Washington (United States) (AFP) – US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky traded barbs Saturday after Washington moved to ease sanctions on Russian diesel and Moscow’s continued strikes on Ukraine killed at least 21 people, including four children.
Trump, whose party faces dim prospects in next month’s midterm elections partly over soaring US fuel prices, announced Friday that he had called Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and agreed to allow Moscow to release large amounts of diesel onto global markets. Ukraine and its European allies expressed dismay at the move, with Zelensky telling reporters Friday it was a “weak decision.” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas meanwhile said on Saturday that lifting sanctions on Russian diesel would only help fuel the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine. “This is not the time to ease pressure on Russia, and Europe won’t,” she wrote online.
Asked about the criticism on Saturday, Trump told reporters that Zelensky had disobeyed his orders not to strike Russian refineries. Trump said the strikes risk worsening global fuel shortages caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran. “He better damn well stop,” Trump said of the strikes, before adding that Ukraine should “get a new president.” “I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal, because he could have made many deals that, for some reason, he never does,” Trump said. Shortly afterwards, UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham reiterated his “complete solidarity” with Zelensky in a call. A statement from his Downing Street office said Burnham had also said the UK would “strengthen its sanctions on Russia.” Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga also backed his president. “He has the support of the Ukrainian people, and they have the right to decide,” he said in a post on X.
Moscow has intensified its deadly bombardment of Ukraine in recent months, sending civilian casualties soaring, while US-led efforts to broker an end to the more than four-and-a-half-year conflict remain deadlocked. Early Saturday, a Russian glide bomb attack on the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia killed 20 people, including three children, according to Ukraine’s state rescue service. “Today, Russia expressed its thanks for the lifting of sanctions on diesel exports by dropping five glide bombs on residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia,” Zelensky said in a post on X. An AFP correspondent at the scene saw rescuers pulling people from the rubble. “We saw people under the rubble — a woman, her husband and a child,” one rescuer, Daniil Pishkin, told AFP. He added that he saw two people rescued from the wreckage but “unfortunately there was a little girl who died.”
A resident of one of the buildings that was hit, who identified herself as Iryna, 69, said she just had time to seek refuge in the bathroom after receiving an air raid warning. Her two neighbors were killed, she said. “They were 75 years old. They were simply thrown out there, onto the street. They didn’t make it to the hospital,” she told AFP. A Russian drone attack on Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region killed an 11-year-old boy, the region’s governor said. Russian strikes triggered widespread power cuts in the capital Kyiv, Ukraine’s DTEK energy provider said, as the city’s mayor reported a strike on a restaurant. AFP reporters heard booms over Kyiv earlier Saturday. The Russian defense ministry said it had hit a “data center” used by Ukraine’s military.
The announcement Friday of the diesel deal came as US, Ukrainian and European officials were meeting in Miami, in a renewed diplomatic push to end the war. Ukraine’s delegation was headed home on Saturday, an aide to Zelensky said. Trump, who has repeatedly touted his credentials as a peacemaker, has long sought to broker a deal since taking office last January. US envoy Steve Witkoff posted to X after the meeting that the “constructive discussions” tackled “potential avenues to de-escalate and conclude the war with Russia ahead of winter and advance efforts toward a durable and lasting peace.” The meeting included “the E3, the European Commission, Ukraine and NATO,” he added. The Kremlin said Saturday that Trump had conveyed his ideas about how to de-escalate the war to Putin during a phone call on Friday. Putin received the proposals “with understanding,” the Kremlin said, without elaborating. Russia, which launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, now occupies roughly one-fifth of Ukrainian territory.
© 2024 AFP
