MOSCOW: The Kremlin said on Monday that it hoped another summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump could take place as soon as the necessary preparation had been completed.
Putin and Trump last met in August at a summit in Alaska, where they discussed a possible resolution to end the war in Ukraine.
Last month they announced plans for a summit in Budapest, but Trump canceled it soon afterwards, saying that the timing did not feel right.
Asked if Moscow had missed an opportunity, and under what conditions a new Putin-Trump meeting might happen, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “We can hardly predict now when these conditions will arise. Although, of course, we are all interested in these conditions occurring sooner rather than later.”
He said both sides agreed a summit required deep preparation in order to be productive.
“Therefore, as soon as this preparation is completed and the conditions for holding the summit are in place, we hope it will take place.”
Announcing the cancelation of the Budapest summit, Trump last month reiterated his frustration with Putin, saying: “Every time I speak with Vladimir, I have good conversations, and then they don’t go anywhere.” On October 22, he imposed Ukraine-related sanctions on Russia – targeting oil companies Rosneft and Lukoil – for the first time in his second term.
On Sunday, Trump said US Republicans were working on legislation that would impose sanctions on any country doing business with Russia – something Peskov said would go down very badly with Moscow.
“We’ll see how this bill progresses and what details are involved. We would, of course, take a very negative view of that,” he said.
Trump has already sharply raised tariffs on Indian goods, citing India’s purchases of Russian oil, in what Moscow said amounted to illegal trade pressure.
Kremlin hopes for a new Putin-Trump summit
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Kremlin hopes for a new Putin-Trump summit
- Putin and Trump last met in August at a summit in Alaska, where they discussed a possible resolution to end the war in Ukraine
Villagers massacred in South Sudan food aid trap
- Civilians killed after being lured from homes with promise of aid, witnesses say
NAIROBI: More than a dozen civilians were killed after being lured from their homes by fighters allied to South Sudan’s government under the pretense of being registered for humanitarian food aid, according to two people who survived the attack.
The killings took place on Saturday morning in the village of Pankor, in Ayod county, in the conflict-hit Jonglei state, about 400km north of the capital, Juba.
Women and children were among the victims.
HIGHLIGHTS
• The two survivors said that 22 people were killed and several more were injured. • Photos showed bodies of women and young men, some with their hands bound behind their backs, who appear to have been shot at close range.
Several dozen fighters arrived in pickup trucks and announced over a loudspeaker that they had come to register residents for food assistance, said the two survivors.
“They gathered them in a luak,” said one witness, referring to a traditional mud hut used to house cattle.
“People were thinking they would get aid or some help.”
The fighters then bound the hands of several men and opened fire on the group.
The two survivors said that 22 people were killed and several more were injured.
The government-appointed county commissioner said 16 people were killed.
Photos showed bodies of women and young men, some with their hands bound behind their backs, who appear to have been shot at close range.
The images, which were shared with AP by an opposition representative, are too graphic to publish.
Makuach Muot, 34, traveled to Pankor on Sunday for the funerals of eight relatives.
Most of the village’s residents had fled fighting months earlier, he said, leaving behind mainly elderly people and young children.
Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Lul Ruai Koang could not be reached for comment.
James Chuol Jiek, the government-appointed county commissioner of Ayod, confirmed that more than a dozen people, mostly women and children, had been killed in the attack.
He said the gunmen belonged to the Agwelek militia, a force drawn from the Shilluk ethnic group that has not been fully integrated into the national army but that has been deeply involved in recent military operations.
Jiek said the fighters had left their barracks overnight without their commander’s knowledge.
He said they told him the killings were revenge for attacks by a Nuer militia on Shilluk villages in 2022, during which hundreds of civilians were killed or abducted.
The government county commissioner condemned the killings and said that several officers had been arrested and that the army had disarmed 150 fighters from the battalion involved.
He disputed that people had been lured out for an aid registration. “This is an opposition lie,” he said.
In January, Agwelek militia commander Lt. Gen. Johnson Olony was filmed ordering his forces to kill civilians during military operations in Jonglei state. “Spare no lives,” he said.
“When we arrive there, don’t spare an elderly, don’t spare a chicken, don’t spare a house or anything.”
His remarks drew widespread rebuke from the UN and others. Olony has since apologized.
Armed clashes, aerial bombardments, and years of extreme flooding have left more than half of Ayod county’s population facing severe food insecurity.
Ayod county lies in northern Jonglei state, an opposition stronghold and a flashpoint in renewed fighting that the UN estimates displaced 280,000people since December.
Aid groups have warned that access restrictions to opposition-held parts of the state were endangering civilian lives.
Residents of northern Jonglei are overwhelmingly from the Nuer ethnic group of suspended vice president and opposition leader Riek Machar.
Opposition officials have repeatedly called the government’s actions in Nuer areas of the country “genocidal.”
Reath Tang Muoch, a senior official in the SPLM-IO, called Olony’s remarks “an early indicator of genocidal intent.”
