Ukraine Update…Day 943…Dancing at the UN…..

China and Brazil on Friday pressed ahead with an effort to gather developing countries behind a plan to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, despite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s dismissal of the initiative as serving Moscow’s interests. Seventeen countries attended a meeting on the sidelines of the UN general assembly chaired by China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, and Brazilian foreign policy adviser Celso Amorim. Wang told reporters they discussed the need to prevent escalation in the war, avoid the use of weapons of mass destruction and prevent attacks on nuclear power plants. Zelenskyy, in a speech to the assembly earlier this week, questioned why China and Brazil were proposing an alternative to his own peace formula. Proposing “alternatives, half-hearted settlement plans, so-called sets of principles” would only give Moscow the political space to continue the war, he said.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken, speaking later, after a meeting with Wang, underscored strong US concerns about China’s support for Russia’s defence industrial base. Addressing reporters, he said that China, while saying it seeks an end to the Ukraine conflict, “is allowing its companies to take actions that are actually helping Putin continue the aggression. That doesn’t add up.”

South Korea’s foreign minister said Russia was engaging in illegal arms trade with North Korea, reiterating statements by the US, Ukraine and independent analysts that Pyongyang is supplying rockets and missilesin return for economic and other military assistance from Moscow.Misuse of Russia’s right to veto as a permanent member of the UN security council is hindering the UN’s efforts to end war, foreign minister Cho Tae-yul said during the UN general assembly on Saturday.

Donald Trump met Volodymyr Zelenskyy in New York in a high-stakes meeting at which the Ukrainian leader hoped to repair ties with the former US president. The two men met at Trump Tower on Friday amid a growing feud between Zelenskyy and Republicans that Ukraine fears could sabotage further US military aid if Trump wins in November.

Trump told Zelesnkyy that if he won November’s presidential election he would get the Ukraine war “resolved very quickly”. “We have a very good relationship, and I also have a very good relationship, as you know, with President Putin,” Trump said as he stood next to Zelenskyy before the meeting. “And I think if we win, I think we’re going to get it resolved very quickly … I really think we’re going to get it … but, you know, it takes two to tango.”

The sit-down – which lasted less than an hour – could be Zelenskyy’s last chance to head off a growing conflict with Trump, who has frequently made complimentary remarks about Vladimir Putin and has also at times said he would cut off aid to Ukraine in order to force Kyiv to negotiate a truce – under any terms – with Moscow.

Zelenskyy later described the meeting as “very productive”. He wrote on X: “I presented our Victory Plan, and we thoroughly reviewed the situation in Ukraine and the consequences of the war for our people. Many details were discussed. We share the common view that the war in Ukraine must be stopped. Putin cannot win. Ukrainians must prevail.”

Finland will place a key Nato base less than 200 kilometers (125 miles) from its border with Russia, “sending a message” to its eastern neighbour, the defence ministry said Friday. Finland became a Nato member last year, dropping decades of military non-alignment after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Russia said on Friday it had captured the village of Marynivka in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, where its forces have been pushing towards the important logistics hub of Pokrovsk. Ukraine’s General Staff said nothing about Marynivka changing hands in an evening report, noting that the village was among nearly a dozen localities where Russian forces had “received a fierce rebuff”.

Russia’s FSB security service is investigating three foreign journalists for reporting in parts of Russia’s Kursk region occupied by Ukrainian forces, bringing the total of such investigations to 12. The three, Kathryn Diss and Fletcher Yeung from Australia’s ABC News and Romanian journalist Mircea Barbu, are being investigated for illegally crossing the Russian border, state news agency Ria Novosti reported.

Nine children deported to Russia since Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine returned home on Friday with the help of Qatar acting as an intermediary, Ukraine’s ombudsman said. Dmytro Lubinets, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said the children ranged in age from 13 to 17, with a 20-year-old man also included in the operation. Several suffered from disabilities and a number of them had been taken from an orphanage in southern Kherson region, first to the Russian-held town of Skadovsk and then to Russia itself, Lubinets said.

A Moscow court on Friday began the trial of a 72-year-old American man accused of fighting as a mercenary in Ukraine, Russian news agencies reported. Moscow City Court is hearing a criminal case against the American “over participating as a mercenary in the armed conflict on the side of Ukraine,” Ria Novosti news agency said.

A Russian missile attack on the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih struck a five-storey building housing the regional police department on Friday, killing at least three people and injuring six others, officials said. Three bodies – of a man and two women – were found under the rubble, the regional governor Serhiy Lysak said on the Telegram messaging app.

A Russian drone may have breached the national airspace of Nato member Romania for “a very brief period of under three minutes” overnight during an attack on neighbouring Ukraine, the Romanian defence ministry said on Friday. Three people were killed in the attack, according to Ukrainan officials….