Trump says Putin playing with fire; he’s ill-informed, Kremlin hits back

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy landed in Berlin on Wednesday for talks with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz as part of a diplomatic drive to end the war in Ukraine

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• Merz pledged to help Ukraine develop its own long-range missile systems that would be free of any Western-imposed limitations on their use and targets

• Meanwhile, the Kremlin said Merz’s decision to have Germany and Ukraine develop the joint production of long-range missiles was nothing but a further provocation of the war in Ukraine

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  Zelenskyy in Berlin for peace talks

The United States and Russia quarrelled in public on Wednesday over the intensifying Ukraine war after US 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.

Putin’s foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, said 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, “Just like the US, Russia has its own national interests, which are above all for us, and they are above all for our President.”