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Melania Trump obtains the humanitarian truce in Oleshky, the small piece of Ukrainian land in the Kherson region that has been reduced to the limit and for which Pope Leo XIV had also spent time in recent days with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky. The White House made the announcement: the ceasefire – it explained – will start on October 29, to allow aid to enter the town under siege and prepare the evacuation of civilians. However, Moscow has specified that Russian forces will observe the truce in the area starting from 4 am Moscow time (3 am Italian time) on Tuesday 27 October.
The role of the First Lady
To define the terms of the operation, the US First Lady worked directly with Russian and Ukrainian leaders. “It became completely clear that, without my intervention, it would have been impossible to get humanitarian aid into the city and evacuate the elderly,” said Melania, who has long been committed to working with Moscow to achieve the reunification of child victims of war with their families. And applause for the First Lady’s work came from the Kremlin: “She made a significant contribution”, observed spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. And Donald Trump praised his wife, excluding however the idea that she could be involved in the trilateral negotiations between the United States, Russia and Ukraine: «She wants to save the children, this is her focus. Both sides are cooperating with her, she is doing a good job”, he noted, before launching another jab at Zelensky, with whom relations remain tense after the freezing of US sanctions on Russia and the slowdown in Starlink’s operations.
The Starlink case and Musk’s defense
On the mystery of Starlink and who gave the order to slow down the service to Kiev, the commander-in-chief did not comment, but assured that he will deal with the case. «I’ll take a look at it», he promised before launching into a full-throated defense of Elon Musk, the owner of Starlink inundated with criticism for the Ukraine case: «He’s brilliant and we need to protect geniuses like him. I know him well, he would never do anything wrong”, he observed speaking of the main financier of the Republicans in the midterms. Musk has in fact invested almost half a billion dollars in their election campaign.
Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of senators has warned the White House that they will block all Trump appointments until Starlink service is restored to one hundred percent for Kiev. The richest man in the world – as reported by the “Wall Street Journal” – would be behind the stop, with Trump having called him in recent days asking him to restore full operation. But – Kiev denounced – the connection speed is still limited for military operations. “For now nothing has changed,” said the advisor to the President of Ukraine, Dmitry Litvin. And the lack of 100% Starlink and Patriots is exposing Ukraine to continued heavy Russian attacks. Raids which in the last few hours have hit even more energy infrastructures, leaving half a million Ukrainians in the dark. “The winter attacks have already started,” Zelensky said after speaking with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. The Ukrainian president is trying to speed up negotiations in view of the colder season, which “is the worst period” for Ukraine.
Towards the Abu Dhabi talks
Trump is also in a hurry to end a war that he promised to resolve in two days when he was elected. To seek a turning point, Kiev, Washington and Moscow will meet at a technical level in Abu Dhabi in the first half of November. The commander-in-chief’s hope is that of an agreement by the end of the year, with the signing of peace at the G-20 in Miami hosted at Trump Doral. An accelerated timeline that does not convince critics, convinced that the president only wants to enter the history books with the photo between Putin and Zelensky, without caring about the real result. A bit like he did with the big announcements for Gaza, which remained almost only on paper.