FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
What are the scenarios being warned about and will there be a division of Ukraine? Is the scenario of the division of Germany after World War II being repeated?
US envoy Steve Witkoff met with Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg on Friday, while Donald Trump urged the Russian president to accept a ceasefire in Ukraine.
The Kremlin said the meeting lasted more than four hours and focused on "aspects of a Ukrainian solution." The talks, Witkoff's third with Putin this year, were described by special envoy Kirill Dmitriev as "productive."
Trump has expressed frustration with Putin over the state of the talks. On Friday, he wrote on social media: "Russia must move. Too many people are dying, thousands a week, in a terrible and senseless war."
This comes after Trump's envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, denied suggesting the country could be divided.
The Times said that, during an interview with the newspaper, Kellogg had proposed that British and French troops could adopt control zones in western Ukraine as part of a "security force".
The Russian army, he reportedly suggested, could then remain in the occupied east. "You could almost make it look like what happened to Berlin after World War II," the newspaper quoted him as saying.
Kellogg later took to social media to say the article had "misrepresented" what he said. "I was talking about a post-ceasefire standoff force in support of Ukrainian sovereignty," he wrote on X, adding: "I was not referring to a partition of Ukraine."
Neither the White House nor Kiev immediately responded to the comments. The BBC has asked the Times for a response.
Earlier on Friday, European countries agreed to 21 billion euros ($24 billion; £18 billion) in military aid for Kiev.
European defense ministers said they saw no sign of an end to the war.
Ahead of the Putin-Witkoff talks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there was "no need to expect progress" as "the process of normalizing relations is ongoing."
Asked whether the discussions could include setting a date for Putin and Trump's meeting, Peskov said "let's see. It depends on why Witkoff came."
Previously, Witkoff had a meeting with Dmitriev at the Grand Hotel Europe in St. Petersburg, where a conference on stainless steel and the Russian market was held.
Dmitriev, the 49-year-old head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, visited Washington last week and was the highest-ranking Russian official to go to the US since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused the Kremlin of prolonging the war during a visit Friday to the site of an April 4 Russian missile strike on his hometown of Kryvyi Rih. The attack killed 19 people, including nine children.
He also claimed that hundreds of Chinese citizens were fighting with the Russian army. This comes after Ukraine said it had captured two Chinese citizens.
"We have information that at least several hundred Chinese citizens are fighting as part of Russia's occupying forces," Zelensky said.
"This means that Russia is clearly trying to prolong the war even by using Chinese lives."
Zelensky placed flowers in front of photos of Herman Tripolets, nine- and seven-year-old Arina Samodina, and Radyslav Yatsko.
He later repeated a call for air defense systems "to protect our lives and cities."
"We discussed this with President Trump - Ukraine is not just asking, we are ready to purchase these additional systems," he wrote on social media.
"Only powerful weapons can be relied upon to protect life when you have a neighbor like Russia."
Trump has previously claimed that he could end the Ukraine-Russia conflict “in 24 hours.” On Friday, he declared that it wouldn’t have happened at all if he had been in the White House in 2022 when Russia launched its full-scale invasion.
"A war that should have never happened and would not have happened, if I were President!!!", he wrote.
In February, US and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia for their first face-to-face talks since the invasion. The officials have also met to discuss restoring full diplomatic relations.
Trump has also had a rocky relationship with Zelensky since the start of his second term as US president, culminating in an angry confrontation in the Oval Office in February.
The US tried to broker a limited ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia in the Black Sea, only to find it stalled when the Kremlin demanded sanctions be lifted after launching a full-scale invasion of its neighbour.
Trump has since said he is "very angry" and "furious" with Putin over the lack of progress on a ceasefire agreement between Kiev and Moscow. /Adapted from BBC Pamphlet/
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