Ukraine war briefing: Zelenskyy says Trump can change Xi Jinping’s stance on Russia’s war

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday he believes that US President Donald Trump could help change Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s stance on Russia’s war in Ukraine. “I think that President Trump can change the attitude of Xi Jinping to this war, because China, we don’t feel that China wants to finish this war,” Zelenskyy told Fox News’ Special Report after meeting Trump on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. The US has highlighted China and India as contributors to the Russia-Ukraine war due to their ongoing purchases of oil from Moscow.

Zelenskyy told the UN security council that China could pressure Russia to end the war in his country. China is not a party to the conflict, but Kyiv has long complained that Beijing has supplied items to Moscow that can be used in its war against Ukraine, and continues to purchase Russian energy. “If China truly wanted this war to stop, it could compel Moscow to end the invasion. Without China, Putin’s Russia is nothing.”

Donald Trump has said he believes Ukraine can regain all the land that it has lost since the 2022 Russian invasion in one of the strongest statements of support he has given Kyiv. The US president delivered his upbeat assessment by claiming Russia was in big economic trouble in a post on Truth Social after meeting the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in New York. “Russia has been fighting aimlessly for three and a half years a War that should have taken a Real Military Power less than a week to win. This is not distinguishing Russia,” Trump said on Truth Social, adding that Putin and Russia were in “big economic trouble.” Zelenskyy welcomed Trump’s “big shift” on Russia.

Russia is launching long-range drones into the airspace of Nato countries to probe the military alliance’s air defences and search for weak points, Zelenskyy said Tuesday. “He will try to find weak places in Europe, in Nato countries, he will try to do it,” Zelensky said at a press conference at the United Nations.

Russian authorities have subjected civilian detainees in Ukrainian areas it occupies to “widespread” and “systematic” torture, including sexual violence, the United Nations said Tuesday. A UN rights office report concluded that Russia “has subjected Ukrainian civilian detainees to consistent patterns of serious violations” of international law since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Ukraine’s energy ministry called for decisive international action to secure the removal of occupying Russian forces from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, after all external power lines were cut off for the 10th time. “Today’s incident once again proves that the Russian occupation is the main threat to the safe operation of the Zaporizhzhia NPP,” the ministry said in a statement.