{"id":131062,"date":"2025-03-24T00:40:38","date_gmt":"2025-03-24T00:40:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/ukraine-russia-war-live-ceasefire-talks-resume-as-trump-envoy-praises-putin-the-independent\/"},"modified":"2025-03-24T00:40:38","modified_gmt":"2025-03-24T00:40:38","slug":"ukraine-russia-war-live-ceasefire-talks-resume-as-trump-envoy-praises-putin-the-independent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/ukraine-russia-war-live-ceasefire-talks-resume-as-trump-envoy-praises-putin-the-independent\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine-Russia war live: Ceasefire talks resume as Trump envoy praises Putin – The Independent"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Trump envoy Steve Witkoff says: \u2018I don\u2019t regard Putin as a bad guy. He\u2019s super smart.\u2019
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Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s special envoy Steve Witkoff has praised Vladimir Putin<\/a>, saying he \u201cliked\u201d the Russian president as US-brokered ceasefire discussions<\/a> got under way in Saudi Arabia.
\u201cI don\u2019t regard Putin as a bad guy<\/a>. He\u2019s super smart,\u201d Mr Witkoff told far-right commentator Tucker Carlson<\/a>, while also dismissing Sir Keir Starmer\u2019s plan for a \u201ccoalition of the willing\u201d<\/a> to provide military security guarantees to Ukraine<\/a> as \u201ca posture and a pose\u201d.
His remarks came as Ukrainian officials met with US counterparts in Riyadh on Sunday to discuss a ceasefire<\/a>, with Russian officials set to follow suit on Monday \u2013 marking the first such parallel peace talks since the early days of Moscow\u2019s full-scale invasion.
As the Ukrainian round of talks concluded on Sunday night, Kyiv\u2019s defence minister Rustem Umerov said they had been \u201cconstructive and meaningful\u201d discussions, focused particularly on the energy sector.
Just hours earlier, officials said at least seven people were killed \u2013 including a five-year-old child \u2013 as Russia<\/a> launched an overnight barrage of drones at Kyiv<\/a>.<\/a> <\/a>The drones hit apartment buildings and sparked several fires throughout Ukraine<\/a>\u2019s capital despite Moscow agreeing to a limited ceasefire<\/a>, officials said.
The electronic hum in the sky above told him that the Russians<\/a> were on a hunting safari and that he was the prey. Leaping from his bicycle, Oleksandr left its wheels spinning as he bolted through a hole in a fence hoping to find cover.
Horrified to discover he was still in the open air, he threw himself against the fence, hoping to blend in, to somehow hide. The drone<\/a> tracked sideways, hung above him, and dropped its bomb.
The explosion tore a chunk of his leg away.
Read the full article here: <\/em>
Officials from Ukraine and Russia are holding ceasefire talks in Saudi Arabia, as US president Donald Trump reportedly pushes to secure a truce in time for Easter.
Kyiv\u2019s delegation sat down with Washington\u2019s team in Riyadh on Sunday night, with Moscow set to separately follow suit on Monday \u2013 in what are believed to be the first such parallel peace talks since the early days of Vladimir Putin\u2019s full-scale invasion.
Here, The Independent<\/em> takes a look at what to expect from the US-led talks in Saudi Arabia, which came just hours after Russia killed seven people \u2013 including a five-year-old child \u2013 in overnight drone strikes on Kyiv, and four people in Donetsk:
Russian president Vladimir Putin<\/a>‘s top security adviser Sergei Shoigu has landed in North Korea and plans to meet its leader Kim Jong Un, the TASS news agency reported on Friday, his latest visit amid dramatic advances in security relations between the two countries.
The TASS report did not provide further details and North Korea’s state media did not report on Mr Shoigu’s arrival.
Mr Shoigu, Russia\u2019s defence minister until last May and secretary of the Security Council since then, had earlier made visits to Pyongyang as North Korea allegedly geared up to deploy soldiers to fight for Russia in its war against Ukraine.
Read the full article here: <\/em>
In remarks that will do little to assuage European fears that the White House is increasingly parroting Kremlin propaganda, Donald Trump\u2019s special envoy has claimed that the \u201celephant in the room\u201d in peace talks is whether Ukraine\u2019s president Volodymyr Zelensky can acknowledge Moscow\u2019s claimed right to Crimea and four \u201cRussian-speaking\u201d regions in eastern Ukraine.
Despite being unable to name two of the four mainland regions \u2013 which Mr Putin partly occupies, and attempted to illegally annex following sham referenda in September 2022 \u2013 and using the Russian name for a third, Steve Witkoff said he believed the \u201ccentral issue\u201d in the conflict was whether Ukraine would relent control of them to Moscow.
Claiming an \u201coverwhelming majority\u201d of residents in the contested regions had indicated a preference for Russian rule, despite reports of ballots being cast at gunpoint, Mr Witkoff went on to claim that \u201cthe Russians are de facto in control of these territories\u201d.
Many thousands of Ukrainians have given their lives to defend territory in Donetsk and Luhansk since 2014, and in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson since Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion three years ago. While Moscow currently controls most of Donetsk and Luhansk, they hold minimal territory in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, with fierce fighting still ongoing in all four regions.
Read the full report here:<\/em>
Ukraine\u2019s defence minister Rustem Umerov said talks with the US delegation in Saudi Arabia on Sunday were \u201cconstructive and meaningful\u201d.
\u201cWe discussed key issues, particularly the energy sector,\u201d Mr Umerov said in a post on social media.
Mr Umerov led the Ukrainian delegation for the talks on Sunday, which will be followed by a meeting between Russian and US officials on Monday\u00a0\u2013 marking the first such parallel peace talks since the early days of Vladimir Putin\u2019s full-scale invasion.
At the this moment of peril for our continent<\/a>, it has never been more important for politicians to say what we really think.
So when I give my speech to Liberal Democrat conference<\/a>, it won\u2019t surprise you that I\u2019ll be talking a lot about Donald Trump and Nigel Farage<\/a>. But it might surprise you that I\u2019m also going to talk about church roofs. (Stay with me on this please\u2026 I know it sounds weird, but I am a Liberal Democrat.)
I know what you\u2019re thinking and you\u2019re right. It\u2019s easy for me to criticise Trump, since I\u2019m not the prime minister and I don\u2019t have to sit across from him in the Oval Office. But let me tell you something: week after week I look at the Labour benches as I tell Keir Starmer that Donald Trump is an unreliable ally, and I see most of the cabinet trying desperately not to nod in agreement.
Read the full article here: <\/em>
The Ukrainian delegation at Sunday’s meeting with the U.S. will be led by defence minister Rustem Umerov. President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier said this fact would allow Kyiv to act in a “very quick and very substantive” way.
However, Ukrainian officials have said they still see Sunday’s meeting in Riyadh as purely technical.
Heorhii Tykhyi, foreign ministry spokesperson, said on Friday the Ukrainian and American sides were due “to clarify the modalities, the nuances of possible different ceasefire regimes, how to monitor them, how to control them, in general, what is included in their scope”.
Last Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to Trump’s proposal for Russia and Ukraine to stop attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure for 30 days and ordered the Russian military to cease them.
The agreement fell short, however, of a wider agreement that the U.S. had sought, and which Kyiv backed, for a blanket 30-day truce in the war.
Russia\u2019s Security Council secretary Sergei Shoigu<\/a> thanked Kim Jong Un for North Korea\u2019s ongoing support in its war against Ukraine<\/a> during a visit today, Russian state-owned news agency Tass reported.
North Korea has supplied vast amounts of weapons to Russia including artillery and ballistic missiles, and has sent up to 12,000 troops to support Russia\u2019s army<\/a> in its war with Ukraine, according to intelligence officials from the US, South Korea and Ukraine.
In late February, South Korea’s spy agency said North Korea appeared to have sent additional troops to Russia. South Korean media put the number of newly sent North Korean soldiers at about 1,000 to 3,000.
Read the full article here: <\/em>
Ukrainians at the scene of the attacks in Kyiv surveyed the damage done to their homes and neighborhoods on Sunday morning.
Many were disparaging of the upcoming ceasefire talks, pointing to the burned out homes destroyed in the drone attack, saying these were more indicative of Russia’s true intentions.
In an old multistory building on Kyiv’s left bank that was damaged in the overnight attack, Dmytro Zapadnya, 37, said he had no faith in Russia upholding any ceasefire agreement.
“There is no point in signing anything (with Russians), because it will not be worth the cost of paper where you put this signature. Well, the only thing that is not very pleasant is that now the United States seems to have little understanding of our situation,” he said.
Donald Trump<\/a> and Russian President Vladimir Putin<\/a> have both insisted that Ukraine\u2019s<\/a> forces in Kursk are surrounded by Russian troops<\/a> and are in imminent danger, but U.S. intelligence reports have contradicted those claims.
A trio of U.S. and European officials familiar with intelligence details of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine told Reuters<\/a> that the situation on the ground does not reflect the comments made by Trump and Putin.
One of the U.S. officials also said that the White House was briefed on the actual situation in Ukraine<\/a>, so it\u2019s unclear why Trump has and continues to claim that Ukrainian troops<\/a> in Russia’s Kursk region are surrounded.
Read the full article here: <\/em>
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Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged inTrump envoy Steve Witkoff says: \u2018I don\u2019t regard Putin as a bad guy. He\u2019s super smart.\u2019From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":131063,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-131062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}