Category: 2. World

The Kremlin said on Thursday that a summit between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin was set for the “coming days”, with the two sides already having agreed the venue “in principle”.

The summit would be the first between sitting United States and Russian presidents since Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva in June 2021, and comes as Trump seeks to broker an end to Russia’s military assault on Ukraine.

Three rounds of direct talks between Moscow and Kyiv have failed to yield any progress towards a ceasefire, with the two sides appearing far apart in their demands to end the more than three-year-long conflict.

Trump said on Wednesday he was likely to meet Putin face-to-face “very soon”.

“At the suggestion of the American side, an agreement has been reached in principle to hold a bilateral summit in the coming days,” Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov was quoted as saying on Thursday by Russian state news agencies.

“We are now starting to work out the details together with our American colleagues,” Ushakov said.

The Kremlin said a venue had been agreed “in principle”, but did not indicate where the summit could take place.

“Next week has been set as a target date,” Ushakov added.

Zelensky calls for meeting

Tens of thousands have been killed since Russia launched its military offensive on Ukraine in February 2022.

Russian bombardments have forced millions for flee their homes and destroyed swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine.

Putin has resisted multiple calls from the United States, Europe and Kyiv for a ceasefire.

At talks in Istanbul, Russian negotiators have outlined hardline territorial demands if Ukraine wants Russia to halt its advance — calling for Kyiv to withdraw from territory it still controls and renounce Western military support.

Moscow has also repeatedly sought to cast doubt on Zelensky’s legitimacy and ruled out a meeting between the two leaders until after the terms of a peace deal have been agreed.

The announcement of the upcoming summit comes a day after US envoy Steve Witkoff met Putin in Moscow.

Witkoff proposed a trilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, but Russia did not respond to that proposal, Ushakov said.

“The Russian side left this option completely without comment,” he added.

Zelensky earlier on Thursday had refreshed his call for a meeting with Putin — which he says is the only way to make progress towards peace.

“We in Ukraine have repeatedly said that finding real solutions can be truly effective at the level of leaders,” Zelensky wrote on social media.

“It is necessary to determine the timing for such a format and the range of issues to be addressed,” he added.

The Ukrainian leader said on Thursday morning that he had planned to hold “several” conversations throughout the course of the day, including with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz as well as French and Italian officials.

“There will also be communication at the level of national security advisors,” Zelensky added.

“The main thing is for Russia, which started this war, to take real steps to end its aggression,” Zelensky added.

VILLEROUGE LA CREMADE, France — France’s largest wildfire in decades continued to burn and spread Thursday, though at a slower pace, after having already ravaged more than 160 square kilometers (62 square miles) in the south of the country and claiming one life, local authorities said.

The blaze, which started Tuesday and tore through the Corbières massif in the Aude region, has remained uncontained despite the deployment of over 2,100 firefighters and several water bomber aircraft.

The fire’s rapid spread was fueled by weeks of hot, dry weather, though cooler temperatures and calmer winds overnight helped slightly ease the situation.

“The battle continues, we have a fire that is not yet under control,” region administrator Christian Pouget told broadcaster BFMTV.

The fire has swept through 15 communes in the Corbières massif, destroying or damaging at least 36 homes, with a full damage assessment still underway. One person died in their home, and at least 13 others were injured, including 11 firefighters, according to local authorities. Three people were reported missing, the Aude prefecture added.

An investigation is ongoing to determine the cause of the fire, which has left a blackened landscape of skeletal trees and ash.

“It’s very sad to think about the image we’re going to give of our Corbières region, with its devastated landscapes and desperate women and men, not just today or tomorrow, but for weeks and months to come. It will take years to rebuild,” said Xavier de Volontat, the mayor of Saint-Laurent-de-la-Cabrerisse, speaking to BFMTV.

Meanwhile, residents and tourists in nearby areas have been asked to remain in their homes unless told to evacuate. Those who had already fled the flames were sheltered overnight in temporary accommodation centers in 17 municipalities.

The fire, which began in the village of Ribaute, is the most significant France has faced since 1949, according to Agnès Pannier-Runacher, France’s minister for ecological transition.

“The night was cooler, so the fire is spreading more slowly, but it remains the most significant fire France has seen since 1949,” she told France Info radio. “It is a fire that is clearly a consequence of climate change and drought in this region.”

This week’s fire was the biggest since the creation of a national fire database in 2006, according to the national emergency service.

Southern Europe has seen multiple large fires this summer. Scientists warn that climate change is exacerbating the frequency and intensity of heat and dryness, making the region more vulnerable to wildfires. Last month, a wildfire that reached the southern port of Marseille, France’s second-largest city, left around 300 people injured.

Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent, with temperatures increasing at twice the speed of the global average since the 1980s, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

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Petrequin reported from Paris.

Bloomberg via Getty Images

AFP via Getty Images

Vladimir Putin has said he is not ready to meet Volodymyr Zelenskyy, even as the Kremlin said preparations were under way for a set-piece bilateral summit with Donald Trump next week.

“I have nothing against it in general, it is possible, but certain conditions must be created for this,” said Putin of the meeting with Zelenskyy, speaking to reporters at the Kremlin. “But unfortunately, we are still far from creating such conditions.”

On Wednesday, Putin met Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff in the Kremlin. Reports from Washington suggested the Russian president had agreed to meet Trump first and then Zelenskyy in a trilateral format as part of US efforts to bring about the end of the war in Ukraine.

Yet reports on Thursday indicated that the White House and the Kremlin may be further from a summit than Moscow has indicated. A White House official told the New York Post that Trump would only meet Putin if the Kremlin leader met Zelenskyy, something Putin has previously rejected.

And while the Kremlin sounded enthused about the prospect of a set-piece summit, it has denied the topic of a three-way summit with Zelenskyy was raised.

“We propose focusing on preparations for a bilateral meeting with Trump in the first place,” said a Putin aide, Yuri Ushakov, to journalists in Moscow. “As for a three-way meeting, which for some reason Washington was talking about yesterday, this was just something mentioned by the American side during the meeting in the Kremlin. But this was not discussed. The Russian side left this option completely without comment.”

No venue was given for the potential bilateral summit but Putin, who was meeting Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the leader of the United Arab Emirates, in the Kremlin, suggested the UAE could be a suitable place to hold the talks. “We have many friends who are willing to help us organise such events. One of our friends is the president of the United Arab Emirates,” he said.

The prospect of Putin and Trump trying to come to an agreement on Ukraine with no one else in the room is likely to alarm Kyiv and European capitals, who have consistently said that Ukraine must be present for discussions about its fate.

By contrast, Russia favours the idea of a “great powers summit” at which it could try to negotiate with Trump over the heads of Europeans. Kirill Dmitriev, a Kremlin economic adviser, said the meeting would be a good opportunity to directly talk to Trump to prevent “misinformation” about Russia that other countries were using to influence the US president. The summit could become “an important historic event”, he claimed.

Trump called Zelenskyy after Witkoff left Russia on Wednesday. The Nato chief, Mark Rutte, and several European leaders were also on the line.

On Thursday, Zelenskyy was careful not to criticise Trump but said he would spend the day speaking with European allies. “We in Ukraine have repeatedly said that the search for real solutions can become truly effective only at the level of leaders. We need to decide on the time for such a format, with a range of issues,” he wrote in a Telegram post.

Later, he said he had spoken with the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron. “I gave [Macron] our Ukrainian view of the talk between President Trump and European colleagues,” he said. “We are coordinating our positions and we both understand the need for a common European vision of key European security issues.”

Zelenskyy has repeatedly called for direct discussions with Putin, with either Trump or the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as a mediator. Putin has so far dismissed the possibility, suggesting that lower-level negotiation groups should come to an agreement first. However, little progress has been made at a series of direct talks in Turkey, with Moscow sending a junior delegation and not appearing ready for real talks.

In recent weeks, Trump had appeared to take a tougher line with Moscow for the first time in his presidency, calling continued Russian attacks against civilian targets in Ukraine “disgusting” and promising the introduction of new sanctions if progress towards a deal was not made by a deadline of this Friday.

White House officials have said sanctions were still expected and on Wednesday, additional tariffs were announced for India, based on the country’s buying of Russian oil. At the same time, however, Trump seemed satisfied with the outcome of Witkoff’s talks.

Ushakov said the discussions had been “businesslike” and claimed they focused on a bright future of cooperation between Washington and Moscow. “It was reaffirmed that Russian-US relations could be based on a completely different, mutually advantageous scenario, which drastically differs from how they developed in recent years,” he said.

Trump said on Wednesday evening the meeting could happen “very soon”. Some others in Washington seemed less sure. The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said a meeting could take place soon, “but obviously a lot has to happen before that can occur”.

If it goes ahead, it would be the first US-Russia leaders’ summit since Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva in 2021.

DEIR AL-BALAH: A single bowl of eggplant stewed in watery tomato juice must sustain Sally Muzhed’s family of six for the day. She calls it moussaka, but it’s a pale echo of the fragrant, layered meat-and-vegetable dish that once filled Gaza’s kitchens with its aroma.

The war has severed families from the means to farm or fish, and the little food that enters the besieged strip is often looted, hoarded and resold at exorbitant prices. So mothers like Muzhed have been forced into constant improvization, reimagining Palestinian staples with the meager ingredients they can grab off trucks, from airdropped parcels or purchase at the market.

Israel implemented a total blockade on trucks entering the besieged strip in early March and began allowing aid back in May, although humanitarian organizations say the amount remains far from adequate.

Some cooks have gotten inventive, but most say they’re just desperate to break the dull repetition of the same few ingredients, if they can get them at all. Some families say they survive on stale, brittle pita, cans of beans eaten cold for lack of cooking gas, or whatever they can get on the days that they arrive early enough that meals remain available at charity kitchens.

“The children remain hungry. Tomorrow we won’t have any food to eat,” Muzhed said from the tent where her family has been displaced in central Gaza’s Deir Al-Balah.

Once, her bowl would barely have fed one child. Now she ladles it out in spoonfuls, trying to stretch it. Her son asks why he can’t have more.

The Muzhed family’s struggle is being repeated across Gaza as the territory plunges deeper into what international experts have called “the worst-case scenario of famine.”

On some days, mothers like Amani Al-Nabahin manage to get mujaddara from charity kitchens. The dish, once flavored with caramelized onions and spices, is now stripped to its bare essentials of rice and lentils.

“Nearly nine out of ten households resorted to extremely severe coping mechanisms to feed themselves, such as taking significant safety risks to obtain food, and scavenging from the garbage,” the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification said on July 29.

Gas for cooking is scarce, vegetables are costly and meat has all but vanished from the markets.

Families in Gaza once dipped pieces of bread into dukkah, a condiment made of ground wheat and spices. But today, 78-year-old Alia Hanani is rationing bread by the bite, served once a day at noon, allowing each person to dip it in a wartime dukkah made of flour, lentils and bulgur.

“There’s no dinner or breakfast,” the mother of eight said.

Some people don’t even have enough to improvise. All Rehab Al-Kharoubi has for her and her seven children is a bowl of raw white beans.

“I had to beg for it,” she said.

For some, it’s even less. Kifah Qadih, displaced from Khuza’a east of Khan Younis, couldn’t get any food — the bowl in front of her has remained empty all day.

“Today there is no food. There is nothing.”