US and Russia row in public as Moscow masses 50,000 troops near Ukrainian region

The United States and Russia quarrelled in public on Wednesday over the intensifying Ukraine war after US President Donald Trump warned that President Vladimir Putin was “playing with fire”, and Moscow massed 50,000 troops near a Ukrainian region. While world leaders bickered over the prospects for peace, the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II was heating up fast: swarms of drones were being launched by both sides while Russia advanced at key points along the front. Trump, in a post on Truth Social, said that Putin was playing with fire and cautioned that “REALLY BAD” things would have happened already to Russia if it was not for Trump himself. “What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realise is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened in Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD. He’s playing with fire,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Tuesday. Putin’s foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, told a state TV reporter that Trump’s remark suggested that he is not well-briefed on the realities of the war. “Trump is not sufficiently informed about what is really happening in the context of the Ukrainian-Russian confrontation,” Ushakov said. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was clear the Trump administration is making “considerable efforts towards a peaceful settlement” and that Russia was “grateful for the mediation efforts of President Trump personally”. “Just like the United States, Russia has its own national interests, which are above all for us, and they are above all for our president,” Peskov said After speaking to Trump on May 19 for more than two hours, Putin said that he had agreed to work with Ukraine on a memorandum which would set out the contours of a peace accord including the timing of a ceasefire. Russia, Peskov said, was preparing for the next round of negotiations with Ukraine and to continue contacts with the United States. Putin ordered tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops. Russia currently controls just under one fifth of Ukraine. Though Russian advances have accelerated over the past year, the war was costing both Russia and Ukraine dearly in terms of casualties and military spending. Russia said it had downed 296 Ukrainian drones over 13 regions overnight into Wednesday while Ukraine said Russia had launched 88 drones and five ballistic missiles. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia has massed more than 50,000 troops, including some of its best forces, near Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region, but Kyiv had taken steps to prevent them from conducting a large-scale offensive. The build-up came as Russia appeared to be gearing up for a summer offensive in Ukraine while Kyiv waited for Moscow to present a memorandum laying out its conditions to proceed with ceasefire talks. Sumy lies across the border from Russia’s Kursk region where Ukraine previously seized and held a pocket of land for months, before being almost fully pushed out last month, although it says it still held some small areas there. “Their largest, strongest forces are currently on the Kursk front,” Zelensky told reporters on Tuesday. “To push our troops out of the Kursk region and to prepare offensive actions against the Sumy region.” Putin has said he wants a “buffer zone” along Russia’s border with Ukraine. Zelensky said he believed Russia wanted to carve out an area of Ukrainian territory about 10km (6 miles) deep. Russia has captured at least four border villages in the region recently, and has been creeping slowly forwards over the past several weeks on parts of the front line in eastern Ukraine near the city of Kostiantynivka. However, the Ukrainian leader said that the Russians had been pushed back in that area by 4km (2.5 miles) over two days. Zelensky told reporters in a briefing that his government was ready for further peace talks in any format. He said he expected the next round to be at a technical level, but said he would be ready for a three-way meeting with Trump and Putin. He said he did not want the United States to leave the Ukraine peace process, as Washington has threatened to do if progress was not made. Ukraine and Russia swapped 1,000 captives each after a meeting of the two countries’ delegations in Istanbul nearly two weeks ago which failed to produce a ceasefire sought by Ukraine, the US and Europe. Zelensky said he viewed Turkey, the Vatican and Switzerland as the most realistic venues for further negotiations with Russia. He said interest in hosting talks had also been expressed by Malta, as well as unspecified African nations. Reuters previously reported that Moscow does not see the Vatican as a serious venue for talks. Zelensky said Russia had signalled that it wanted talks to take place in Belarus, a suggestion Kyiv regarded as unserious and impossible given Russian troops used the country as a launch pad to invade Ukraine in 2022. Meanwhile, Zelensky was expected to meet with new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Berlin on Wednesday. Germany has been the second-biggest supplier of military aid to Ukraine after the United States. Additional reporting by Associated Press

US and Russia row in public as Moscow masses 50,000 troops near Ukrainian region

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Ukraine-Russian war intensifying as Trump warns Putin he is ‘playing with fire’

Ukraine-Russian war intensifying as Trump warns Putin he is ‘playing with fire’