigate an economy unnerved by President Donald Trump’s stop-start tariff rollout.Policymakers voted to hold the US central bank’s key lending rate at between 4.25 percent and 4.50 percent, the Fed announced in a statement. They also cut their growth forecast for 2025 and hiked their inflation outlook, while still penciling in two rate cuts this year — in line with their previous forecast in December.”Uncertainty today is unusually elevated,” Fed chair Jerome Powell told reporters after the US central bank’s decision was published, adding that at least part of a recent rise in inflation was down to tariffs.All three major Wall Street indices closed higher on the news, while government bond yields fell after the Fed announced it would slow down the rate at which it is reducing its balance sheet, which swelled during the pandemic. In an unusual move, Fed governor Christopher Waller opposed the Fed’s rate decision because of his colleagues’ support for slowing down the pace at which it is shrinking the balance sheet. – ‘Unclear’ tariff policy -Since returning to office in January, Trump has ramped up levies on top trading partners including China, Canada and Mexico — only to roll some of them back — and threatened to impose reciprocal measures on other countries.Many analysts fear Trump’s economic policies could push up inflation and hamper economic growth, and complicate the Fed’s plans to bring inflation down to its long-term target of two percent while maintaining a healthy labor market.”Everybody knew there was not going to be a rate cut,” Moody’s Analytics economist Matt Colyar told AFP after the Fed’s decision was published. “What has changed is the kind of broader economic environment, mostly coming out of chaotic policy coming from DC.”Until fairly recently, the hard economic data pointed to a robust American economy, with the Fed’s favored inflation measure showing a 2.5 percent rise in the year to January — above target but down sharply from a four-decade high in 2022.Economic growth was relatively robust through the end of 2024, while the labor market has remained quite strong, with healthy levels of job creation and the unemployment rate hovering close to historic lows. But the mood has shifted in the weeks since Trump returned to the White House, with inflation expectations rising and financial markets tumbling amid his on-again, off-again rollout of tariffs. – Recession risk up -In updated economic forecasts published Wednesday, Fed policymakers sharply cut their growth forecast for this year to 1.7 percent, down from 2.1 percent in the last economic outlook in December. They also downgraded their outlook for growth next year, while raising their forecast for headline inflation in both 2025 and 2026.  But they kept their rate cut predictions largely unchanged, penciling in two rate cuts this year and next, in line with their previous forecast.Powell told reporters that the risk of recession in the United States had risen slightly in recent weeks, but was not yet a cause for concern.”If you go back two months, people were saying that the likelihood of a recession was extremely low,” he said. “It has moved up but it’s not high.”At the White House, which sits a short walk from the Fed’s Washington headquarters, Trump’s National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett took questions about the Fed chair’s press conference.”I try not to cherry pick things that chairman Powell said,” he told reporters. “And I think that chairman Powell is clear that if there were a tariff effect, it’s a transitory one.” “What gets tariffed and not is something that you’ll have complete clarity on on April 2,” he added, referring to the date at which Trump has said he intends to impose retaliatory levies on US trading partners.

Donald Trump began his second term vowing to be a peacemaker. Two months in, Israel has launched a major new offensive in Gaza, US forces are pounding Yemen, and Ukraine and Russia are exchanging fire despite his mediation.Speaking as he was sworn in on January 20, Trump said: “My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier.” He pointed to a just-concluded deal, conceived by outgoing president Joe Biden but pushed through by Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, that halted Israel’s military operations in Gaza in return for the release of some hostages by Hamas, which attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.In recent days, Israel has relaunched air strikes, killing hundreds of people according to the Gaza health ministry, and renewed its ground operations. The State Department said Hamas bore “total responsibility” after rejecting a proposal by Witkoff, a Trump friend also mediating with Russia, to move toward a second phase of the Gaza ceasefire.Trump has also ordered military strikes on Yemen’s Huthi insurgents after the Iranian-backed forces reopened attacks on Red Sea shipping in professed solidarity with the Palestinians.Brian Finucane, a former State Department official now at the International Crisis Group, which promotes conflict resolution, said that the narrative of Trump as peacemaker was always overstated and that his approach was erratic.Trump likes to claim wins and would relish earning the Nobel Peace Prize, seeing it as a “one of life’s great achievements,” Finucane said.”He was happy to claim credit for the Gaza ceasefire in January, but then unwilling to put pressure on the Israelis to move to phase two,” Finucane said.Another Trump envoy held the first-ever direct US talks with Hamas, unthinkable for previous administrations, but Trump also has called for the mass removal of Gaza’s two million people.”None of this is terribly coherent, but neither is it terribly surprising,” Finucane said.He pointed to Trump’s first term in which he threatened to annihilate North Korea before holding unprecedented summits with leader Kim Jong Un and saying that they “fell in love.”- Preference for peace, but if not -Trump’s aides have described his bellicose posture as part of a strategy as he seeks an ultimate goal of peace.”He’s been abundantly clear. He’s a president that wants to promote peace,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a radio interview Wednesday. Trump, who had boasted that he would end the Ukraine war within a day, held successive calls this week with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and voiced optimism about reaching a truce.But Russia, which invaded Ukraine in 2022, launched a barrage of missile and drone attacks hours after the Trump call.Jennifer Kavanaugh, director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, which supports restraint, said there was reason for optimism from Trump’s Ukraine diplomacy, but that Putin has the upper hand on the ground and is not going to compromise easily.She said that Trump also did not appear to offer any concessions to Putin, despite outside criticism of his ties with the Russian leader and Trump’s earlier berating of Zelensky that alarmed European allies.”To me, this was a positive step forward that set the ground for some confidence building, both between Ukraine and Russia and between Trump and European allies who are very concerned about his negotiating style,” she said.- ‘Hard realities’ -She said it was not yet “time to give up hope for peace” from Trump.”I think what we’ve seen is that promises run into the hard realities of how difficult it is to get to peace in these very difficult and intractable conflicts,” she said.Sina Toossi, a fellow at the progressive Center for International Policy, was less hopeful. Compared with his first term, Trump’s aides such as Rubio are “more loyalists than independent power players,” giving the president freer rein including for brinksmanship, Toossi said.”For Trump, foreign policy isn’t about carefully negotiated peace deals. It’s about performance, leverage and crafting a narrative that sells,” he said.Referring to Trump’s book as a hotel developer, Toossi said: “He approaches diplomacy the way he approached real estate in ‘The Art of the Deal:’ — escalate tensions, maximize threats, push the situation to the brink of disaster and then, at the last minute, strike a deal.”

Donald Trump told Volodymyr Zelensky Wednesday that the United States could own and run Ukraine’s nuclear power plants as part of his latest bid to secure a ceasefire in Russia’s invasion of its neighbor.The Ukrainian president said following their call that Kyiv was ready to pause attacks on Russia’s energy network and infrastructure, a day after Vladimir Putin agreed to halt similar strikes on Ukraine.But a wider ceasefire remains elusive with the Kremlin leader insisting in his own call with Trump on Tuesday that the West first stop all military aid for Ukraine.Republican Trump’s tone was markedly more positive after the Zelensky call, with the White House describing it as “fantastic” — despite the fact that the two men had a blazing televised row in the Oval Office recently.Trump “discussed Ukraine’s electrical supply and nuclear power plants” and said Washington could be “very helpful” in running them,” said a statement from National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.”American ownership of those plants would be the best protection for that infrastructure and support for Ukrainian energy infrastructure,” it said.Trump also pledged to help Kyiv get more air defense equipment from Europe, and to find Ukrainian children “abducted” by Russia, the statement said.The US president earlier said on his Truth Social network that efforts to reach a full truce were “very much on track.”- ‘Ending the war’ -For his part, Zelensky said he was ready to reciprocate with Russia on a pause on energy network strikes following the “frank” conversation with the US president.”One of the first steps towards fully ending the war could be ending strikes on energy and other civilian infrastructure. I supported this step, and Ukraine confirmed that we are ready to implement it,” he added.Zelensky said Ukrainian and US officials could meet in coming days for fresh talks in Saudi Arabia, where Russian and American teams are also due to meet early next week.Russia and Ukraine exchanged 372 prisoners, Moscow said Wednesday, which was planned as a goodwill gesture following the Trump-Putin call.Kyiv and Moscow however accused each other of continuing attacks.Ukraine’s defense ministry said an overnight barrage of Russian missiles and drones struck the war-battered nation, killing one person and damaging two hospitals.”Today Putin effectively rejected the proposal for a full ceasefire,” Zelensky said of the strikes.Ukraine’s national railway service said the barrage had hit railway energy infrastructure in the central Dnipropetrovsk region.Russia’s defense ministry reported a “deliberate” Ukrainian attack overnight on an oil depot in the south of the country, which they said was aimed at “derailing” Trump’s attempts to broker an end to the fighting.”These attacks are countering our common efforts,” added Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, referring to the US-Russian talks.- ‘Don’t believe Putin’ -The major sticking point remains Putin’s resistance to a full ceasefire — something that Kyiv and some Western allies say underscores how the Russian leader cannot be trusted.Putin insisted during his call with Trump on Tuesday that a full ceasefire was only possible if the West agrees to Moscow’s long-standing demand to halt its billions of dollars in military aid for Ukraine.The Kremlin chief also demanded Ukraine must not be allowed to rearm and must halt mandatory mobilization.Moscow and Washington were even at odds on the results of the call. The Kremlin said they only discussed halting power plant attacks, but the White House insisted the talks covered both energy and other civilian infrastructure.Trump’s overtures to Putin, and indications Washington will no longer guarantee European security, have spooked Kyiv and the United States’s NATO allies.”I don’t believe Putin at all, not a single word. He only understands force,” said Kyiv resident Lev Sholoudko, 32.In Moscow, locals were more optimistic the talks could bring an end to the fighting — to Russia’s advantage.”Definitely this is in our favor,” said Moscow resident Larisa, 46. “There is no other way. What happened in 1945 will happen now,” she added, referring to the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany.

Mervin Yamarte’s family in Venezuela thought the 29-year-old — arrested by US authorities amid President Donald Trump’s migrant crackdown — would be put on a deportation flight home. But the plane never arrived.Instead, they learned he had been flown to El Salvador after spotting him in a video, head shaven and bowed, sitting on the floor of a maximum security prison.Yamarte was arrested last week at his home in Dallas with three friends, all of whom survived the brutal Darien jungle on their journey north in September 2023.Three days after being detained, they were deported in shackles to El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), accused of being members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which has a presence in the United States.Mervin and his friends were among 238 Venezuelans deported to El Salvador under a centuries-old wartime act invoked by Donald Trump which can be used to repel an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” by an enemy country.The deportations took place despite a US federal judge granting a temporary suspension of the expulsions order.Mervin, Andy, Ringo and Edwuar grew up in Los Pescadores, a poor neighborhood of small homes with tin roofs and dirt streets in the country’s oil capital of Maracaibo.With Venezuela’s economy, including its oil industry, in meltdown, the four decided to follow in the footsteps of the nearly eight million Venezuelans to have emigrated in the past decade.But life in the United States, surviving off odds jobs, was a struggle.”My son wanted to come home because he said this wasn’t the American dream, it was the American nightmare,” his mother Mercedes Yamarte told AFP.After their arrest, the four — who were never charged with any crime, according to their families — agreed to be deported to Venezuela, where their families were waiting over the weekend to welcome them home.Instead, they were flown to El Salvador, whose gang-busting President Nayib Bukele struck a deal with Trump to house alleged gang members at his showpiece mega-jail.One of Mervin’s brothers recognized him in a video released by the Salvadoran presidency showing the prisoners being led in chains from a plane, having their heads shaved and sitting in rows on the floor.A sobbing Yamarte is haunted by her son’s “terrified” look in the footage.”It’s the greatest pain in my life, because it’s like a cry for help from my son,” said Yamarte, adding her two other children in the United States are now “begging” to return home but fear suffering the same fate as Mervin if they agree to be deported.- Tattoos -In Canada Honda, another impoverished Maracaibo neighborhood, Yajaira Chiquinquira Fuenmayor was also anticipating an emotional reunion with her son.After 16 months in the United States, Alirio Belloso was detained in Utah on January 28, a week after Trump returned to office vowing the biggest deportation wave in US history.He too was awaiting deportation to Venezuela but instead was transferred to El Salvador’s CECOT, where prisoners are crammed in windowless cells, under 24-hour surveillance and barred from receiving visitors.In the Salvadoran propaganda video, Belloso is shown having his head shaved.Legal experts in the United States have challenged the legality of the expulsions, saying that even if courts ruled that Tren de Aragua’s presence in the United States constitutes an “invasion,” authorities must still prove that each detainee is a member of the gang.”My son is not a criminal; my son is a decent person. He went to the United States to work to support his family,” Fuenmayor argued.Belloso’s 19-year-old wife Noemi Briceno, who lives in Venezuela, wondered “was it the tattoos” that led him to be tagged a gang member.”My husband has tattoos of his niece, who died of leukemia, and (others with) the name of his daughter and his mother,” Briceno said. “And an hourglass,” she added, adding that it was a nod to a promise he made by his daughter to return home soon.Yamarte said that Mervin too had a tattoo on his hand, which she now sees as a call to action.It reads “strong like mum.”

A jury in North Dakota on Wednesday ordered Greenpeace to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages in a case brought by a US pipeline operator that had been closely watched for its far-reaching free speech implications. The verdict dealt a massive blow to the prominent environmental advocacy group, which was accused by the operator of the Dakota Access Pipeline, Energy Transfer (ET), of orchestrating a campaign of violence and defamation.”We would like to thank the judge and the jury for the incredible amount of time and effort they dedicated to this trial,” said ET.”While we are pleased that Greenpeace will be held accountable for their actions, this win is really for the people of Mandan and throughout North Dakota who had to live through the daily harassment and disruptions caused by the protesters who were funded and trained by Greenpeace.”Nearly a decade ago, the Standing Rock Sioux tribe led one of the largest anti-fossil fuel protests in US history against the project’s construction. Hundreds were arrested and injured, prompting concerns from the United Nations over violations of Indigenous sovereignty.The pipeline, which transports fracked crude oil to refineries and global markets, has been operational since 2017.But Energy Transfer continued to pursue legal action against three Greenpeace entities — first in a federal lawsuit seeking $300 million, which was dismissed, and then at the state level in North Dakota.A trial began in late February in Mandan, North Dakota, and the jury deliberated for nearly three days before returning their verdict.”We should all be concerned about the future of the First Amendment, and lawsuits like this aimed at destroying our rights to peaceful protest and free speech,”  Deepa Padmanabha, senior legal advisor of Greenpeace USA said in a statement.”Greenpeace will continue to do its part to fight for the protection of these fundamental rights for everyone.”Critics had called the case a clear example of a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP), designed to silence dissent and drain financial resources. Notably, North Dakota is among the minority of US states without anti-SLAPP protections.Greenpeace also maintained that it played only a small role in the protest movement, which was led by Native Americans.More than 400 organizations, along with public figures such as singer Billie Eilish and actors Jane Fonda and Susan Sarandon, had signed an open letter in support of Greenpeace, as had hundreds of thousands of individuals globally.

The US Federal Reserve paused interest rate cuts again on Wednesday and noted an increase in economic uncertainty, as it navigates an economy unnerved by President Donald Trump’s stop-start tariff rollout.Policymakers voted to hold the US central bank’s key lending rate at between 4.25 percent and 4.50 percent, the Fed announced in a statement. They also cut their growth forecast for 2025 and hiked their inflation outlook, while still penciling in two rate cuts this year — in line with their previous forecast in December.”Uncertainty today is unusually elevated,” Fed chair Jerome Powell told reporters after the decision was published, adding that at least part of a recent inflation uptick was related to tariffs.Since taking office in January, Trump has ramped up levies on top trading partners including China, Canada and Mexico — only to roll some of them back — and threatened to impose reciprocal tariffs on other countries.Many analysts fear Trump’s economic policies could push up inflation and hamper economic growth, and complicate the Fed’s plans to bring inflation down to its long-term target of two percent while maintaining a healthy labor market.”Everybody knew there was not going to be a rate cut,” Moody’s Analytics economist Matt Colyar told AFP. The “Fed has been pretty clearly communicating they’re going to wait and see.””What has changed is the kind of broader economic environment, mostly coming out of chaotic policy coming from DC,” he added.”It’s quite unclear how high the tariffs will get, how widespread they will be, and how long they will last,” former Boston Fed president Eric Rosengren said in an interview ahead of the rate decision.The Fed’s vote was not unanimous, with one governor rebelling in opposition to his colleagues’ decision to slow the pace at which the Fed shrinks the size of its balance sheet.- Slowing economy – Until fairly recently, the hard economic data had pointed to a fairly robust American economy, with the Fed’s favored inflation measure showing a 2.5 percent rise in the year to January — above target but down sharply from a four-decade high in 2022.Economic growth was relatively robust through the end of 2024, while the labor market has remained fairly strong, with healthy levels of job creation, and an unemployment rate hovering close to historic lows. But the mood has shifted in the weeks since Trump returned to the White House, with inflation expectations rising and financial markets tumbling amid the on-again, off-again rollout of tariffs. Against that backdrop, Fed policymakers tweaked their economic forecasts. While they still have two rate cuts penciled in this year and next, they have revised several other data points. They now expect economic growth to increase by 1.7 percent this year, and by 1.8 percent next year — a sharp cut from the last economic outlook in December, and a slowdown from last year.They also raised their outlook for inflation in 2025 and 2026, and nudged up their forecast for the unemployment rate. – Recession risk up -“Fed officials want to be careful not to overreact,” Nationwide chief economist Kathy Bostjancic told AFP ahead of the rate decision, adding she expects the Fed to ultimately make just one rate cut this year. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Powell said the risk of recession had risen slightly in recent weeks.”If you go back two months people were saying that the likelihood of a recession was extremely low,” he said. “So it has moved up but it’s not high.”While Fed officials have sought to avoid criticizing the new administration, some outside analysts have been less restrained.”Trump’s management of economic policy has been a disaster,” Michael Strain, the director of economic policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, wrote in a recent blog post. 

A 53-year-old man convicted of murder was put to death by lethal injection in Arizona on Wednesday in the first execution in the southwestern US state in more than two years.Aaron Gunches, who had dropped legal efforts to halt his execution, was sentenced to death for the 2002 murder of Ted Price, his girlfriend’s ex-husband.”Justice for Ted Price and his family was finally served,” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes told reporters following the execution at a state prison in Florence, Arizona.Media witnesses said Gunches was placed on a gurney in the death chamber and restraints were put on his arms and legs.Asked if he had any last words, Gunches shook his head to say no.Intravenous lines were then inserted into his arms and Gunches breathed heavily several times after the drugs began to flow, the witnesses said.He lost consciousness and his chest stopped moving several minutes later.Gunches was the first prisoner put to death in Arizona since November 2022.Problems with administering lethal injections in previous executions led to a suspension of capital punishments while a review was conducted.John Barcello, deputy director of the Arizona Department of Corrections, said Gunches’s execution went as planned.”By all accounts, the process went according to plan without any incident at all,” Barcello told reporters.Gunches was executed one day after a 46-year-old man convicted of rape and murder was put to death by nitrogen gas in the southern state of Louisiana.Jessie Hoffman, who was sentenced to death for the 1996 murder of Molly Elliott, a 28-year-old advertising executive, was the first person executed in Louisiana in 15 years.Only one other US state, Alabama, has carried out executions by nitrogen hypoxia, which involves pumping nitrogen gas into a facemask, causing the prisoner to suffocate.The method has been denounced by UN experts as cruel and inhumane.- Executions scheduled in Oklahoma, Florida -The vast majority of US executions since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976 have been performed using lethal injection, although South Carolina executed a man by firing squad on March 7.Two other executions are scheduled in the United States this week — in Florida and Oklahoma.Wendell Grissom, 56, is to be executed by lethal injection in Oklahoma on Thursday for shooting and killing Amber Matthews, 23, during a 2005 home robbery.Edward James, 63, is to be executed by lethal injection in Florida on Thursday.James was sentenced to death for the 1993 rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl, Toni Neuner, and the murder of Betty Dick, her 58-year-old grandmother.There have been eight executions in the United States this year, following 25 last year.The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others — California, Oregon and Pennsylvania — have moratoriums in place.President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment and on his first day in office called for an expansion of its use “for the vilest crimes.”

US President Donald Trump hailed a “very good” call with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky Wednesday, a day after Russia’s Vladimir Putin agreed to temporarily halt attacks on Kyiv’s power plants.Trump said efforts to secure a full ceasefire in Russia’s three-year-old invasion remained “on track” despite the fact that his call with Putin failed to produce any broader peace deal.As Kyiv and Moscow accused each other of continuing attacks, Zelensky said after the “frank” call that Ukraine was ready to pause strikes on both Russian energy and civilian infrastructure. Trump said he spoke for around an hour with his Ukrainian counterpart, their first conversation since they had a blazing televised row in the Oval Office just over two weeks ago.”Much of the discussion was based on the call made yesterday with President Putin in order to align both Russia and Ukraine in terms of their requests and needs,” Trump said on his Truth Social network.”We are very much on track.”The White House later said that during the call Trump had floated US “ownership” of Ukrainian power plants as it would be the “best protection” for them.The billionaire former real estate mogul has already pushed Kyiv into a deal to give the United States preferential access to its critical mineral resources.Trump also pledged to help Ukraine get more air defense equipment from Europe, a statement from National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.- ‘Rejected’ -But while Ukraine has already agreed to a US plan for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire with Russia, Putin is still refusing.The Kremlin leader insisted during his call with Trump that a full ceasefire was only possible if the West halts its billions of dollars in military aid to Kyiv — Moscow’s long-standing demand.Putin also demanded Ukraine must not be allowed to rearm, and that it must halt mandatory mobilization.Despite both Ukraine and Russia saying they now backed a temporary truce on power plants, each accused the other of failing to adhere to the halt.Ukraine’s defense ministry said an overnight barrage of Russian missile and drones struck the war-battered nation, killing one person and damaging two hospitals.”Today Putin effectively rejected the proposal for a full ceasefire,” said Zelensky.Ukraine’s national railway service said the barrage had hit railway energy infrastructure in the central Dnipropetrovsk region.Russia’s defense ministry reported a “deliberate” Ukrainian attack overnight on an oil depot in the south of the country, which they said was aimed at “derailing” Trump’s attempts to broker an end to the fighting.”These attacks are countering our common efforts,” added Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, referring to the US-Russian talks.Russia and Ukraine did however exchange 372 prisoners, Moscow said Wednesday, which was planned as a goodwill gesture.In Washington, US envoy Steve Witkoff said technical talks on a possible deal to end the war would begin in Saudi Arabia on Monday. He predicted that a ceasefire agreement could be reached “within a couple of weeks” and told Bloomberg Television that a meeting in the kingdom between Trump and Putin was “likely” but offered no timeline.- ‘Concessions’ -Zelensky warned before his call with Trump against making “any concessions” to Russia following Putin’s demand for a Western aid halt.Trump insisted on Monday night that he and Putin “didn’t talk about aid at all.”The US president has however talked about dividing up “assets” including Ukrainian land and a huge nuclear power plant currently held by Moscow’s forces.Trump’s overtures to Putin and indications Washington will no longer guarantee European security have spooked Kyiv and the United States’s NATO allies and prompted moves towards a steep increase in domestic defense spending.”I don’t believe Putin at all, not a single word. He only understands force,” said Kyiv resident Lev Sholoudko, 32.In Moscow, locals were more optimistic the talks could bring an end to the fighting — to Russia’s advantage.”Definitely this is in our favor,” said one Moscow resident, Larisa, 46. “There is no other way. What happened in 1945 will happen now,” she added, referring to the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany.burs-dk

Vladimir Putin scored a coup by discussing with Donald Trump in highly anticipated phone talks everything from improving bilateral ties to Iran and even hockey matches, but stopping well short of agreeing any peace path to end the war in Ukraine, analysts say.During the call on Tuesday, Putin refused a full ceasefire agreement proposed by Washington but focused instead on reviving Russian-American cooperation that has been frozen since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.The very fact such talks took place was an achievement for the Kremlin, said Ekaterina Schulmann, a Russian political scientist based in Berlin.”The two superpowers are discussing the fate of the world and the future of humanity,” she told AFP, summing up Moscow’s thinking. “It is a great achievement for Russia which reproduces a Soviet-era narrative without being the Soviet Union.”The Kremlin said Trump had also backed Putin’s proposal to hold ice hockey matches between American and Russian players playing in the NHL and KHL, an echo of showdowns between the Soviet Union and Canada in the Cold War in the 1970s.Putin had agreed to halt attacks against Ukrainian energy targets but already the next day Moscow and Kyiv accused each other of not respecting those pledges.”Nothing will change on the front lines,” wrote Mark F. Cancian and Maria Snegovaya for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.”The artillery will still fire, the drones will still fly, the infantry will still shoot at each other, and people will keep dying.”- ‘Russia-friendly Ukraine’ -By emphasising “the absolute necessity of addressing the root causes” of the war against pro-Western Ukraine unleashed by Russia three years ago, Putin is sticking to his guns, and the direction of any future talks does not bode well for Kyiv, analysts said. “US and Russian positions on Ukraine remain irreconcilable,” said Tatyana Stanovaya, founder of political consultancy R.Politik.The France-based analyst ruled out any possibility of a genuine ceasefire in Ukraine, saying that what Putin wanted was a Russia-friendly Ukraine, “all of it”.”There won’t be a full ceasefire if Putin’s conditions are not met,” she said. “All ceasefire scenarios involve partitioning Ukraine one way or another. Under no circumstances will this scenario be acceptable to Putin.”Stanovaya suggested that Putin might be willing to allow western Ukraine to drift closer to the EU but added the Russian leader remained convinced the capital Kyiv and the southern port city of Odesa should become Russia-friendly.”Putin thinks it’s not only realistic, he thinks it will happen and there is no alternative.”Analysts said they expected Putin to keep playing for time and make insignificant concessions on Ukraine in talks with Trump as he pushes for the lifting of sanctions and the resuscitation of bilateral cooperation and joint work tackling world crises.Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said that Russia was trying to make sure that relations with the United States were compartmentalised.Under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden, he said, the war in Ukraine defined Washington’s approach towards Russia in all spheres, be it climate or regional crises.”Now the approach is completely different,” he told AFP. “And even if the negotiations on Ukraine won’t reach a desired result, Russia is hoping that other tracks will remain.””It looks like 1-0″ in favour of Putin, he added.- ‘Will last for years’ -Russian political analyst Konstantin Kalachev said Moscow was likely to launch a new offensive in the spring or summer.”Russia will use its advantage on the battlefield,” he said. “The spring has arrived, everything has dried up, and this is the most favourable time to use heavy equipment.”Schulmann also said she did not expect Russia to lay down arms any time soon.”In any military conflict, negotiations begin when both sides are convinced that they will not improve their situation by military means,” she said.Russia, Schulmann added, appears to believe that it could now win more through military means than through any negotiations.French President Emmanuel Macron has been seeking to coordinate Europe’s response, attempting together with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to assemble a “coalition of the willing”, countries prepared to protect any ceasefire.But Stanovaya was pessimistic about Europe’s role in buttressing Ukraine militarily, saying if Europeans send troops to Ukraine without Russia’s consent, they would be targeted by Moscow.Stanovaya said it was impossible to solve the root causes of the conflict, given that Ukraine was not prepared to surrender.”We need to admit that the conflict will last for decades, for years at the very minimum,” she added.