Russian invasion Negotiations

Vance to Zelensky before the meeting: “Behave”

Before Monday’s meeting at the White House with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, US Vice President JD Vance told him to behave. He said so in an interview with Fox News.

According to Vance, the comment was a way to break the ice. Their last meeting in the Oval Office in February did not end as well as Monday’s negotiations – then Trump and the vice president berated Zelensky in front of the world’s media.

– I spoke to Zelensky and said “as long as you behave, I will not say anything,” says Vance about Monday’s meeting.

Kallas: Putin wants us to walk into his trap

A swap of territory between Ukraine and Russia is a “trap Putin wants us to walk into”. This is what EU Foreign Affairs Chief Kaja Kallas says in an interview with the BBC.

The Donbas region has long been a strategically important place for Russia. In negotiations with US President Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin put forward a proposal that Donbas be declared Russian in exchange for the front lines being frozen. This is what Kallas is now warning about. She believes that Putin has not yet made a single concession in the negotiations.

– Putin just laughs. He is not stopping the killing, but escalating it, she says.

Expert: They were needed — but Trump has fired them

US President Donald Trump lacks the support of experts he needed in negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. This is reported by the New York Times.

During his term in office, Trump has fired half the staff at the US National Security Council. There are intelligence experts who have helped presidents navigate negotiations for decades. But Trump is confident that he can do without them and that in the end it will be his personal relationship with Putin that will lead to peace in the war in Ukraine, writes the New York Times.

But expert Evelyn N. Farkas, deputy director of the McCain Institute at the University of Arizona, doesn't buy that argument.

"They're flying blind without the expertise. The people who were fired have seen all the intelligence on Putin's intentions. They have agents in place. They know all the information that's been gathered," she says.