“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity” ~llaw
Mar 17, 2025
Firefighters work at the site of an apartment building hit by a Russian drone strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Chernihiv, Ukraine March 16, 2025. REUTERS/Maksym Kishka
LAW’s NUCLEAR WORLD NEWS of TODAY with the RISKS and CONSEQUENCES of TOMORROW
In My Opinion:
Let’s see how this telecon between Putin and Trump turns out on Tuesday, and is it not odd that Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy is not allowed to be a part of the conversation and decision-making? It’s as if Russia and the United States have no respect for Ukraine and will force the country’s future subject to the whims of the two international powers who will demand natural resources, land areas, and even whether or not Ukraine can join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Does all of this ultimately mean that Ukraine’s desire to become a democratic republic nation as a part of the “free world” will never happen, likely forcing their country to be dominated by Putin’s dream for a larger and more powerful USSR?
What Russia wants from Ukraine and other European ‘free world’ countries is not a whole lot different than Trump’s desire to annex Canada, Greenland, and Panama for the United States, a country that suddenly seems to be on its way to becoming a Russian twin companion both massive in territory and identical in politics — as well as military might. ~llaw
Trump and Putin to discuss power plants, land in talks to end Ukraine war
By Nathan Layne and Jeff Mason
March 17, 202511:21 AM PDTUpdated 2 hours ago
- Summary
- Trump sees ‘good chance’ to end war in Ukraine
- Trump will speak with Putin on Tuesday over ceasefire proposal
- Kremlin confirms Putin to speak with Trump by phone
- Ukraine supports 30-day ceasefire proposal
- Russia demands Ukraine’s neutrality, exclusion from NATO
WASHINGTON, March 17 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said he would speak to Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Tuesday about ending the Ukraine war, with territorial concessions by Kyiv and control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant likely to feature prominently in the talks.
“We want to see if we can bring that war to an end,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One during a flight to the Washington area from Florida. “Maybe we can, maybe we can’t, but I think we have a very good chance.
“I’ll be speaking to President Putin on Tuesday. A lot of work’s been done over the weekend.”
Trump is trying to win Putin’s support for a 30-day ceasefire proposal that Ukraine accepted last week, as both sides continued trading heavy aerial strikes early on Monday and Russia moved closer to ejecting Ukrainian forces from their months-old foothold in the western Russian region of Kursk.
Asked what concessions were being considered in ceasefire negotiations, Trump said: “We’ll be talking about land. We’ll be talking about power plants … We’re already talking about that, dividing up certain assets.”
Trump gave no details but he appeared to be referring to the Russian-occupied facility in Ukraine, Europe’s largest nuclear plant. Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of risking an accident at the plant with their actions.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told a regular briefing on Monday that “there’s a power plant that is on the border of Russia and Ukraine that was up for discussion with the Ukrainians, and he (Trump) will address it in his call with Putin tomorrow.” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed on Monday that Putin would speak with Trump by phone but declined to comment on Trump’s remarks about land and power plants.
The Kremlin said on Friday that Putin had sent Trump a message about his ceasefire plan via U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff, who held talks in Moscow, expressing “cautious optimism” that a deal could be reached to end the three-year conflict.
In separate appearances on Sunday TV shows in the United States, Witkoff, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Trump’s National Security Adviser, Mike Waltz, emphasized there were still challenges to be worked out before Russia agrees to a ceasefire, much less a final peaceful resolution to the war.
Asked on ABC whether the U.S. would accept a peace deal in which Russia was allowed to keep Ukrainian territory that it has seized, Waltz replied: “We have to ask ourselves, is it in our national interest? Is it realistic? … Are we going to drive every Russian off of every inch of Ukrainian soil?”
“We can talk about what is right or wrong but also have to talk about the reality of the situation on the ground,” he said, adding that the alternative to finding compromises on land and other issues was “endless warfare” and even World War Three.
‘IRONCLAD’ GUARANTEES
Firefighters work at the site of an apartment building hit by a Russian drone strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Chernihiv, Ukraine March 16, 2025. REUTERS/Maksym Kishka
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said he sees a good chance to end the war after Kyiv accepted the U.S. proposal for a 30-day interim ceasefire.
However, Zelenskiy has consistently said the sovereignty of his country is not negotiable and that Russia must surrender the territory it has seized. Russia seized the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and now controls most of four eastern Ukrainian regions since it invaded the country in 2022.
Zelenskiy has not responded publicly to Waltz’s remarks.
Russia will seek “ironclad” guarantees in any peace deal that NATO nations exclude Kyiv from membership and that Ukraine will remain neutral, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko told Russian media outlet Izvestia in remarks published on Monday that made no reference to the ceasefire proposal.
“We will demand that ironclad security guarantees become part of this agreement,” Izvestia cited Grushko as saying.
Putin says his actions in Ukraine are aimed at protecting Russia’s national security against what he casts as an aggressive and hostile West, in particular NATO’s eastward expansion. Ukraine and its Western partners say Russia is waging an unprovoked war of aggression and an imperial-style land grab.
Moscow has demanded that Ukraine drop its NATO ambitions, that Russia keep control of all Ukrainian territory seized, and that the size of the Ukrainian army be limited. It also wants Western sanctions eased and a presidential election in Ukraine, which Kyiv says is premature while martial law is in force.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said on Monday that the conditions demanded by Russia to agree to a ceasefire showed that Moscow does not really want peace.
Finland’s Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen said the onus should be on Russia as the invading country, not Ukraine, to make concessions “because otherwise you would be compromising international law.”
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Monday that “a significant number” of nations – including Britain and France – were willing to send peacekeeping troops to Ukraine in the event of a peace deal with Russia. Defence chiefs will meet this week to firm up plans.
Russia has ruled out peacekeepers until the war has ended.
“If they appear there, it means that they are deployed in the conflict zone with all the consequences for these contingents as parties to the conflict,” Russia’s Grushko said.
“We can talk about unarmed observers, a civilian mission that would monitor the implementation of individual aspects of this agreement, or guarantee mechanisms. In the meantime, it’s just hot air.”
Reporting by Nathan Layne, Jeff Mason, David Ljunggren, Julia Harte, Lidia Kelly, Additional reporting by Bart Meijer in Brussels, Writing by Michael Perry, Gareth Jones and David Brunnstrom Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan, Angus MacSwan, Sharon Singleton and Rod Nickel
Thomson Reuters
Jeff Mason is a White House Correspondent for Reuters. He has covered the presidencies of Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden and the presidential campaigns of Biden, Trump, Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain. He served as president of the White House Correspondents’ Association in 2016-2017, leading the press corps in advocating for press freedom in the early days of the Trump administration. His and the WHCA’s work was recognized with Deutsche Welle’s “Freedom of Speech Award.” Jeff has asked pointed questions of domestic and foreign leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. He is a winner of the WHCA’s “Excellence in Presidential News Coverage Under Deadline Pressure” award and co-winner of the Association for Business Journalists’ “Breaking News” award. Jeff began his career in Frankfurt, Germany as a business reporter before being posted to Brussels, Belgium, where he covered the European Union. Jeff appears regularly on television and radio and teaches political journalism at Georgetown University. He is a graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and a former Fulbright scholar.Subscribed
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