Zelenskyy says he would join Trump-Putin summit in Hungary if invited – Europe live

Ukrainian president criticises choice of Budapest as location for meeting as Trump suggests Kyiv must cede land to end warFrance’s Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin admitted Monday to security flaws in protecting the Louvre that had led to robbers a day earlier stealing imperial jewels in broad daylight from the famed Paris museum.
“What is certain is that we have failed, since people were able to park a furniture hoist in the middle of Paris, get people up it in several minutes to grab priceless jewels and give France a terrible image,” he told France Inter radio.The Louvre will remain closed on Monday for a second day running.If I am invited to Budapest – if it is an invitation in a format where we meet as three or, as it’s called, shuttle diplomacy, President Trump meets with Putin and President Trump meets with me – then in one format or another, we will agree.Donald Trump on Sunday suggested the best way to end the war in Ukraine would be to “cut up” the Donbas region, leaving most of it to Russia. The US president told reporters: “Let it be cut the way it is,” adding: “They can negotiate something later on down the line.” The comments came after a tense White House meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in which Trump reportedly put pressure on the Ukrainian president to give up swaths of territory.The European Union foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said on Monday that it was “not nice” that Putin might travel to EU member Hungary for talks on the war in Ukraine. Kallas told reporters ahead of a gathering of European foreign ministers in Luxembourg that Trump’s efforts to bring peace were welcome but that it was also important for Zelenskyy to meet the Russian leader.Ukraine is preparing a contract to buy 25 Patriot air defence systems. In comments to media at a meeting on Sunday and cleared for use on Monday, Zelenskyy said the systems would be supplied every year for a number of years, and that Ukraine would seek for some European nations to give Kyiv priority in the queue for the systems. Patriots are seen by Kyiv as the most effective systems to stop Russian ballistic missiles, which travel several times faster than the speed of sound.Zelenskyy said he had spoken to the French president, Emmanuel Macron, on Monday about applying pressure on Russia, and that he had agreed to meet him in the near future. “Pressuring the one who started the war is the key to a denouement,” Zelenskyy wrote on X. “Emmanuel and I discussed all the current diplomatic aspects and our recent contacts with partners.”The Louvre will remain closed for a second day running on Monday, management told AFP, after thieves stole crown jewels from the museum in Paris a day earlier. French police are still hunting for four thieves who carried out a highly professional daylight raid on the Louvre, breaking into one of the museum’s most ornate rooms and escaping with eight pieces of “priceless” historic jewellery, including a necklace given by Napoleon to his wife. Continue reading...