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US president-elect Trump meets with Zelensky at reopening of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris
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US president-elect Donald Trump has called for an immediate ceasefire and negotiations between Ukraine and Russia to end “the madness”.
He made the comments just hours after meeting Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in Paris for their first face-to-face talks since he won last month’s US election.
“Zelensky and Ukraine would like to make a deal and stop the madness,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social, adding that Kyiv had lost some 400,000 soldiers. “There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin.”
“I know Vladimir [Putin] well. This is his time to act. China can help. The World is waiting!” Trump added.
Zelensky reacted to Trump’s message on Sunday saying peace was not just a piece of paper, but needed guarantees.
“When we talk about effective peace with Russia, we must first and foremost talk about effective guarantees for peace. Ukrainians want peace more than anyone else,” he said on X.
It appeared Trump’s figure of 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers lost in the war meant both killed and wounded. Zelensky said 43,000 soldiers had been killed in the war and that there had been 370,000 wounded soldiers.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has just said there are plans to discuss Ukraine’s NATO membership with US President Biden in “the coming days.”
Russia has had no contact with US president-elect Donald Trump thus far, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said to reporters during a news briefing.
The Kremlin claimed yesterday that Russia was willing to negotiate about Ukraine after the President-elect called for an urgent cease-fire and discussions.
After meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Paris, Donald Trump has called for an immediate ceasefire and negotiations to end the country’s war with Russia.
“There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin. Too many lives are being wasted, too many families destroyed,” Trump wrote in an online post on Sunday.
He continued: “I know Vladimir well. This is his time to act. China can help. The world is waiting! Zelenskyy and Ukraine would like to make a deal and stop the madness.”
Ukraine’s defence minister said today he discussed planning for the next meeting of the Ramstein Group with US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin.
The Ramstein group, also known as the Ukraine defence contact group UDCG, is a US-led group of over 50 countries, including all 32 NATO members, which convenes at the US Ramstein air base in Germany.
Rustem Umerov also said Austin reaffirmed the “readiness of the United States to provide Ukraine with everything it needs to effectively fight the enemy” during a conversation about continued security assistance.
On November 25, general Christian Freuding, head of the special Ukraine task force at Germany’s ministry of defence, hinted at the possibility of an additional Ramstein-format meeting in December.
Previously, Umerov stressed the importance of the Ramstein format for Ukraine and expressed hope for continued support under Donald Trump’s administration.
Denmark has transferred a second batch of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, further bolstering the country’s air defence capabilities, president Volodymyr Zelensky announced.
The American-made fighter jet has been the front-line combat plane of choice for the NATO alliance and numerous air forces around the world for 50 years.
Although new to Ukraine, the F-16s are older jets which have been donated by Western allies of Ukraine. Zelensky added that the first batch of Danish-provided F-16 jets has already been deployed, and the second one will improve Ukraine’s air defence capabilities against ongoing Russian missile strikes.
“Denmark’s decisive leadership in defending lives stands out,” he wrote in a social media post, adding: “With this additional reinforcement, our air shield is stronger than ever.”
He thanked Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, her team, and the Danish people for their support.
France’s acting Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said Monday that Ukraine should decide when it’s ready to negotiate with Russia on ending the war and Kyiv should do so from a position of strength.
Asked about comments by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump called on the weekend who called for an immediate ceasefire and negotiations between the two countries, Barrot told franceinfo radio a strong Ukraine was also in the United State’s interest.
Devastating human and material losses continue to mount, leaving Ukraine more vulnerable than at any time since the early days of the war.
As of 31 August, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine had documented at least 11,743 civilians killed and 24,614 wounded in Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Ukrainian prosecutors have said 589 Ukrainian children had been killed by 15 November.
Western countries believe Russia has suffered far worse casualties than Ukraine, sometimes losing more than 1,000 soldiers killed per day during periods of intense fighting in the east.
But it is Ukraine, with around a third of Russia’s population, that is likely to be facing the more severe manpower shortages arising from battles of attrition.
Russia now occupies and claims to have annexed around a fifth of Ukraine, an area around the size of Greece.
The draft 2025 budget envisages that about 26% of Ukraine’s GDP, or 2.2 trillion hryvnias ($53.3 billion), would go on defence. Ukraine has already received more than $100 billion from its Western partners in financial aid.
The silent black-and-white surveillance camera video of the Russian missile attack in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro was brief but chilling: Six huge fireballs pierced the darkness and slammed into the ground at astonishing speed.
Within hours of the 21 November attack on the military facility, Vladimir Putin took the rare step of speaking on national TV to boast about the new, hypersonic missile. He warned the West that its next use could be against Ukraine’s Nato allies who allowed Kyiv to use their longer-range missiles to strike inside Russia.
Mr Putin said the missile was called the “Oreshnik” — Russian for “hazelnut tree.”
A Russian attack on a military industrial facility in central Ukraine on Nov. 21 marked the first use of a powerful new weapon -– a hypersonic ballistic missile with multiple warheads
Anna Tsivilyova, the reported daughter of Putin’s cousin, estimates at least 50,000 losses
Around 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in Russia’s full-scale invasion since February 2022, Volodymyr Zelensky saidin a first rare update on the war casualties.
The Ukrainian president said 370,000 injuries had been reported in a post on his social media and said that this tally included soldiers who had been hurt more than once and some of the injuries were said to be minor.
Additionally, around 198,000 Russian soldiers had been killed and a further 550,000 wounded.
Russia and Ukraine have not shared the total military losses in the continuing war and treat the number as a state secret. The latest information from Mr Zelensky comes as a rare admission at a time the incoming US president Donald Trump called for an immediate ceasefire and negotiations between Ukraine and Russia to end “the madness”
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