Ukraine Update…Day 1,072…Trump says he’s talkin to Putin about ending the War….

• Donald Trump’s plan for a quick settlement in Ukraine must not only stop the war but also ensure that there can no longer be any more Russian aggression, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said in an interview broadcast on Sunday. Zelenskyy said Ukraine wanted no repeat of the experience of peace accords and talks that failed to produce results in the years running up to Moscow’s February 2022 full-scale invasion. And that, he said, meant putting security guarantees in place. “A frozen conflict will lead to more aggression again and again. Who then will win prizes and go down in history as the victor? No one. It will be an absolute defeat for everyone, both for us, as is important, and for Trump,” Zelenskyy told Britain’s ITV. “If I had an understanding that America and Europe will not abandon us and they will support us and provide security guarantees, I would be ready for any format for talks,” he said.

• The comments were broadcast as Trump indicated that he had been in contact with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, and that progress was being made in its talks to end the war; that would mark the first officially acknowledged conversation between Putin and a US president since early 2022. Asked by reporters onboard Air Force One on Sunday whether he had had his conversation with Putin since becoming president on 20 January or before, Trump said: “I’ve had it. Let’s just say I’ve had it … And I expect to have many more conversations. We have to get that war ended.” He added: “If we are talking, I don’t want to tell you about the conversations,” Trump said. “I do believe we’re making progress. We want to stop the Ukraine-Russia war.” Trump told the New York Post on Friday that he had spoken to Putin, remarking that “I better not say” just how many times. In comments to the outlet Trump said he believed Putin “does care” about the killing on the battlefield but did not say if the Russian leader had presented any concrete commitments to end the nearly three-year conflict.

• Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz said on Sunday that senior US diplomats would be in Europe this week “talking through the details of how to end this war and that will mean getting both sides to the table”. In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press, Waltz said the Russian economy was not doing well and that Trump “is prepared to tax, to tariff, to sanction” Moscow to get Putin to the negotiating table. Waltz also underscored that the Trump administration is looking to use this week’s engagements to begin talks on clawing back some of the United States’ assistance to Ukraine. He said European allies would need to take a greater role in supporting Ukraine going forward.

• Waltz refused to confirm Trump’s comments about speaking to Putin. “There certainly are a lot of sensitive conversations going on,” he told NBC. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the Tass state news agency that he could not neither confirm nor deny a conversation had taken place between Trump and Putin. “I personally may not know something, be unaware of something,” Peskov said.

• Russia launched an overnight drone attack on Kyiv, sparking a fire at a non-residential building in one of the city’s districts, the mayor of the Ukrainian capital said early on Monday. “All emergency services are on site,” Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a post on the Telegram messaging app. “So far, there are no injuries reported.”

• Three Baltic states connected to the European power grid on Sunday after severing Soviet-era links with Russia’s network, a shift EU chief Ursula von der Leyen hailed as “freedom from threats and blackmail”. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – former Soviet states that are now EU and Nato members – had been planning the switch for years, but Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine accelerated the process.

• Russia said on Sunday that its forces had captured the eastern Ukrainian village of Orikhovo-Vasylivka, near the strategic military hub of Chasiv Yar that Moscow is attempting to seize. The defence ministry said in a daily briefing that “as a result of decisive attack actions, the South group of troops liberated the settlement of Orekhovo-Vasilevka in the Donetsk region,” using the Russian name for the village about 10 km (six miles) north of Chasiv Yar and near the road to the Ukraine-held city of Sloviansk.

• An explosion on Sunday on an oil tanker at a port in north-west Russia forced the crew to evacuate and was being investigated, the country’s federal shipping agency said. The Rosmorrechflot maritime and river transport agency wrote on Telegram that “an explosion took place in the engine room” of the Koala in Ust-Luga port west of St Petersburg on Sunday morning. The US in January designated more than 180 Russian ships it assesses to be part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” exporting crude oil despite western sanctions. The Koala is not on this list. Ukraine’s security services in January claimed to have used drones to strike a fuel terminal at Ust-Luga, saying that “through it, Russia sells oil and gas with the help of the ’shadow fleet’”…..

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