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Though firm details are still unclear, Ukrainians are watching nervously at how the Trump team has been engaging with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Not long after the conclusion of the joint news conference, Trump wrote on social media that he had had a “lengthy and productive phone call” with Putin to discuss ending the war.
Zelensky has emphasised throughout the war that Ukraine needs its Western allies to provide it with security guarantees that would prevent Russia from using any break in the fighting to regroup and launch another invasion.
Zelensky said at the news conference that he could only discuss the subject of US security guarantees for Ukraine with Trump directly.
Pre-dawn missile strike
Bessent’s visit came hours after Kyiv’s residents were awoken by a pre-dawn Russian ballistic missile attack that killed one person in the city.
On Wednesday, natural gas production sites owned by Ukraine’s state-run energy firm Naftogaz were damaged in a Russian strike on the central Poltava region, prompting Ukraine to ask allies to increase the supply of imported gas. Russia, which has previously focused its missile and drone attacks on the Ukrainian electricity sector, has in recent months sharply stepped up attacks on Ukrainian gas storage facilities and production fields. A Russian strike on a residential building in Poltava killed at least seven people, including three children.
Workers lower into graves the coffins of Kateryna Zapishnya, 38, Diana Zapishnya, 12, Danyil Zapishnyi, 8, and Serhii Zapishnyi, 40, who were killed on February 1 by a Russian strike on a residential building in Poltava, Ukraine.Credit: AP
Ukraine’s underground gas storage facilities are located in the west of the country, while the main production capacity is in the east, in the frontline Kharkiv region, as well as in the Poltava region.
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The prospective minerals deal shows how Ukraine has rapidly reset its foreign policy approach to align with the transactional world view set out by the new occupant of the White House, Ukraine’s most important wartime ally.
Trump’s decision to send his Treasury secretary before any other official was striking in a wartime capital that has been a revolving door for Western security, defence and political officials over almost three years of war.
Bessent has said he supported ratcheting up sanctions on Russia’s oil sector, a move begun by the Biden administration shortly before leaving office.
On Monday, Russia’s point man for relations with the US said that all of Putin’s conditions must be met in full before the war in Ukraine could end.
Those conditions include Ukraine dropping its NATO ambitions and withdrawing its troops from the entirety of the territory of four Ukrainian regions claimed and mostly controlled by Russia, something Kyiv has likened to capitulation.
Reuters
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