Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will present a plan to President Joe Biden to force Russia to halt its invasion of his country just weeks before the US holds presidential elections.
Ukraine will hold a meeting with ambassadors from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) on Wednesday to discuss the current situation in the country.
Russia had redeployed some of its troops from southern Ukraine to help fight off Kyiv’s incursion into the Kursk region, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday.
Zelensky will pitch plan to the US to force Russia to end war
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will present a plan to force Russia to halt its invasion of his country to President Joe Biden just weeks before the US holds presidential elections.
Zelensky said on Tuesday that he wanted to discuss the blueprint with Biden during his trip to the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York in September. He would also present it to presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, he said.
The announcement comes as the outcome of the 5 November election remains uncertain and the two candidates differ significantly on a solution to the conflict in Ukraine, currently well into its second year.
Zelensky said the plan comprised a “powerful package to force Russia to end the war using diplomacy”, “economic” steps and Ukraine’s “place in the global security” architecture, but didn’t provide additional details.
“It would be fair to present the plan to the US president first; it depends on him whether the plan will be successful,” Zelensky said during a four-and-a-quarter-hour press conference with his top officials in Kyiv on Tuesday. “And we do want to execute this plan.”
The attempt to coerce Russia to pull its troops is likely to face hurdles. Any such initiative from Kyiv will have to rely heavily on continued support from Western allies at a time when war fatigue continues to grow.
While Biden and Harris have pledged to back Kyiv for as long as needed, Trump has repeatedly raised doubts over US commitments to Nato. He’s also said he’ll bring the war to an end before his inauguration.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has given little indication that he’s ready to negotiate, except on his terms.
The Kremlin has continued to demand that Kyiv withdraw its forces from the four Ukrainian regions that Russia partially occupies and abandon its bid to join Nato before it will agree to a ceasefire.
Zelensky on Tuesday dismissed any prospects of talks with Putin, calling them “empty and meaningless”.
But his attempt to win over key nations from the Global South, many of which have been sympathetic to Russia, for Ukraine’s current blueprint for peace largely faltered at a summit in Switzerland in June.
While the meeting included representatives from more than 90 countries, Russia wasn’t invited. Several states sent lower-level delegations and some declined to sign a final statement.
Speaking at the same conference as Zelensky on Tuesday, the president’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, reiterated a plan to hold a second summit in one of the countries of the Global South. Russia is unlikely to ignore the meeting if other members of the BRICS group of states that also includes Brazil, India, China and South Africa were to engage, he said.
Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region would also feature in the discussion with Biden, Zelensky said, calling the operation successful. It had delivered “many necessary solutions”, he said. Kyiv’s allies have largely withheld judgment of the offensive.
Ukraine to brief Nato on Wednesday on air defence, status of war
Ukraine will hold a meeting with ambassadors from Nato on Wednesday to discuss the current situation in the country.
Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called a meeting of the so-called Nato-Ukraine Council at Kyiv’s request.
“Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov is expected to brief allies via video-link on the battlefield situation and priority capability needs,” Nato spokesperson Farah Dakhlallah said in an emailed statement. “Nato allies have delivered substantial support to Ukraine’s air defence and they are committed to further bolstering Ukraine’s defences.”
On Monday, Ukraine faced the biggest air attack since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in February 2022. The embattled country has recently been hit by waves of Russian strikes against civilians and infrastructure, particularly energy-related.
Macron nears deal to sell French fighter jets on Serbia visit
Emmanuel Macron was closing in on a deal to sell Rafale fighter jets made by Dassault Aviation to Serbia, according to people familiar with the discussions.
The French president was set to sign an agreement with his Serbian counterpart, Aleksandar Vucic, during a trip to Belgrade on Thursday, said the people, who added that it would include provisions on defence, economic and energy cooperation.
Vucic previously said that the Balkan nation was seeking to purchase as many as a dozen of the French warplanes for about €3-billion.
Serbia has ramped up defence spending in recent years, including with orders of Pantsir air defence systems from Russia and Chinese-made, short-range missiles. While Vucic has condemned the invasion of Ukraine, he has refused to join the European Union’s sanctions against the Kremlin, trying not to sever ties with Russia, while increasingly seeking support from Beijing.
The Franco-Serbian deal could also mention the former Serbian province of Kosovo, with Serbia’s ambitions to join the EU relying firmly on normalising relations. Belgrade doesn’t recognise the sovereignty of Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008. Macron has in recent months appeared sympathetic to Serbia’s views on the conflict.
Ukraine says Russia moved troops to Kursk from front
Russia had redeployed some of its troops from southern Ukraine to help fight off Kyiv’s incursion into the Kursk region, Zelensky said on Tuesday.
The cross-border operation had seen “some success” with Moscow moving 30,000 of its troops to the Kursk region, the country’s army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said at the same news conference with the president.
But Russia was still keeping its most capable soldiers for its push into the Donetsk region in Ukraine’s east where it sought to capture the town of Pokrovsk, an important logistics hub for Kyiv’s forces, the general said. He didn’t clarify how many of those soldiers were redeployed from the front in Ukraine.
The Russian troop movements described by Syrskyi suggest only partial success in Ukraine’s attempt to blunt the Kremlin’s assault in the east. Moscow intends to seize the entire Donetsk region, which it illegally annexed almost two years ago without controlling the whole area.
Bloomberg was unable to independently verify Ukraine’s claims about Russian troop deployments. Moscow’s military commanders had no plan to send significant forces from Ukraine to the Kursk region, a person close to the Kremlin told Bloomberg last week.
“Donetsk region is Russia’s strategic goal,” Zelensky said, adding that Moscow had moved troops from the Zaporizhzhia region rather than from its front in Donetsk.
Kyiv continues its incursion in the Kursk region of Russia, which caught Moscow off guard and has prompted tens of thousands of residents to flee their homes. One of the operation’s aims was to force Russia to move its troops from the Pokrovsk front to Kursk, Syrskyi said.
Ukraine’s military chief said that Kyiv now controlled almost 1,300 square kilometres and 100 settlements in the Kursk region, where it had captured 594 Russian soldiers.
Russia continued its bombardment of Ukraine on Tuesday with drone and missile strikes, after Monday’s attack, which the country’s air defence said was the biggest since the start of the war. Both attacks damaged energy infrastructure and caused blackouts across the country.
Nuclear watchdog says Russia elevates risk by running Kursk reactor
Monitors from the United Nations atomic watchdog said Rosatom was elevating the risk of a radiological emergency by continuing to operate a nuclear power plant on Russian soil that’s near territory seized by Ukraine this month.
“The fact that the plant is operating makes it even more serious,” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi said on Tuesday in comments broadcast by Russian state television.
The IAEA monitoring mission led by Grossi visited the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant to assess the risk of a nuclear accident. Unlike Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, where all six reactors have been shut down, Kursk continues generating electricity.
The agency warned of particularly “serious consequences” if the fuelled core of a so-called RBMK reactor were hit while in operation. Impacts from attack drones were observed on site, according to Grossi, who didn’t specify which side fired them.
“A nuclear power plant of this type so close to the military front is an extremely serious fact,” Grossi said, describing the site as “exposed and fragile.”
The Soviet-era technology currently operating on the site is particularly vulnerable to a Chernobyl-like accident if hit by artillery or rocket fire. The RBMK technology operating in Kursk uses the same outdated Soviet design that exploded in Chernobyl. Unlike modern units, it doesn’t have the steel and concrete containment domes that back up core safety systems and are designed to contain radiation in the event of an accident.
That key safety-design weakness means that no country outside of Russia operates RBMK power plants.
Modi speaks to Biden and Putin after visit to Kyiv
Narendra Modi spoke with Biden and Putin about the war in Ukraine following the Indian prime minister’s conciliatory visit to Kyiv.
The White House, in an account of the call which took place on Monday, said Biden “commended” Modi for his visits to both Ukraine and Poland, “and for his message of peace and ongoing humanitarian support for Ukraine, including its energy sector.
“The leaders affirmed their continued support for a peaceful resolution of the conflict in accordance with international law, on the basis of the UN Charter.”
The Indian leader then spoke by phone with Putin on Tuesday and “exchanged perspectives on the Russia-Ukraine conflict” and “insights from the recent visit”, Modi said on the X social media platform. The Kremlin confirmed the call took place.
Modi said he also reiterated “India’s firm commitment to support an early, abiding and peaceful resolution of the conflict” during that discussion.
In an earlier post on X about his call with Biden, Modi said: “We had a detailed exchange of views on various regional and global issues, including the situation in Ukraine”, without providing additional details.
Modi, whose country has historic ties to Russia and has for decades relied on Moscow for weapons, indicated his support for Ukraine’s sovereignty during his first visit to the war-torn nation since Russia invaded more than two years ago.
His trip to Kyiv last week has been seen as an attempt to balance India’s relations with the US and Russia, roughly a month after his July visit to Moscow angered US officials. Modi was pictured hugging Putin shortly after Russia was blamed for a wave of attacks that killed at least 38 people, and included the main children’s hospital in Kyiv. DM