Ukraine-Russia battle newest: Angry Trump officers admit quick peace cope with Putin now unlikely

At least one person was killed and several injured, including an infant and a 7-year-old boy, in Russia’s overnight drone attacks on Ukraine, regional officials said early today.

A 45-year-old civilian was killed and two injured in a strike on a settlement near the frontline in the Zaporizhzhia region, the governor of the southeastern Ukrainian region said on his Telegram channel.

An infant, a child and six other civilians were injured in a Russian drone attack on Kharkiv, regional officials there said, in what seemed to be the latest in a series of bombings of the city not far from Russia’s border.

Volodymyr Zelensky has said that a minerals deal that Ukraine and the US are negotiating doesn’t mention his country’s Nato membership in the future.

“As for this agreement and the Nato question, there is no mention of Nato in this agreement, and there never was,” Mr Zelensky said, confirming earlier reports.

“A decision (regarding the deal) will be made in the coming days.”

His remarks come a few days after a source in the presidential office told the Kyiv Independent that Ukraine is “not tying” the minerals deal to Nato.

A Ukrainian overnight drone attack forced the evacuation of at least 60 people when falling drone debris hit their apartment building in the Russian city of Kursk, not far from the border with Ukraine, a regional official said this morning.

“As a result of the attack of enemy drones on Kursk, there is damage to an apartment building in the city centre,” the acting governor of the Kursk region, Alexander Khinshtein, said on Telegram.

“Fortunately, there are no casualties.” The scale of the attack was not clear.

Russia’s air defence units destroyed 93 Ukrainian drones overnight, Russia’s TASS and RIA state news agencies reported this morning.

Nearly all of them, or 87, were destroyed over the Kursk region that borders Ukraine, the agencies reported.

Ukraine will hold in-depth talks with a small group of foreign countries about contributing forces to a contingent that would act as a security guarantee for the war-hit nation, Volodymyr Zelensky said.

“As far as the matter of a contingent goes, we will have a meeting on Friday. It will be a meeting of our military teams, several countries, a narrow circle of countries that will be ready to deploy a contingent in one form or another,” he said.

Mr Zelensky said he was awaiting “more concrete” answers from Kyiv’s allies on their readiness to participate in such a force, an initiative Russia strongly opposes.

The contingent would include a land component, an air component and a presence at sea, he said.

“This will be the first in-depth meeting, (before that) there were consultations. I think we will see some clarifications and some details,” Mr Zelensky said of Friday’s meeting.

He added that it was not only the contingent under discussion. “It is very important how the future of the Ukrainian army will look like,” he said.

Donald Trump must not be misled by Vladimir Putin’s “stalling tactics” to delay peace in Ukraine, outgoing German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said during a visit to Kyiv.

“At the upcoming meeting of Nato foreign ministers, we will make it clear to the American side that we should not engage with Putin’s stalling tactics,” the 44-year-old Greens leader said in a statement released after her arrival in the Ukrainian capital.

Mr Putin is “feigning readiness to negotiate but is not moving one millimetre from his position”, she added.

Donald Trump has accused the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky of “trying to back out” of the minerals deal proposed by Washington as payback for US military aid.

“I see he’s trying to back out of the rare earth deal. And if he does that, he’s got some problems. Big, big problems,” Mr Trump told reporters aboard Air Force Once on Sunday.

“We made a deal on rare earth and now he’s saying, ‘well, you know, I want to renegotiate the deal,” he said.

Mr Trump went on: “He wants to be a member of Nato. Well, he was never going to be a member of Nato. He understands that. So if he’s looking to renegotiate the deal, he’s got big problems.”

The view has been echoed in the US among senior Trump officials brokering peace who have, for weeks, complained privately about Kyiv’s handling of the negotiations and what they view as resistance to a minerals deal with Washington and moving forward with peace talks.

The likelihood of the US successfully achieving a Ukraine peace deal in the next few months has plummeted, according to senior Trump administration officials.

Two US officials familiar with the matter told Reuters that the Trump team is drawing up new plans to pressure both Kyiv and Moscow into peace talks.

In a series of meetings and calls over the weekend, officials inside the White House and State Department acknowledged that Russian president Vladimir Putin is actively resisting Washington’s attempts to strike a lasting peace accord and discussed what, if any, economic or diplomatic punishments could push Russia closer to a deal, the sources said.

Top US officials have for weeks complained privately about Kyiv’s handling of the negotiations and what they view as resistance to a minerals deal with Washington and moving forward with peace talks. But in recent days, the sources said, officials are increasingly frustrated with Moscow.

The growing anger toward Moscow, including from the president himself, marks a shift in the administration’s internal deliberations about Putin’s willingness to negotiate.

When he took office in January, president Donald Trump and his top advisers set out to reach a full ceasefire by April or May, with a lasting peace deal to follow.

But neither agreement appears imminent, the officials said, raising the possibility that the three-year-old war will drag on and that Ukraine will need more Western support for its military operations.

Rebekah Koffler, a former DIA intelligence officer who specializes in Russia’s war strategy, told Fox New that Putin’s goal with his latest conscription drive is to prolong the war.

“There’s no ceasefire and no peace plan between Russia and Ukraine to be had,” said Koffler, the author of a best-selling book “Putin’s Playbook.”

“What President Trump seeks is regretfully, unachievable. Putin’s goal is to keep fighting, in order to compel Ukraine to capitulate.

“Now that Germany and France are considering to deploy reassurance forces into Ukraine, Putin is factoring in those numbers, so he is increasing his force’s posture, to deter such a deployment or failing to prevent it by force.”