{"id":115351,"date":"2024-11-16T10:11:42","date_gmt":"2024-11-16T10:11:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/ukraine-russia-war-zelensky-says-scholz-has-opened-pandoras-box-after-putin-call-the-independent\/"},"modified":"2024-11-16T10:11:42","modified_gmt":"2024-11-16T10:11:42","slug":"ukraine-russia-war-zelensky-says-scholz-has-opened-pandoras-box-after-putin-call-the-independent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/ukraine-russia-war-zelensky-says-scholz-has-opened-pandoras-box-after-putin-call-the-independent\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine-Russia war: Zelensky says Scholz has opened \u2018Pandora\u2019s box\u2019 after Putin call – The Independent"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Zelensky said the call between Scholz and Putin is part of the latter\u2019s strategy to avoid changing policy
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Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky<\/a> has criticised German chancellor Olaf Scholz<\/a> for speaking with Russian president Vladimir Putin<\/a> over the phone for the first time in two years.
Mr Scholz urged Putin to pull his forces out of Ukraine<\/a> and open talks with Kyiv in order to set the region on course for a \u201cjust and lasting peace\u201d.
The Kremlin<\/a> said that Berlin<\/a> had requested the conversation, and Putin told Mr Scholz that any agreement to end the war in Ukraine must take into account \u201cnew territorial realities\u201d.
Mr Zelensky said the call \u201copens Pandora\u2019s Box\u201d, claiming it is \u201ccritical for [Putin] to weaken his isolation, as well as Russia\u2019s isolation, and to hold mere talks that will lead nowhere\u201d.
This is a decades-old strategy which has \u201callowed Russia to avoid making any changes to its policies, effectively doing nothing, which has ultimately led to this war,\u201d Mr Zelensky added.
\u201cWe understand all the current challenges and we know what to do. And we want to make it clear: there will be no \u2018Minsk-3\u2019; we need real peace,\u201d he said, referring to the peace agreement signed in 2015 which granted self-governance to certain areas of Donbas.
Russian forces have captured two villages in Ukraine\u2019s eastern Donetsk region, Russian news agencies cited the defence ministry as saying on Saturday.
The villages of Makarivka, just over 100km west of Donetsk city, and Leninskoye, the ministry claims according to Reuters.
It comes as Russia continues to progress in its offensive on the eastern Ukrainian front.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has criticized German chancellor Olaf Scholz for his call with Russian president Vladimir Putin as opening a \u201cPandora\u2019s box\u201d.
\u201cThis is exactly what Putin has been wanting for a long time: it is extremely important for him to weaken his isolation, Russia\u2019s isolation, and to have normal negotiations that will not end in anything,\u201d Mr Zelensky said.
During the first phone call in nearly two years, Mr Scholz urged Mr Putin to withdraw his troops and end the full-scale invasion launched in February 2022.
After months spent occupying a swathe of territory in Russia in the wake of a daring summer assault, Volodymyr Zelensky has claimed that Ukraine is now engaged against a force of 50,000 troops amassed by Vladimir Putin in the border Kursk region.
However, Moscow is now pushing to retake the territory. Following reports that thousands of North Korean troops have been stationed in Kursk, Ukraine\u2019s military has claimed that Russia has suffered two consecutive days of record losses \u2013 suggesting the fight is gaining a new intensity.
The Independent <\/em>has spoken to analysts about how the situation may develop in the weeks and months to come:
Experts tell Andy Gregory and Tom Watling that the real question is how much Kyiv\u2019s troops are able to inflict casualties on the Russians as the price for taking the territory back
President Joe Biden is expected to use his final meeting with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, to urge him to dissuade North Korea from further deepening its support for Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Today\u2019s talks on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru will take place just over two months before Biden leaves office and makes way for Republican president-elect Donald Trump.
It will be Mr Biden’s last check-in with Mr Xi \u2014 someone the Democrat saw as his most consequential peer on the world stage.
With the final meeting, officials say Biden will be looking for Mr Xi to step up Chinese engagement to prevent an already dangerous moment with North Korea from further escalating.
Mr Biden along with South Korean president Yoon Seok Yul and Japan’s prime minister Shigeru Ishiba yesterday condemned North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s decision to send thousands of troops to help Moscow repel Ukrainian forces who have seized territory in Russia’s Kursk border region.
Mr Biden called it “dangerous and destabilising cooperation.”
White House officials also have expressed frustration with Beijing, which accounts for the vast majority of North Korea’s trade, for not doing more to rein in Pyongyang.
Embattled chancellor Olaf Scholz has insisted that the war in Ukraine constitutes a financial emergency for Germany \u2013 which would open up the possibility of more spending.
In an interview with the Sueddeutsche Zeitung<\/em> newspaper, Mr Scholz said that, at the start of the war in February 2022, Germany had no idea how long the conflict would last or how long over 1 million Ukrainian refugees would need protection in the country.
\u201cThe misjudgement we made back then does not prevent us from doing the right thing today. Russia\u2019s war is an extraordinary event that justifies a financial emergency \u2013 and therefore higher spending,\u201d said Scholz, while also calling for a moderate change in the debt rule that currently limits public spending.
\u201cA reform will not solve all of our financial problems, but it will make our path a little easier,\u201d he added.
Japanese foreign minister Takeshi Iwaya landed in the Ukrainian capital today for an unannounced visit in an apparent show of unity with the war-ravaged country.
Mr Iwaya traveled to Kyiv by train from Poland after visiting Peru for a regional economic meeting, the foreign ministry said.
The top diplomat will meet his Ukrainian counterpart Andrii Sybiha and hold talks with president Volodymyr Zelensky later in the day, Mainichi<\/em> reported.
A London-based exiled Russian television chef has been found dead in Serbia.
Alexei Zimin, 52, was an outspoken critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin\u2019s Crimea annexation. He was found dead in a hotel room in Belgrade earlier this week, according to Russian media. He was travelling to the Serbian capital to promote his new book on Britain, entitled Anglomania<\/em>.
According to the Serbian authorities, there were \u201cno suspicious circumstances\u201d in Zimin\u2019s death. An autopsy and toxicology investigation was underway, according to BBC News.
Zimin spent his final years in exile in the UK and ran a cookery show on the Russian NTV channel. But the show was stopped after he issued anti-war messages on social media in the wake of Putin\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Russia\u2019s state-owned natural gas company Gazrom will cut off supplies to Austria\u2019s OMV utility today Austria\u2019s chancellor said.
He added that his country\u2019s underground gas storage was full and that it had alternative, non-Russia supplies.
The cutoff follows OMV\u2019s announcement that it would stop paying for Gazprom gas to its Austrian arm to offset a \u00a3192m arbitration award it won over an earlier cutoff of gas to its German subsidiary.
Chancellor Karl Nehammer said yesterday that Austria has a secure supply of alternative fuel and that \u201cno one will freeze this winter, no home will be cold.\u201d
More here.<\/em>
Austria’s chancellor says Russia\u2019s state-owned natural gas company Gazrom will cut off supplies early Saturday to Austrian utility OMV<\/p>\n

After months spent occupying a swathe of territory in Russia in the wake of a daring summer assault, Volodymyr Zelensky has claimed that Ukraine is now engaged against a force of 50,000 troops amassed by Vladimir Putin in the border Kursk region.
The Ukrainian incursion was the largest on Russian soil since the Second World War and succeeded in taking Moscow \u2013 and even Kyiv\u2019s closest allies \u2013 by surprise.
But despite Ukrainian troops\u2019 success in bedding into positions deep into Kursk, the offensive received a mixed reaction from analysts, with some questioning the wisdom of drawing vital defensive power away from the fight in Ukraine\u2019s eastern Donbas region, where Mr Putin\u2019s forces have been making steady, grinding gains for months.
Andy Gregory and Tom Watling report.<\/em>
Experts tell Andy Gregory and Tom Watling that the real question is how much Kyiv\u2019s troops are able to inflict casualties on the Russians as the price for taking the territory back
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