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Ukraine will not discuss limits to its armed forces or enforced neutrality at November meeting, president says. What we know on day 1,706 A trilateral meeting between Kyiv, Washington and Moscow will take place in November aiming to restart stalled Russia-Ukraine peace talks, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said . “We are ready to talk. If it’s a territorial issue, it must be addressed at a leadership level. Other issues fall within the remit of the technical groups. All this can therefore be discussed in November,” the Ukrainian president said on Sunday in an interview. Zelenskyy also renewed his push ⁠for a meeting between him and Vladimir Putin, believing that Putin is the only person ​in Russia who can make major decisions to end ​the war. Zelenskyy says that at the trilateral talks, Ukraine will not discuss limits to its armed forces, or enforced postwar neutrality . Kyiv has long sought entry into Nato despite the reticence of some members. Meanwhile, US warnings about imminent ⁠Russian ballistic missile strikes, critical to Ukraine’s air defences, have been fully restored , according to Zelenskyy. He told Ukraine’s ⁠TSN television channel that SpaceX’s ​Starshield satellite internet had been working at speeds of up to 420km/h since early on Saturday, after a meeting with the US special envoy Steve Witkoff in Oslo. Starshield was throttled earlier in October amid diplomatic pressure on Kyiv from Washington. The US has been trying to pressure Ukraine to suspend strikes on Russian oil refineries , which it says push energy prices higher. However, Zelenskyy has repeatedly said Kyiv will only stop the strikes if Moscow stops hitting Ukraine’s power infrastructure, or if the US allows Ukraine to use of Starshield ‌over Russia to detect launch places of its ballistic missiles, or if it supplies Ukraine with Patriot missiles. Zelenskyy on Sunday said Russia had launched nearly 2,300 drones targeting Ukrainian cities over the past week , renewing his call on western allies to speed up deliveries of interceptors. “This week alone, Russia has launched about 1,600 guided bombs, 48 missiles of various types, including ballistic missiles, and almost 2,300 strike drones at Ukraine,” he wrote in an online post. Russia’s defence ⁠ministry said on ⁠Sunday ​its drones had struck a ⁠cargo vessel bound for the Black Sea port of ⁠Chornomorsk in an overnight ​attack ‌and another cargo ‌vessel en route to the ‌port of Odesa during the day. The ministry said the vessels were being used to supply the Ukrainian army. Russian ‌forces also hit a logistics centre, a ​distribution centre and a logistics terminal in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv overnight. Reuters could not confirm the reports. A Ukrainian drone attack overnight on the Russian border city ⁠of Belgorod killed ⁠three people ​and injured 13, local authorities said on Sunday , while ⁠a separate drone strike later in the day killed another person. The overnight attack on Belgorod ​damaged 30 apartment buildings, regional governor ⁠Alexander Shuvayev said. The presidential election in Bulgaria on Sunday ended inconclusively, with the next head of state to be picked in a runoff. In a surprisingly strong performance, the candidate of the pro-western reformist opposition, Andrey Gyurov, will face the incumbent leftist president, Iliana Yotova. Iotova opposes military aid to Ukraine and favours dialogue with Russia, while Gyurov has often expressed firm support for Kyiv . The vote was held amid security concerns after a series of drone attacks on ships in the Black Sea . Continue reading...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earned his first millions in Moscow and should leverage those ties to negotiate with Vladimir Putin, says ex-aide.

Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov, an adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin and former ambassador to the U.S., said on Sunday that upcoming talks between the U.S., Ukraine and Russia should include more of Europe.

President Donald Trump blames Ukraine for continuing its defensive war against Russia. He does so even as Ukraine has agreed to ceasefires proposed by Trump but rejected or broken systematically by Russia. Trump pretends that Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s energy network are intended to increase American gas prices rather than, as they are, to drain […]

The woman who watched French rioters destroy her livelihood. Inside the annual conference where men learn how to get laid. And more. It’s Friday, October 23. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Kara Kennedy attends SlutCon, where “flirt girls” teach awkward men how to get laid. A Parisian bakery owner shares a harrowing first-person account of watching rioters loot her store. And much more. But first: the method to Trump’s foreign policy madness. Anyone hoping to keep up with U.S. foreign policy this week had their work cut out for them. The week began with news that Russian president Vladimir Putin had proposed a summit to discuss Ukraine. The participants? Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping—but not Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump reportedly did not reject the proposal. Then we learned that Elon Musk had green-lit a slowdown of a military-grade Starlink that Ukraine uses for many of its drones. If this all sounds backward to you, you’re not alone. “Confused is how many people today feel about U.S. foreign policy,” Niall Ferguson writes in our lead story today. “For some people,” he continues, “the only possible explanation for all of this is that President Donald Trump is simply a crazed man-child emperor.” Those people would be wrong, he says. “To understand Trump’s approach to foreign policy, and particularly his counterintuitive approach to the war in Ukraine, you have to understand the debt he . . . owes to a 20th-century president: Richard Nixon.” Read Niall’s column to understand how the 47th president’s strategy borrows a page from the 37th’s—and the one key difference that may determine whether Trump ultimately succeeds. Still, Trump’s apparent courting of Putin is hard for many to stomach. That’s especially true when you consider the case of Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter who was imprisoned by Russia for 491 days on trumped-up espionage charges. Evan has written a new book about his time in prison, and today he talks to Tanya Lukyanova about his experience, his thoughts on ongoing hostage diplomacy, and what Putin still gets wrong about him. Click below to watch the interview. —The Editors EDITORS’ PICKS The biggest story this week was the rioting in France, and for the past five days, we’ve brought you a series of stories to help make sense of the violence. With unrest threatening to resume this weekend, don’t miss Douglas Murray, Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, and Nora Bussigny on the essential questions raised by the riots: Who is behind them, what is at stake, and can French culture and the Republic endure their aftermath? In case you missed it, we recently brought a new columnist aboard. Ross Douthat is writing for The Free Press every Thursday, and this week, he took on a topic he knows better than almost anyone: the so-called religious revival in the West. Despite the cultural cachet enjoyed by today’s Catholics, he wrote, “the form of Christianity that’s most adapted to late-modern America” isn’t Catholicism—“it’s evangelical Protestantism.” In his latest column, he revealed why the sect of Christianity most often criticized by the left has more to teach us about ourselves than we might think. In the early 20th century, Portsmouth, Ohio, was a bustling metropolis, home to an NFL team and booming manufacturing plants. Then, in the 1990s, the town was hollowed out by deindustrialization and devastated by the opioid crisis, swiftly becoming the “pill mill” capital of America. Today, it’s been overrun by addicts seeking treatment, leading to the emergence of a new cottage industry: substance abuse recovery. But when Frannie Block went to Portsmouth, she found something troubling: an industry that locals say is rife with exploitation, abuse, and fraud. Her latest investigation takes us to a forgotten corner of America, where the cure to the opioid crisis may have become worse than the disease. It’s a…

Both Putin and Zelenskyy said Thursday they were open for peace negotiations, even as they continued strikes overnight.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe leads an agency that’s at war with Russia, even as Trump makes nice with Putin.

The US president is portraying Zelenskyy as the villain as he strives for Russia’s approval If Donald Trump could, he would fly to Munich to sign away Ukraine to Vladimir Putin, and return to wave the document as “peace in our time”, hoping to claim at least the second Fifa peace prize. Whatever the complicated motives of Neville Chamberlain, his well-grounded fear after the carnage of a world war of another apocalypse and his wishful thinking that Hitler would be satiated after carving up Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain had not sent his son-in-law and former golf partner and real estate partner in advance to cut back-end deals with the Nazis to profit for his family and cronies. Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man , Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth . He is a Guardian US columnist and co-host of the Court of History podcast Continue reading...

Evelyn Farkas, McCain Institute executive director and former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, says it's a moral problem for the US that Starlink speeds were slowed while Ukrainians were trying to intercept missiles and drones targeting civilians. Farkas says Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to signal openness to negotiations while maintaining his maximalist claims and continuing attacks on Ukrainians. Farkas says Putin is trying to get European countries to stop supporting Ukraine and says a diesel deal with President Donald Trump came out of a call between the two leaders. She speaks with Kailey Leinz and Joe Mathieu on Bloomberg’s "Balance of Power." (Source: Bloomberg)

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that future talks on a settlement of the war in Ukraine should focus on security guarantees for both countries and an overall framework for security throughout Europe.

John Hardie, the deputy director of the FDD’s Russia program, joined Brittany Lewis on “Forbes Newsroom” to discuss the current state of the Russia-Ukraine war.

President Vladimir Putin said Russia’s ready to resume trilateral negotiations with the US and Ukraine on a potential peace deal, according to the Kremlin. Putin made the offer during more than three hours of talks in St. Petersburg with US President Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, on Wednesday. Dan Tannebaum, Partner at Oliver Wyman & Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, discusses the conflict and what this latest push for talks signifies. (Source: Bloomberg)

Washington Post reports White House holds up Patriot interceptor transfers to Ukraine while Russian missiles keep falling on Ukrainian cities.

Russian missiles rained down on Kyiv overnight in a large-scale attack launched just hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin signaled that he is open to further peace negotiations with Ukraine.

The UK pushed back against the description of Vladimir Putin as a “humanitarian” given by US President Donald Trump’s Ukraine war envoy, saying it rejected that characterization of the Russian leader.

Russia has sought to separate the war in Ukraine from potential business deals and diplomacy with the United States. Its efforts now appear to be working.

Europe’s leaders can no longer trust a word that comes out of Washington. No more slaps on the wrist – we need concrete steps to punish Trump Historical comparisons are always inexact. No one conflict precisely mirrors another. Yet Donald Trump’s shameless appeasement of Vladimir Putin carries more than a noxious whiff of Neville Chamberlain’s failed attempt in Munich in 1938 to head off war with Nazi Germany. To be fair to the former UK prime minister – and history largely hasn’t been – his peacemaking efforts had the enthusiastic backing of most people in Britain and France who, like him, were desperate to avoid a repeat of the horrors of the first world war. Trump enjoys no equivalent public support for his treachery . Nor does he face the prospect of a US war with Russia. His betrayal of Ukraine is cynically self-interested, globally dangerous and utterly contemptible. US-Russian talks on agreeing the shoddy terms of a precedent-setting American sell-out of Ukraine are at an advanced stage, after meetings in St Petersburg this week. Trump has zigzagged over the war ever since returning to office. Now, panicked by record-low poll ratings , he seems determined to scapegoat Ukraine and force its de facto capitulation. Recent steps – his shocking decision to fund Putin’s war machine by buying Russian diesel, his waiving of tougher sanctions, his mysterious, lethal interruptions in US satellite and intelligence sharing with Kyiv, and his renewed attempt to oust Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy – mark Trump out as the skulking Judas, the craven Brutus of the modern age. He makes Chamberlain look like a man of iron principle. All that’s lacking is an umbrella. Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator Continue reading...

Putin is losing ground. This is no time to reward him.

Moscow firing ballistic missiles at Ukraine shortly after talks between U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and Russia's Vladimir Putin showed the Kremlin's position on the war had not changed, President Volodymyr Zelenskyyy said Thursday.

A Trump diplomat called Putin “a humanitarian,” another in a recent flurry of overtures to the Russian leader. But it’s unclear whether blandishments will entice him to strike a deal.

US envoy Steve Witkoff hailed Vladimir Putin as a “true humanitarian” after the Kremlin released a 74-year-old retired teacher accused of fighting for Kyiv and agreed to trilateral talks to end the war in Ukraine.

Steve Witkoff’s flattery of the Russian leader could be just the start of a mendacious stratagem from a US president who says Moscow ‘has been fine on Ukraine’ They say the first casualty of war is truth. For the Trump administration, the road to peace with Russia now encompasses some extraordinary lies. Steve Witkoff delivered one as he sat down with Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg on Wednesday, aiming to close the deal on Russia’s land grab in Ukraine with the White House’s strategy of maximum pressure on Kyiv and saccharine flattery of the Kremlin. Continue reading...

The Trump administration praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “humanitarian” for releasing a detained US citizen, the latest White House move to curry favor with Russia in its efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

The agreement comes following a meeting between the Russian president and U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff.

President Vladimir Putin agreed Wednesday to resume trilateral negotiations with Washington and Kyiv on ending the war in Ukraine, a Kremlin official said. The Russian leader has agreed "in principle" to resume the talks after Nov. 10...