By Guy Faulconbridge and Max Hunder
MOSCOW/KYIV (Reuters) -The United States and Russia quarrelled in public on Wednesday over the intensifying Ukraine war after U.S. President Donald Trump warned that President Vladimir Putin was “playing with fire” and Moscow massed 50,000 troops near a Ukrainian region.
While world leaders bicker over the prospects for peace, the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War Two is heating up fast: swarms of drones are being launched by both sides while Russia is advancing at key points along the front.
Trump, in a post on Truth Social, said that Putin was playing with fire and cautioned that “REALLY BAD” things would have happened already to Russia if it was not for Trump himself.
“What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened in Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD. He’s playing with fire,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Tuesday.
Putin’s foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, told a state TV reporter that Trump’s remark suggested that he is not well-briefed on the realities of the war.
“Trump is not sufficiently informed about what is really happening in the context of the Ukrainian-Russian confrontation,” Ushakov said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was clear the Trump administration is making “considerable efforts towards a peaceful settlement” and that Russia was “grateful for the mediation efforts of President Trump personally.”
“Just like the United States, Russia has its own national interests, which are above all for us, and they are above all for our president,” Peskov said.
After speaking to Trump on May 19 for more than two hours, Putin said that he had agreed to work with Ukraine on a memorandum which would set out the contours of a peace accord including the timing of a ceasefire.
Russia, Peskov said, was preparing for the next round of negotiations with Ukraine and to continue contacts with the United States.
WAR HEATING UP
With Trump and the Kremlin trading barbs, the war intensified.
Russia said it had downed 296 Ukrainian drones over 13 regions overnight while Ukraine said Russia had launched 88 drones and five ballistic missiles.
After Russia ejected Ukrainian forces from the western Kursk region, Moscow’s forces have pushed over the border into neighbouring Sumy region of northeastern Ukraine and taken several villages there.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Russia has gathered 50,000 troops near the northern Sumy region, but added that Kyiv had taken steps to prevent Moscow from conducting a large-scale offensive there.
Putin has repeatedly said he wants a “buffer zone” along Russia’s border with Ukraine.
Russian Defence Minister Andrei Belousov said that the U.S.-led NATO military alliance was using the Ukrainian crisis to build up its presence across eastern Europe and the Baltic but that Russia was advancing along the entire front in Ukraine.
Putin ordered tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops.
Russia currently controls just under one fifth of Ukraine. Though Russian advances have accelerated over the past year, the war is costing both Russia and Ukraine dearly in terms of casualties and military spending.
Top Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev, a former president, said Trump should worry more about World War Three, a remark Trump’s envoy, Keith Kellogg, said it was reckless.
“Stoking fears of WW III is an unfortunate, reckless comment… and unfitting of a world power,” Kellogg said on X.
(Reporting by ReutersEditing by Ros Russell)
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