Trump Criticizes Zelensky and Putin, Urges Peace Deal Before US Talks

Donald Trump‘s special envoy Steve Witkoff said he planned to discuss peace efforts with Russian President Vladimir Putin and would meet with Ukrainians later, without giving a specific date.

“We plan to discuss peace, and Ukraine and Russia,” Witkoff told reporters at Davos, adding that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner would join the discussions on Thursday. “I’m hopeful… we need a peace.”

Witkoff told CNBC that the Russian side had requested the meeting, adding: “I think that’s a significant statement on their part.”

The Kremlin confirmed that Putin would meet Witkoff in Moscow on Thursday.

European leaders gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday for a discussion on whether Europe was ready to defend itself.

Mark Rutte, the secretary general of Nato, was cautious to stress the importance of the trans-Atlantic relationship and hailed Trump’s efforts to encourage greater defence spending in Europe.

Alex Stubb, the Finnish president, said that Europe “unequivocally” could defend itself against a Russian attack. Asked whether the alliance was fractured and on its way out, he said: “No, not at all.

“I think actually we’re in the process of creating a stronger Nato since we have seen since the end of the Cold War. This is pretty much Nato 3.0.”

He pointed to Nato’s borders growing with new allies, including Finland, while Russia has stagnated economically, failed to make major gains in Ukraine and decreased its sphere of influence.

“And here we are asking ourselves, shaking, are we able to defend ourselves? My answer is: yes we are.”

German prosecutors say they have arrested a Russian and a German national on suspicion of supporting the foreign terrorist organisations “People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.”

They claim that the two suspects had organised deliveries of supplies, medical products and drones to pro-Russian militia groups in eastern Ukraine since 2016.

Ukraine’s anti-corruption bureau says it is investigating an unnamed former senior official from the president’s office and a former board member of state oil and gas major Naftogaz for involvement in an alleged green energy embezzlement scheme.

In a statement on social media, the bureau said the alleged scheme involved claiming green energy payments for facilities in territories occupied by Russia in 2022.

It said a total of nine suspects had been identified in the case.

US president Donald Trump has said he will meet with Volodymyr Zelensky today, despite the Ukrainian president pulling out of Davos.

Ukraine’s leader had initially said he would only travel to Switzerland if documents on security guarantees with the United States and a prosperity plan were ready to be signed there.

The decision to stay in Kyiv follows two nights worth of heavy bombardment in the capital which has left millions without power.

“Certainly, I chose Ukraine in this case, not the economic forum, but everything can change at any moment. Because it is very important for Ukrainians to end this war,” Zelensky told reporters on Tuesday.

Ukraine is poised to establish a system enabling its allies to train their artificial intelligence models using Kyiv’s invaluable combat data, meticulously gathered throughout the nearly four-year conflict with Russia.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has amassed extensive battlefield intelligence, including systematically logged combat statistics and millions of hours of drone footage captured from above.

Such real-world information is critically important for the development and refinement of AI models.