. . .and the media is reporting that these are pro-Russian protests.
President Duda has met with Donald Trump and has then stated that this war needs to come to an end, in a dramatic shift of position in the Polish government.
The EU continues to look at ways in which it can seize the frozen Russian assets.
There are also reports from WP that Zelensky has instructed his Foreign Minister to not amend a UN draft resolution at the request of the US.
The United States is using a "combination of punches" to force Ukraine to accept a minerals deal, as part of its border efforts to end the Ukraine crisis amid the shift of strategic focus from Europe to Asia, an expert said on Sunday.
"The
conflict [may] continue for some time. After all, Ukraine, a key party
to it, is not involved [in the talks]. I believe it will be very
difficult to achieve a resolution, as it is impossible to allow a few
major powers, especially the U.S. to dominate the entire process of the
conflict," he said
Teng
Jianqun, director of the Center for Diplomatic Studies at Hunan Normal
University, said this development came as a result of U.S. coercion.
"Clearly,
the United States is employing a combination of punches, using
political, economic, and military pressure to force the Zelensky
government into accepting what can be seen as a humiliating agreement
under duress," he added.
Meanwhile,
the United States is intensifying its contacts with Russia.
The two
parties have agreed to send senior officials for more talks and work
towards improving ties and ending the fighting in Ukraine.
"I
believe this signal reflects a concession by Zelensky's government, and
the aggressive tactics of the United States.
President Trump has
referred to Zelensky as merely an 'actor' and a 'dictator', even
withholding the title of president, in an effort to exert political
pressure on him.
At the same time, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson
publicly announced that no further economic aid would be provided to
Ukraine.
Furthermore, there is now a proposal to stop military support,
including the Starlink satellite services, to the Ukrainian forces," said Teng.
Teng highlighted that the United States is pursuing a two-pronged strategy to achieve geopolitical goals.
"In
terms of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the Trump administration is
actually pursuing a two-pronged strategy, pushing for progress on two
fronts simultaneously.
One is to force Ukraine to repay its debts, and
substantially so.
The other is to strengthen interactions with Russia,
including arranging a meeting between the two heads of state. Russia,
for its part, is also open to improving ties with the United States and
European countries," said the expert.
While
Trump's administration is longing to settle the conflict and pivot U.S.
strategic focus toward Asia, Teng warned that such ambitions face
significant obstacles.
"But
fundamentally, we know that the Putin government is unlikely to follow
the U.S. pace or immediately sit down for negotiations with Ukraine. The
Trump administration is eager to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict in
order to pull back from Europe to the Asia-Pacific for what it calls
great power competition, but this is a one-sided wishful thinking.
Looking ahead, I believe that the U.S.-Russia rapprochement will face
significant difficulties. As for the prospect of bringing parties back
to the table on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, this will face numerous
challenges," said Teng.
According to Reuters, the United States has reportedly threatened to cut off Ukraine's access to Starlink internet services if it did not sign the minerals deal.
After this week's meeting between Zelensky and U.S. Special Envoy to Ukraine and Russia Keith Kellogg in Kiev, both sides disclosed information suggesting that they are nearing a deal on critical minerals.
US pressuring Ukraine into minerals deal with multiple strategies: expert
2025-02-23 17:42 Last Updated At：21:27
The
United States is using a "combination of punches" to force Ukraine to
accept a minerals deal, as part of its border efforts to end the Ukraine
crisis amid the shift of strategic focus from Europe to Asia, an expert
said on Sunday.
On
February 12, U.S. President Donald Trump proposed a plan to use
500-billion-dollar worth of Ukrainian minerals to repay the U.S. aid
provided during Ukraine's conflict with Russia, which was initially
rejected by Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Teng
Jianqun, director of the Center for Diplomatic Studies at Hunan Normal
University, said this development came as a result of U.S. coercion.
"I
believe this signal reflects a concession by Zelensky's government, and
the aggressive tactics of the United States. President Trump has
referred to Zelensky as merely an 'actor' and a 'dictator', even
withholding the title of president, in an effort to exert political
pressure on him. At the same time, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson
publicly announced that no further economic aid would be provided to
Ukraine. Furthermore, there is now a proposal to stop military support,
including the Starlink satellite services, to the Ukrainian forces,"
said Teng.
In
his first month as President, Donald Trump is making global waves with
plans for a potential Ukraine ceasefire, strategies to curb Iran's
nuclear ambitions, and reshaping the Middle East. With a ...
In celebratory social media posts, industry executives declared the end of a “siege against crypto” by the federal government.
The
euphoria didn’t last long. Bybit, which is based in Dubai and processes
tens of billions of dollars in daily transactions, revealed that
thieves had breached its system, stealing huge quantities of Ether.
Crypto has a long history of damaging hacks, but the theft from Bybit dwarfed the previous record, when thieves stole $611 million in cryptocurrencies from a platform called PolyNetwork in 2021.
Even
outside the crypto world, there is little precedent for a theft so big.
“It may even be the largest single theft of all time,” said Tom
Robinson, a co-founder of Elliptic, a crypto analysis firm.
On
social media, Bybit’s chief executive, Ben Zhou, assured customers that
the company was still solvent. “Even if this hack loss is not
recovered, all of clients assets are 1 to 1 backed,” he wrote. “We can
cover the loss.”
Big Day for Crypto Goes South in a Hurry After a Giant Hack
Hours
after Coinbase said the S.E.C. was dropping a lawsuit against it,
another major cryptocurrency exchange reported a potentially
record-setting theft.
Bybit, run by Ben Zhou, shown speaking at a conference in December, said it had been hit by a billion-dollar theft. Credit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times
The
good news for cryptocurrency investors arrived just after 8 a.m. on
Friday: Coinbase, the largest crypto marketplace in the United States,
had reached a deal with U.S. regulators to dismiss a lawsuit that had hung over the industry for years.
But within hours, the crypto market descended into a new crisis. At 10:51 a.m., Bybit, another leading crypto exchange, said it had been hacked — with industry analysts estimating the loss at nearly $1.5 billion, the largest theft in crypto history.
The
prices of Bitcoin, Ether and other major cryptocurrencies plunged.
Even
Coinbase’s share price had dropped 8 percent by the end of the day.
This
split-screen contrast was a telling illustration of the state of crypto
in 2025. Even as President Trump embraces the industry, it remains the
wild West of the financial world, prone to scams, thefts and sudden
market meltdowns. . .
[>>>] The news about Coinbase and Bybit came at
the end of a roller-coaster few days in the crypto world.
A
proliferation of new memecoins — digital currencies based on an internet
joke or a celebrity mascot, with no practical function — has prompted
widespread complaints about scams.
Last
week, a memecoin promoted by the president of Argentina, Javier Milei,
suddenly plummeted in value, setting off a political crisis there and costing investors more than $250 million.
Recently, crypto executives have expressed worry about the spread of these high-risk cryptocurrencies, fretting
that they could undo some of the progress the industry has made with
lawmakers. Shortly before his inauguration, Mr. Trump put his own
memecoin on sale — it shot up in value before crashing. More than
800,000 crypto accounts lost money.
“Memecoins aren’t just a casino — they’re worse,” Haseeb Qureshi, a
crypto venture investor, wrote on social media this week. “They’re a
casino where each slot machine has a different owner, each trying to rip
you off as much as they can before you move on to the next one.”
