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LONDON/KYIV: Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky flies to Washington on Monday under heavy US pressure to agree a swift end to Russia’s war in Ukraine but determined to defend Kyiv’s interests — without sparking a second Oval Office bust-up with Donald Trump.

The US president invited Zelensky to Washington after rolling out the red carpet for Vladimir Putin, Kyiv’s arch foe, at a summit in Alaska that shocked many in Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands have died since Russia’s 2022 invasion.

The Alaska talks failed to produce the ceasefire that Trump sought, and the US leader said on Saturday that he now wanted a rapid, full-fledged peace deal and that Kyiv should accept because “Russia is a very big power, and they’re not.”

The blunt rhetoric throws the onus squarely back on Zelensky, putting him in a perilous position as he returns to Washington for the first time since his talks with Trump in the Oval Office in February descended into acrimony.

The US president upbraided him in front of world media at the time, saying Zelensky did not “hold the cards” in negotiations and that what he described as Kyiv’s intransigence risked triggering World War Three.

Trump’s pursuit of a quick deal defies intense diplomacy by the European allies and Ukraine to convince him that a ceasefire should come first and not — as sought by the Kremlin — once a settlement is agreed.

A source familiar with the matter told Reuters that European leaders had also been invited to Monday’s meeting between Trump and Zelensky, though it was unclear who would actually attend.

Trump briefed Zelensky on his talks with Putin during a call on Saturday that lasted more than an hour and a half, the Ukrainian leader said. They were joined after an hour by European and NATO officials, he added.

“The impression is he wants a fast deal at any price,” a source familiar with the conversation said.

The source said Trump told Zelensky that Putin had offered to freeze the front lines elsewhere as part of a deal, if Ukraine fully withdrew its troops from the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, something Zelensky said was not possible.

Trump and US envoy Steve Witkoff told the Ukrainian leader that Putin had said there could be no ceasefire before that happened, and that the Russian leader could pledge not to launch any new aggression against Ukraine as part of an agreement.

Kyiv has publicly dismissed the idea of withdrawing from internationally recognized Ukrainian land as part of a deal, and says the industrial Donetsk region serves as a fortress holding back Russian advances deeper into Ukraine.

Oleksandr Merezhko, head of the Ukrainian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, told Reuters by phone that Trump’s emphasis on a deal rather than a ceasefire carried great risks for Ukraine.

“In Putin’s view, a peace agreement means several dangerous things – Ukraine not joining NATO, his absurd demands for denazification and demilitarization, the Russian language and the Russian church,” he said.

Any such deal could be politically explosive inside Ukraine, Merezhko said, adding he was worried that Putin’s ostracism in the West had ended.

SECURITY GUARANTEES

Avoiding a repeat of the Oval Office row is critical for Zelensky to preserve relations with the US, which still provides military assistance and is the key source of intelligence on Russia’s military activity.

For Ukraine, robust guarantees to prevent any future Russian invasion are fundamental to any serious settlement.

Two sources familiar with the matter said Trump and the European leaders discussed potential security guarantees for Ukraine similar to the transatlantic NATO alliance’s mutual support pledge during their call. It says, in effect, that an attack on one is treated as an attack on all.

One of the two sources, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said European leaders were seeking details on what kind of US role was envisaged.

Zelensky has repeatedly said a trilateral meeting with the Russian and US leaders is crucial to finding a way to end the full-scale war launched by Russia in February 2022.

Trump this week voiced the idea of such a meeting, saying it could happen if his talks in Alaska with Putin were successful.

“Ukraine emphasizes that key issues can be discussed at the level of leaders, and a trilateral format is suitable for this,” Zelensky wrote on social media on Saturday. Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov told the Russian state news agency TASS a three-way summit had not been discussed in Alaska.

KABUL: Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, the supreme leader of the Taliban, has ordered his ministers to remove the “acting” designation from their titles, a move experts say indicates the establishment of a permanent Afghan government.

Weeks after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August 2021, the group formed a caretaker government consisting almost entirely of senior figures and without female representation, which has remained in place ever since.

As Afghanistan marks the fourth anniversary on Friday since the Taliban takeover of the country, the group’s reclusive chief, who rules largely from Kandahar, told his officials to stop using “caretaker” in their roles.

“All ministers and the cabinet of the Islamic Emirate should not use the word caretaker in their titles,” Akhundzada said in a statement.

When the Taliban first announced a caretaker administration it was framed as a temporary set-up before the country established an official and inclusive government that included women and members of Afghanistan’s diverse ethnic groups.

Afghans were expecting a voting system to establish a permanent government that would include their voices, whether it was in the form of elections or a “loya jirga,” a grand assembly traditionally held to reach a consensus on important political issues.

“But now that the supreme leader (has) instructed that the current government is official, from a legal perspective the supreme leader’s decree constitutes a law for the Taliban government, replacing the constitution,” Abdul Saboor Mubariz, board member of the Center for Strategic and Regional Studies in Kabul, told Arab News.

“The political implication of this decision could be that there is no hope for major change in the present form of government.”

The initial announcement of a caretaker government, he added, was in the hope of gaining official recognition by the international community. 

With the exception of Russia in July, no other nation has formally recognized Taliban rule since the group seized power in 2021.

“But now they (have) realized that no big progress has been made in that regard so they want to make the current government permanent,” Mubariz said. 

Naseer Ahmad Nawidy, a political science professor at Salam University in Kabul, said the removal of “caretaker” in ministerial titles could mean higher authority for Taliban officials.

“(It’s) something positive. The ministries in Kabul need to have (a) free hand and more authority in their relevant tasks considering the expertise required for each sector,” he told Arab News.

The Taliban also used the term initially to mean that “the ministers were only temporary and that the actual authority was only with the supreme leader in Kandahar,” Nawidy added.

“It also has another message to the executive officials: that no one should be above obeying and all decrees of the leader must be implemented without any questions,” he said.

“The new announcement is an indication that the Islamic Emirate wants to show that the government is fully established.”