 "Another Trump deadline passes and.... nothing")
Russia surreptitiously missed a Donald Trump-proclaimed deadline yesterday, but the US president did not make a lot of noise about it, except saying that he is “very disappointed” in President Vladimir Putin.
On July 14, Trump set a 50-day deadline for Putin to get to the negotiating table with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. That deadline passed on September 2 and there is still no sign of a meeting between the two leaders.
In fact, the president stripped that deadline just two weeks after announcing it, cutting that timeframe down to “10 to 12 days” on July 28 before letting that day pass 10 to 12 days later with no significant outcome.
Meanwhile, there have been a number of developments in the backroom and on the frontline.
Russia launches drone barrage
Russian forces launched more than 500 drones and missiles at Ukraine in a large-scale attack that mainly targeted the west of the country and caused power outages, Ukrainian officials said Wednesday.
The barrage also came as UK Defence Secretary John Healey arrived in Ukraine for talks on security cooperation, according to his Ukrainian counterpart.
The head of the northern Chernigiv region, Vyacheslav Chaus, said 30,000 people were left without electricity after drone strikes on “civilian infrastructure”.
Ukraine’s air force said Moscow had fired 502 drones and 24 missiles, while regional officials in the west of the country said several people were wounded and residential homes and civilian infrastructure were damaged.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsTrump says he is ‘disappointed’ in Putin
While Putin was meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in China for the country’s Victory Day parade, Trump said he was “very disappointed” by Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s failure to strike a Ukraine peace deal.
“I’m very disappointed in President Putin, I can say that,” Trump told the Scott Jennings radio show when asked if he felt betrayed by Putin’s response. “We had a great relationship, I’m very disappointed.”
Trump has remained deliberately vague on the Ukraine talks since the Alaska summit, sometimes threatening sanctions against Moscow but at other times saying he may let the two sides fight it out.
With inputs from agencies
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