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An intended summit in Budapest between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin was called off on Wednesday
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Donald Trump has said he will not meet with Vladimir Putin until he thinks a deal to secure peace between Russia and Ukraine is in place.
“You have to know that we’re going to make a deal, I’m not going to be wasting my time,” the US president told reporters in Doha on Saturday.
It comes after Mr Trump said earlier this week he did not want to have a “wasted meeting” with Putin, after officials concluded that the gap between the two sides was too big to begin negotiations on peace in Ukraine.
An intended summit in Budapest, Hungary, between the pair was to take place in the coming weeks, but was put on hold on Wednesday. “It just it didn’t feel right to me,” said Mr Trump. “It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get. So I cancelled it.”
As well as calling off the meeting, the Trump administration also unleashed new sanctions against Russia’s biggest oil companies, as part of a push for Moscow to end the war in Ukraine.
But Putin responded by saying he would never bow to US pressure, despite admitting the sanctions could cause economic pain.
Donald Trump said on Saturday that he will not meet Putin until he thinks a peace deal can be reached.
On Wednesday, an intended summit between the pair in Budapest was put on hold after Moscow refused to budge on its red lines for ending the war in Ukraine.
Trump said on Tuesday that he did not want to have a “wasted meeting” with Putin after officials concluded that the gap between the two sides was two big to begin negotiations.
A senior White House official told Reuters that there are “no plans for President Trump to meet with President Putin in the immediate future”.
Donald Trump has said he will not meet with Vladimir Putin until he thinks a deal to secure peace between Russia and Ukraine is in place.
“You have to know that we’re going to make a deal, I’m not going to be wasting my time,” the US president told reporters in Doha on Saturday.
Two people were killed and 13 others injured in Kyiv after Russian missiles and drones hit sites in Ukraine overnight, including infrastructure and energy sites, Ukrainian officials said on Saturday.
The attack in Kyiv set off multiple fires and damaged residential infrastructure, including a kindergarten, according to city officials.
“These strikes were once again directed at our civilian and energy infrastructure,” prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko said on X.
“Russia is now attempting to create a humanitarian catastrophe in Ukraine to coincide with winter.”
Ukraine’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said Russian missiles and drones had also targeted the energy grid, railroads, and homes in Dnipro, Kharkiv and Sumy.
Russia’s defence ministry said in a statement on Telegram that the overnight attacks were targeted at enterprises of Ukraine’s military-industrial complex and energy infrastructure facilities that support its operations.
Russia’s defence ministry separately said that its forces had downed 121 Ukrainian drones overnight, including seven that were flying towards Moscow.
The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region said on Saturday that Ukraine had struck a dam on a local reservoir, causing damage.
In a statement on Telegram, Vyacheslav Gladkov said that repeat strikes on the dam could risk flooding, and advised residents of parts of two border settlements, Shebekino and Bezlyudovka, to leave their homes for temporary accommodation.
Belgorod region borders Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region, and has come under attack by Kyiv’s forces since the outbreak of full-scale conflict between Russia and Ukraine in 2022.
There was no immediate comment from Kyiv.
Separately, Russia’s Defence Ministry said that its forces had downed 121 Ukrainian drones overnight, including seven that were flying towards Moscow.
Ukraine has in recent weeks mounted a major campaign of strikes on Russian energy infrastructure that has taken up to a fifth of Russia’s refining capacity offline.
The intended summit between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin was put on hold on Wednesday after Moscow refused to budge on its red lines for ending the war in Ukraine.
Trump said on Tuesday that he did not want to have a “wasted meeting” with Putin after officials concluded that the gap between the two sides was two big to begin negotiations.
A senior White House official told Reuters that there are “no plans for President Trump to meet with President Putin in the immediate future”. It comes after Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held a “productive call” but opted against an in-person meeting.
Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban, a key ally of Moscow in the EU, insisted that preparations for a meeting in Budapest were still ongoing on Wednesday. The date and time of this summit is still unconfirmed according to Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto.
Read more here:
Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukraine overnight into Saturday killed at least four people and wounded 16 others, local officials said.
In the capital, Kyiv, two people were killed and nine were wounded in a ballistic missile attack in the early hours of Saturday, Timur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s city military administration, said.
A fire broke out in a non-residential building in one location, while debris from intercepted missiles fell in an open area at another site, damaging windows in nearby buildings, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service wrote on the message app Telegram.
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Field Marshal Lord Richards tells The Independent’s Sam Kiley that Ukraine has been given false hope by its Western allies and cannot triumph against Russia unless Nato forces join fight:
The death toll from the Russian missile and drone attack on Ukraine rose to four this morning.
Two people were killed and nine wounded in a ballistic missile attack on the capital Kyiv in the early hours of Saturday, said Timur Tkachenko, head of the city military administration.
Three of the wounded were taken to hospital, according to Ukraine’s State Emergency Service.
A fire broke out in a non-residential building in one location, while debris from intercepted missiles fell in an open area at another site, damaging windows in nearby buildings, the emergency service added.
“Explosions in the capital. The city is under ballistic attack,” mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote during the onslaught.
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