Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Ukraine could not agree to a Russian proposal to give up more of his country’s territory in exchange for a ceasefire because Moscow would use what it gained as a springboard to start a future war.

The Ukrainian president said he did not believe that Donald Trump supported Russia’s demands, and he expressed hope the US leader would act as an honest mediator when he meets Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday.

He added there was no sign that Russia was preparing to implement a ceasefire, as reports emerged that small sabotage groups had pierced Ukrainian defences in the eastern Donbas, advancing about six miles in three days. Zelenskyy also warned that Russia was planning new offensives on three parts of the frontline.

Speaking to journalists in the run-up to the Trump-Putin summit, and a day before a virtual meeting with US and European leaders, Zelenskyy said he believed Putin wanted to dominate his country because he “does not want a sovereign Ukraine”.

It was therefore dangerous, Zelenskyy said, for Ukraine to be forced by the US into accepting Russia’s demand to take over the parts of Donbas it does not control after the Alaska summit. The region sought by Russia amounted to “about 90,000 square kilometres” of the country, he said.

Last week Russia indicated it was prepared to consider a ceasefire in the Ukraine war for the first time, in exchange for Ukraine withdrawing from the parts of Donbas it still controlled. Though Trump then suggested that Russia and Ukraine could engage in some “swapping of territories”, Zelenskyy said he understood that Russia was “simply offering not to advance further, not to withdraw from anywhere” and that swaps were not on the table.

“We will not leave Donbas. We cannot do it,” Zelenskyy said. “For Russians, Donbas is a springboard for a future new offensive.” The region demanded by Russia was too strategically important to give up, he said, because it was a heavily fortified area that protected Ukraine’s central cities.

“I have heard nothing – not a single proposal – that would guarantee that a new war will not start tomorrow and that Putin will not try to occupy at least Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv” once Russia had gained all of Donbas, Zelenskyy said.

Ukraine’s leader said he wanted Putin instead to agree to a ceasefire on the current frontlines and for both sides to return all prisoners of war and missing children, before any discussion about territory and the future security of the country. “Any question of territory cannot be separated from security guarantees,” he said.

Zelenskyy said he would not be at the summit in Alaska, the first face-to-face meeting between Trump and Putin with both in office since 2018. But he said he hoped it would be followed by “a trilateral meeting” with Trump and Putin, though the Russian leader has so far said he is not willing to meet Zelenskyy.

The Ukrainian leader also expressed faith in the unpredictable Trump, who he said could act as an honest broker between himself and Putin. “I do not believe that Putin’s proposal is Trump’s proposal,” he said. “I believe that Trump represents the United States of America. He is acting as a mediator – he is in the middle, not on Russia’s side. Let him not be on our side but in the middle.”

He said he did not know what exactly Putin and Trump were going to discuss in Alaska, saying “probably there is a bilateral track” of talks about other topics of mutual interest, such as trade, sanctions and business. But he said Putin had scored a diplomatic win in securing the meeting: “He is seeking, excuse me, photographs. He needs a photo of his meeting with President Trump.”

Zelenskyy said Russia was desperately trying to show it was winning the war and that the Kremlin wanted “to create a certain narrative, especially in the American media, that Russia is moving forward and Ukraine is losing” by mounting sabotage attacks in the Donbas region.

He acknowledged that “groups of Russians advanced about 10 kilometres in several places” although he said: “They have no equipment, only weapons in their hands,” and said that some had already been killed or captured.

But the breach is ill-timed from Ukraine’s point of view. In Alaska, Putin is likely to tell Trump that such successes show that Russia is gradually winning the three-year war in the east, and so US future support for Kyiv will be wasted.

War maps showed two lines of advance east of the town of Dobropillya, and gains of about six miles since Friday. Experts said the next few days would be critical to see if Ukraine could contain the break in the front.

Ukraine’s military said Russia had concentrated about 110,000 troops in the sector and that the invaders were “brazenly attempting to infiltrate our defensive lines with sabotage and small infantry groups, regardless of their losses”.

The military command said in a social media post that reserves had been deployed at the order of Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s chief military commander, in an effort to restore the frontlines.

View image in fullscreen Residents of Drobopillya and nearby villages are evacuated on Tuesday. Photograph: Pierre Crom/Getty Images

The Institute for the Study of War said Russian “sabotage and reconnaissance groups” had infiltrated Ukrainian-held territory near Dobropillya, a key supply point in the west of the Donetsk region.

“It is premature to call the Russian advances in the Dobropillya area an operational-level breakthrough,” the ISW said on Monday night. It said the invaders would now try to turn “tactical advances” into something more significant.

Russia is taking heavy casualties of about 1,000 a day, with 500 killed and 500 wounded on Monday, Zelenskyy said, as it relies heavily on infantry assaults to break Kyiv’s defensive lines.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s casualties on the same day were much smaller – a total of 340 – “18 killed and 243 wounded, with 79 missing in action”. But in the past when Moscow’s forces have broken through, Ukraine has frequently proved unable to push them back.

A former senior Ukrainian army officer, Bohdan Krotevych, said the piercing of Ukraine’s lines had come about because “instead of reinforcing defensive units with infantry”, senior commanders in Kyiv had prioritised deploying newly mobilised soldiers into assault forces, leaving units already on the frontline weakened.

“To stabilise the front, we must reinforce brigades on the line of contact with infantry,” Krotevych said, and he called for Ukraine to urgently strengthen its reserve forces and adopt a defensive strategy rather than try to counter high-risk Russian infantry assaults with its own.

Dobropillya is a key supply point for the beleaguered towns of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad to the south and the principal cities of Ukrainian-held Donbas to the east from the centre of the country.

Zelenskyy said Russia was preparing a fresh offensive in the autumn involving nearly 30,000 troops moved from Sumy, in the north-east of Ukraine, “in three directions” on the frontline – towards Zaporizhzhia in the south and Pokrovsk and the nearby Novopavlika in the south-east.

About 850 officers and agents took part in a “massive law enforcement surge” across Washington DC on Monday night and made nearly two dozen arrests, the White House has said.

The show of force came after Donald Trump announced that he was sending the national guard into the capital and putting city police under federal control, even though the violent crime rate is at a 30-year low.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday: “As part of the president’s massive law enforcement surge, last night approximately 850 officers and agents were surged across the city. They made a total of 23 arrests, including multiple other contacts.”

The arrests consisted of homicide, firearms offences, possession with intent to distribute narcotics, fare evasion, lewd acts and stalking, Leavitt added. “A total of six illegal handguns were seized off of District of Columbia’s streets as part of last night’s effort.”

Leavitt added: “This is only the beginning. Over the course of the next month, the Trump administration will relentlessly pursue and arrest every violent criminal in the district who breaks the law, undermines public safety and endangers law-abiding Americans.”

Leavitt used to briefing to argue that opinion polls show broad public backing for the crackdown on crime and that Democrats and the media are out of touch.

In a bizarre interlude, the first question went to podcast host Benny Johnson, who delivered a monologue about crimes he had suffered during his 15 years as a Washington DC resident. “To any reporter that says and lies that DC is a safe place to live and work, let me just say this,” he said, looking at Leavitt, “Thank you. Thank you for making the city safe.”

Johnson followed up by asking if Trump would consider giving the Presidential Medal of Freedom to “Big Balls”, whose real name is Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old software engineer, for his “heroic actions” in an attempted carjacking in Washington last week. Leavitt replied: “I haven’t spoken to him about that, but perhaps it’s something he would consider.”

The press secretary also told reporters that homeless people have the option be taken to a homeless shelter and offered addiction and/or mental health services. “If they refuse, they will be susceptible to fines or to jail time. These are pre-existing laws that are already on the books. They have not been enforced.”

Trump’s intervention has been widely condemned as an authoritarian power grab that undermines the autonomy of Washington’s DC local government and seeks to distract attention from political problems such as the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Earlier, Muriel Bowser, the mayor of Washington DC, pledged to work “side by side” with the federal government as national guard troops arrived at their headquarters in the capital.

Speaking after a meeting with the attorney general, Pam Bondi, at the justice department, Bowser told reporters: “I won’t go into the details of our operational plan at this point but you will see the Metropolitan police department (MPD) working side by side with our federal partners in order to enforce the effort that we need around the city.”

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser speaks during a news conference on President Donald Trump’s plan to place Washington police under federal control and deploy National guard troops. File picture: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

Bowser has cultivated a delicate working relationship with Trump since his return to power in January, avoiding direct confrontations when possible. On Tuesday, she struck a conciliatory note and said she would try to make the most of the extra resources to fight crime.

“What I’m focused on is the federal surge and how to make the most of the additional officer support that we have,” she said. “We have the best in the business at MPD and chief Pamela Smith to lead that effort and to make sure that the men and women who are coming from federal law enforcement are being well used and that, if there is national guard here, that they’re being well used and all in an effort to drive down crime.

“So, how we got here or what we think about the circumstances right now, we have more police and we want to make sure we’re using them.” However, other Democratic mayors across the country have adopted a different tone, warning Trump against expanding his law and order power grab in other major cities.

Trump told reporters on Monday: “We have other cities also that are bad,” citing the Democratic strongholds of Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. “And then, of course, you have Baltimore and Oakland. You don’t even mention them any more, they’re so far gone.”

Stephen Miller, an influential White House deputy chief of staff, stepped up the rhetoric on Tuesday, tweeting without evidence: “Crime stats in big blue cities are fake. The real rates of crime, chaos & dysfunction are orders of magnitude higher. Everyone who lives in these areas knows this. They program their entire lives around it. Democrats are trying to unravel civilization. Pres Trump will save it.”

All five cities named by Trump are run by Black mayors. Most were outspoken in denouncing the president’s move. Brandon Johnson, Chicago’s mayor, said in a statement: “Sending in the national guard would only serve to destabilize our city and undermine our public safety efforts.”

Brandon Scott, the mayor of Baltimore, said: “When it comes to public safety in Baltimore, he should turn off the rightwing propaganda and look at the facts. Baltimore is the safest it’s been in over 50 years.”

Barbara Lee, the mayor of Oakland, wrote on X: “President Trump’s characterization of Oakland is wrong and based in fear-mongering in an attempt to score cheap political points.”

Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, where troops were sent earlier this month in a crackdown on protests, posted: “Another experiment by the Administration, another power grab from local government. This is performative. This is a stunt. It always has been and always will be.”

Trump took command of the Washington DC police department and deployed the national guard under laws and constitutional powers that give the federal government more sway over the nation’s capital than other cities. But Democrats raised concerns that Washington DC could be a blueprint for similar strong-arm tactics elsewhere.

Christina Henderson, a Washington DC at-large councilmember, told CNN on Tuesday: “I was listening to the president’s press conference yesterday, and I think it should be concerning to all Americans that he talked about other cities.

“The District of Columbia, for decades, without statehood, has always been used as a petri dish, where Congress or the federal government is trying out ideas here. So, I would hope that folks don’t lose sight of what’s happening in the district. And even if they don’t live here, they fight hard with us.”

California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, warned that Trump “will gaslight his way into militarising any city he wants in America”.

JB Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, insisted that the president “has absolutely no right and no legal ability to send troops into the city of Chicago, and so I reject that notion”.

He added: “You’ve seen that he doesn’t follow the law. I have talked about the fact that the Nazis in Germany in the 30s tore down a constitutional republic in just 53 days. It does not take much, frankly, and we have a president who seems hell-bent on doing just that.”

— The Guardian

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he would reject any Russian proposal to pull Ukrainian troops out of the eastern Donbas region as it would deprive Kyiv of defensive lines and open the way for Moscow to conduct further offensives.

The Ukrainian leader told reporters on Tuesday that territorial issues should be discussed after Russia agrees to a ceasefire, and security guarantees for Ukraine should be an integral part of that discussion.

Speaking ahead of a summit on Friday between US President Donald Trump and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in Alaska , Zelenskyy also reiterated that Ukraine must be involved in any talks concerning its own territory. Trump has suggested an exchange of territory might be part of any putative peace deal.

Zelenskyy said Russia’s proposal was to halt its advances in other Ukrainian regions in exchange for Kyiv pulling back its forces from the Donbas in eastern Ukraine, which comprises the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine still controlled about 30 per cent of the Donetsk region, or about 9,000 square kilometers, and had heavily fortified defensive lines and controlled strategic high ground there.

Any pullout would create a launch pad for new Russian offensives, he said.

“We will not leave Donbas. We cannot do this. Everyone forgets the first part — our territories are illegally occupied,” Zelenskyy told reporters at a briefing on Tuesday.

“Donbas for the Russians is a springboard for a future new offensive.”

Trump-Putin meeting ‘a listening exercise’

Trump’s administration tempered expectations on Tuesday for major progress toward a ceasefire, calling his meeting with Putin a “listening exercise.”

Asked why Zelenskyy was not joining the US and Russian leaders at the Alaska summit, a White House spokeswoman said on Tuesday that the bilateral meeting had been proposed by Putin, and that Trump accepted to get a “better understanding” of how to end the war.

“Only one party that’s involved in this war is going to be present, and so this is for the president to go and to get a more firm and better understanding of how we can hopefully bring this war to an end,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters. “You need both countries to agree to a deal.”

Trump is open to a trilateral meeting with Putin and Zelenskyy later, Leavitt said.

Russia makes fresh advance

In one of the most extensive incursions so far this year, Russian troops advanced near the coal-mining town of Dobropillia, part of Putin’s campaign to take full control of Ukraine’s Donetsk region. Ukraine’s military dispatched reserve troops, saying they were in difficult combat against Russian soldiers.

Ukraine’s military meanwhile said it had retaken two villages in the eastern region of Sumy on Monday, part of a small reversal in more than a year of slow, attritional Russian gains in the southeast.

Russia, which launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, has mounted a new offensive this year in Sumy after Putin demanded a “buffer zone” there.

Ukraine and its European allies fear that Trump, keen to claim credit for making peace and seal new business deals with Russia’s government, will end up rewarding Putin for his 11 years spent in efforts to seize Ukrainian territory, the last three in open warfare.

A U.S. Army sergeant accused of shooting five fellow soldiers at a Georgia base was charged Tuesday with attempted murder, aggravated assault and domestic violence as the Army revealed that one of the victims was the suspect’s romantic partner.

The charges were issued as Sgt. Quornelius Radford made his first appearance Tuesday in a military courtroom at Fort Stewart, where officials say he opened fire with a personal handgun on members of his supply unit. The hearing officer ordered Radford, 28, to remain in pretrial confinement.

Radford was arrested Aug. 6 after officials say soldiers disarmed and restrained him until military police arrived.

All five of the wounded soldiers survived the attack. Radford was charged with six counts of attempted murder — the sixth referring to a soldier he shot at and missed, said Michelle McCaskill, a spokesperson for the Army’s Office of Special Trial Counsel, which is prosecuting Radford.

Radford also faces six counts of aggravated assault and a single count of domestic violence.

“That charge is there because one of the victims was the intimate partner of the accused,” McCaskill said.

She said she did not know whether Radford’s partner was among the five people he wounded. The Army has not released the victims’ names.

Fort Stewart officials have declined to comment on the shooter’s motives.

Under military law, attempted murder carries a potential penalty of life imprisonment.

Radford was represented by Army defense attorneys at his hearing Tuesday. Phone and email messages left with Fort Stewart’s Trial Defense Service were not immediately returned.

Now that he’s been charged, Radford faces pretrial proceedings to determine whether there is enough evidence for him to stand trial by court-martial.

The largest Army post east of the Mississippi River, Fort Stewart is home to thousands of soldiers assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division. It is located about 40 miles (64 kilometers) southwest of Savannah.

Radford served as a supply sergeant in the division’s 2nd Armored Brigade. Army records show he enlisted in 2018.

Soldiers in Radford’s unit said they followed the sound of gunfire into the hallways of an office building where they found hazy gunsmoke in the air and wounded victims on the floor and in nearby offices.

Brig. Gen. John Lubas, the 3rd Infantry’s commander, credited soldiers with saving lives by immediately rendering first aid, in some cases using their bare hands to staunch bleeding gunshot wounds.

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll visited Fort Stewart the day after the shootings to award Meritorious Service Medals to six soldiers who helped restrain the gunman and treat the victims.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday that Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin had scored a “personal victory” by getting invited to talks with Donald Trump on US soil, and that the meeting further delayed sanctions on Moscow.

Zelensky also ruled out withdrawing troops from Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region as part of a peace deal, after Trump suggested he and Putin might negotiate a land swap to end the war.

The summit, set to take place in Alaska on Friday, will be the first between a sitting US and Russian president since 2021 and comes as Trump seeks to broker an end to Russia’s nearly three-and-a-half year invasion of Ukraine.

Zelensky, who is not scheduled to take part, has expressed concern that Russia will put forward hardline demands and that Trump will hammer out a deal that will see Ukraine cede swathes of territory.

“We will not withdraw from the Donbas… if we withdraw from the Donbas today — our fortifications, our terrain, the heights we control — we will clearly open a bridgehead for the Russians to prepare an offensive,” Zelensky told reporters.

The Donbas encompasses the eastern Ukrainian regions of Lugansk and Donetsk, both of which Russia claims as its own and has sought to control since its invasion began in 2022.

Zelensky said Friday’s summit would effectively postpone new US sanctions on Russia — sanctions that Trump had promised to impose if Putin refused to halt his war.

“First, he will meet on US territory, which I consider his personal victory. Second, he is coming out of isolation because he is meeting on US territory. Third, with this meeting, he has somehow postponed sanctions,” Zelensky said.

Zelensky also said he had received a “signal” from US envoy Steve Witkoff that Russia might agree to a ceasefire, without elaborating.

“This was the first signal from them,” Zelensky said.

On the battlefield, Zelensky warned Russia had made sharp advances near the coal mining town of Dobropillia and was planning new ground assaults on at least three different areas of the front line.

“Russian units have advanced 10 kilometres (six miles) deep in several spots. They all have no equipment, only weapons in their hands. Some have already been found, some destroyed, some taken prisoner. We will find the rest and destroy them in the near future,” Zelensky said.

A map published by Ukrainian battlefield monitor DeepState, which has close ties with Ukraine’s military, showed Russia had made a double-pronged advance around 10 kilometres (six miles) deep in a narrow section of the front line near Dobropillia.

Dobropillia, home to around 30,000 people before the war, has come under regular Russian drone attacks.

The advance also threatens the largely destroyed town of Kostiantynivka, one of the last large urban areas in the Donetsk region still held by Ukraine.

Russian forces have been accelerating their advances for months, pressing their advantage against overstretched Ukrainian troops.

The Ukrainian army said Tuesday it was engaged in “difficult” battles with Russian forces in the east, but denied Russia had a foothold near Dobropillia.

“The situation is difficult and dynamic,” it said in a statement.

The Institute for the Study of War, a US-based think tank, said Russia was sending small sabotage groups forwards.

It said it was “premature” to call the Russian advances around Dobropillia “an operational-level breakthrough”.

A Ukrainian military group that oversees parts of the front in the Donetsk region also said Russia was probing Ukrainian lines with small sabotage groups, describing battles as “complex, unpleasant and dynamic”.

Trump has described his summit with Putin on Friday as a chance to check the Russian leader’s ideas for ending the war.

European leaders have meanwhile sought to ensure respect for Kyiv’s interests.

Russia, which invaded Ukraine in 2022, has made costly but incremental gains across the front in recent months and claims to have annexed four Ukrainian regions while still fighting to control them.

Ukrainian police meanwhile said that Russian attacks in the past hours had killed three people and wounded 12 others, including a child.

Trump has suggested both Russia and Ukraine would have to cede territory for peace (Credit: AFP)