Sawt Falasteen - Ukraine war talks enter 'critical week', says US

US President Donald Trump said he thought Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was ready to concede the peninsula, which was annexed by Moscow in 2014.

Trump, who boasted before his inauguration that he could halt Russia's invasion of Ukraine within one day, has launched a diplomatic offensive to stop the fighting since taking office in January.

He cast doubt Saturday over whether Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted an end to the war, which has devastated swaths of eastern Ukraine and killed tens of thousands of people.

The following night, Russia launched drone and missile attacks, killing four people in regions across eastern Ukraine and wounding more than a dozen.

"I want him to stop shooting, sit down, and sign a deal," Trump said Sunday in response to a question on what he wanted from Putin.

"We have the confines of a deal, I believe, and I want him to sign it," Trump added, likely referring to a US-proposed peace plan.

Earlier Sunday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stressed the importance of the week ahead.

"We're close, but we're not close enough" to a deal to halt the fighting, Rubio told broadcaster NBC.

"I think this is going to be a very critical week."

The White House has said that without rapid progress, it could walk away from its role as a broker.

Trump indicated that he would give the process "two weeks".

- Crimea crucial in talks -

Washington has not revealed details of its peace plan, but has suggested freezing the front line and accepting Russian control of Crimea in exchange for peace.

Trump said he thought Zelensky was ready to concede Crimea, despite the Ukrainian leader repeatedly saying he never would.

"Oh, I think so," said Trump in response to a question on whether he thought Zelensky was ready to "give up" the Black Sea peninsula.

Russia, which launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, claims to have annexed four eastern and southern territories of the war-battered country since then, despite not having full military control over them.

Russia holds about 20 percent of Ukraine's territory, including Crimea.

Germany's Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said Sunday that Ukraine should not agree to all territorial concessions to Russia reportedly set out in the deal proposed by Trump.

"Ukraine has, of course, known for some time that a sustainable, credible ceasefire or peace agreement may involve territorial concessions," he told broadcaster ARD.

"But these will certainly not go... as far as they do in the latest proposal from the US president," Pistorius said.

Rubio had a phone call Sunday with Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the foreign ministry in Moscow said.

The pair "emphasised the importance of consolidating the emerging prerequisites for starting negotiations in order to agree on a reliable path to long-term sustainable peace", a statement said.

- N. Korea confirms Kursk fighting -

Kyiv launched a shock cross-border counter-offensive into Kursk in August 2024 and had hoped it could use land in the western Russian region as a bargaining chip in future peace talks with Moscow.

Russia said Saturday it had captured Gornal, the last settlement under Ukrainian control in Kursk -- which Ukraine's army dismissed as "propaganda tricks".

Russian Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov praised the "heroism" of the North Korean soldiers who fought for Russia in the Kursk campaign -- the first time Moscow had admitted their participation in the conflict.

North Korea on Monday confirmed for the first time that it had indeed deployed troops to Russia, with state news agency KCNA reporting that Pyongyang's soldiers helped Moscow reclaim territory in Kursk.

South Korean and Western intelligence agencies have long reported that Pyongyang sent more than 10,000 soldiers to help in Kursk last year.

"They who fought for justice are all heroes and representatives of the honour of the motherland," North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said according to KCNA, with the leader adding that a monument to the "battle feats" would soon be built in the capital.

According to North Korea's Central Military Commission, "the operations for liberating the Kursk area to repel the adventurous invasion of the Russian Federation by the Ukrainian authorities were victoriously concluded".

Several Russian military bloggers who closely monitor the conflict also said fighting was still ongoing around the forests on the border between Russia and Ukraine.

And a local Russian army commander in Kursk said the army was still conducting operations in the region, according to a state television broadcast aired Sunday.

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N.Awad--SF-PST