Ukrainian foreign minister describes air attacks on third day of prisoner swap as biggest in weeks.
Russia has targeted Ukraine for a second consecutive night with drones and missiles, killing at least 12 people as the two countries pursue a major prisoner swap.
Ukraine’s air force said on Sunday that Russian forces attacked Ukrainian regions with 298 drones and 69 missiles overnight, one of the largest aerial attacks of the war.
“Most regions of Ukraine were affected by the hostile attack. Enemy air strikes were recorded in 22 areas, and downed cruise missiles and attack UAVs (drones) fell in 15 locations,” the air force said on Telegram.
Ukraine’s security service reported that at least four people were killed and 16 were injured in the capital, Kyiv.
The country’s emergency service reported that three children – aged eight, 12 and 17 – were killed in the region of Zhytomyr, while another person was killed in the southern city of Mykolaiv.
Four others were killed in attacks across the Khmelnytskyi region, Sergiy Tyurin, the deputy head of the regional military administration, said in a post on Telegram, adding that civilian infrastructure had been destroyed.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said it had been a “difficult Sunday morning in Ukraine after a sleepless night” following “the most massive Russian air attack in many weeks”.
A difficult Sunday morning in Ukraine after a sleepless night. The most massive Russian air attack in many weeks lasted all night.
Russia launched hundreds of drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles into Ukrainian cities and communities during the night, injuring and… pic.twitter.com/FcawH6DJD4
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported on Telegram that “more than a dozen enemy drones” were in the airspace around the capital.
He reported damage to a student dormitory in Holosiivskyi district, a house in Dniprovskyi district and a residential building in Shevchenkivskyi district.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its forces shot down 110 Ukrainian drones overnight.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said 12 drones flying towards the Russian capital had been intercepted.
Restrictions were imposed on at least four airports, including the main hub Sheremetyevo, the Russian civilian aviation authority, Rosaviatsiya, said.
Major prisoner swap
The two sides traded fire as they engaged in their biggest prisoner swap since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Kyiv and Moscow agreed to swap 1,000 prisoners of war and civilian detainees each in talks held in Istanbul, Turkiye, earlier this month – the first time the two sides had met face to face for peace talks.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russia’s Defence Ministry said each side brought home 307 more soldiers on Saturday, a day after each released a total of 390 servicemen and civilians.
Zelenskyy said on his official Telegram channel that further releases are expected on Sunday.
The Russian Defence Ministry also said it expected the exchange to continue.
The renewed attacks followed a massive wave of attacks the previous day, with Ukraine reporting on Saturday that Russia had hit it with 250 drones and 14 ballistic missiles, while Russia said it was attacked by at least 100 Ukrainian drones.
The two countries swap hundreds of soldiers and civilians as Russia launches more drone attacks on Ukraine.
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged more prisoners of war as Ukrainian officials renew their calls for more sanctions in response to dozens of attack drones and ballistic missiles launched by Moscow’s forces at Kyiv overnight.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence said on Saturday it released 307 Ukrainian prisoners of war in exchange for as many Russian servicemen, who are being cared for in Belarus before their return to Russia.
Ukraine confirmed the exchange, saying among those returned were army soldiers, agents of the State Border Guard Service, and members of the National Guard of Ukraine.
The two sides each released 270 servicemen and 120 civilians on the Ukrainian border with Belarus on Friday, as part of the biggest prisoner exchange since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Both sides have agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners, but the aerial attacks and ground fighting have not stopped.
Ukraine’s military on Saturday said overnight attacks launched from multiple Russian regions used 250 drones and 14 ballistic missiles to hit Kyiv and other areas, damaging several apartment buildings and a shopping mall, and injuring at least 15 people in the capital.
Sites in the Ukrainian regions of Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa and Zaporizhia were also hit, with Ukrainian forces saying six of the ballistic missiles were shot down by its air defences, along with 245 drones, many of which were said to be Iranian-designed.
A drone explosion lights up the sky over Kyiv during a Russian drone strike [Gleb Garanich/Reuters]
Oleh Syniehubov, head of Kharkiv’s regional state administration, said on Saturday morning that four Ukrainians were killed and several others injured over the past 24 hours in the region as a result of multiple Russian attacks.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Ministry of Defence said at least 100 Ukrainian drones attempted to strike Russian targets overnight. It said 64 unmanned aerial vehicles were downed overnight in the skies of the Belgorod region, along with 10 additional drones launched on Saturday morning.
Dozens more projectiles were downed over Kursk, Lipetsk and Voronezh and another five were shot down over Tver northwest of Moscow, it said.
‘Difficult night’
In a social media post, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the country had another “difficult night” that he believes should convince the world that “the reason for the war being dragged out is in Moscow”.
“It is obvious that we need to put much more pressure on Russia to get results and start real diplomacy. We are waiting for sanctions from the US, Europe and all our partners. Only additional sanctions against key sectors of the Russian economy will force Moscow to agree to a ceasefire.”
The Group of Seven (G7) nations threatened on Friday to impose further sanctions on Russia if it fails to agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said a week after talks in Turkiye’s capital Istanbul led only to an agreement on the exchange of prisoners of war, that Moscow has yet to send any “peace memorandum”.
“Instead, Russia sends deadly drones and missiles at civilians,” he wrote in a post on X, adding that “increased sanctions pressure on Moscow is necessary to accelerate the peace process.”
Reporting from Kyiv, Al Jazeera’s John Hendren said the Istanbul meeting was disappointing for Zelenskyy because he wanted a face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Instead, it was a much lower-level meeting. But they did manage to get this prisoner swap,” he said, adding that the exchanges could be over by Sunday but the details were not clear.
“Zelenskyy has been disappointed by the lack of additional US sanctions against Russia. Europe has agreed to new sanctions, but it’s not clear that they will really have the desired effect to bring Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table.”
These are the key events on day 1,185 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Here is where things stand on Saturday, May 24:
Fighting
At least 14 people were injured in one of the biggest combined drone and ballistic missile attacks to date on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, according to city officials, and witnesses reported a series of explosions and waves of Russian drones flying over the city.
Ukraine’s air force said that Moscow launched 250 long-range drones and 14 ballistic missiles overnight. It said it down 245 of the Shahed-type drones and six of the Iskander ballistic missiles. It was unclear if the remaining drones and missiles hit its targets.
Anti-aircraft units were activated across the Ukrainian capital following the attack at dawn. Timur Tkachenko, head of the capital’s military administration, said two fires had broken out in the city’s Sviatoshynskyi district. Drone fragments also hit the ground in four districts.
At least two people were killed in Ukraine’s southern city of Odesa after Russia struck port infrastructure with missiles, according to authorities.
Three people were killed in shelling incidents in different parts of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, the focal point of the war’s front line, authorities said.
Russia has accused Ukraine of launching a massive wave of drone attacks, numbering up to 800, against non-military targets in Moscow and other regions in the last three days and said it would respond, but said it was still committed to holding peace talks with Kyiv.
Ukraine’s military said that it had hit a battery-manufacturing facility in Russia’s Lipetsk region, which it said supplied Russian missile and bomb manufacturers. It added that the batteries were used in aerial bombs, cruise missiles and the Iskander-M ballistic missile.
A Russian military helicopter has crashed near the village of Naryshkino in Russia’s Oryol region, killing the crew, the state news agency TASS reported, citing the Moscow military district headquarters. The preliminary cause of the crash was a technical malfunction.
Politics and diplomacy
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has announced that Moscow will be ready to hand Ukraine a draft document outlining conditions for a long-term peace accord once a prisoner exchange, now under way, is completed.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha told reporters that Kyiv was waiting for Russia’s proposals on the form of talks, a ceasefire and a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Sybiha, quoted by Ukrainian media, said Kyiv would be in favour of expanding such a meeting to include United States President Donald Trump.
Lavrov has cast doubt on the Vatican as a potential place for peace talks with Ukraine. Italy had said Pope Leo XIV was ready to host the peace talks after Trump suggested the Vatican as a location. Italy, the pope and the US had voiced hope the city-state could host the talks.
Russia and Ukraine have each released 390 prisoners of war and said they would free more in the coming days, an initiative agreed in talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials in Turkiye last week.
Putin has declared in televised remarks that Russia needs to strengthen its position in the global arms market by increasing exports of weapons.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz urged Chinese President Xi Jinping to back Western efforts towards a Ukraine truce in his first phone call with China’s leader since Merz took office this month.
Economy
US credit rating agency Fitch has affirmed Ukraine’s long-term foreign currency sovereign credit rating at “Restricted Default”, as the war-torn nation continues to navigate diplomatic tensions and a significant erosion of its finances amid its grinding war with Russia.
The International Monetary Fund has started a new review of its $15.5bn programme to Ukraine this week, even as the country failed to reach a deal with GDP-linked debt holders last month.
Finance officials from the Group of Seven (G7) nations have threatened they could impose further sanctions on Russia should it fail to agree a ceasefire in its war on Ukraine.
Ending their G7 meeting in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, where foreign ministers were also convening this week, the finance chiefs said on Thursday night that if efforts to end Russia’s “continued brutal war” in Ukraine failed, the group would look at how it could push Moscow to step back.
“If such a ceasefire is not agreed, we will continue to explore all possible options, including options to maximise pressure such as further ramping up sanctions,” a final communique following three days of meetings read.
The G7, comprised of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, also pledged to work together to ensure that no countries that financed the war would be eligible to benefit from Kyiv’s reconstruction.
Canadian Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said that point was a “very big statement”, calling it a key pillar.
However, the group shied away from naming countries, including China, which the West has previously accused of supplying weapons to Russia.
The communique added that Russia’s sovereign assets in G7 jurisdictions would continue to be blocked until Moscow ended the war and paid reparations to Ukraine for the damage it caused to the country.
‘Clear signal?’
“I think it sends a very clear signal to the world … that the G7 is united in purpose and in action,” Champagne told the closing news conference.
However, the statement omitted mention of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs that are disrupting global trade and supply chains and swelling economic uncertainty.
Differences were also apparent in the approach to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Trump has unnerved US allies by sidelining them to launch bilateral ceasefire talks with Moscow, in which US officials have adopted many of the Kremlin’s narratives regarding the conflict.
In the statement, the description of the war was watered down from October’s G7 statement, issued before Trump’s re-election, that called it an “illegal, unjustifiable, and unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine”.
G7 finance ministers and central bank governors sit down for their first meeting at the G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors’ Meeting in Banff, Alberta, Canada, May 21, 2025 [File: Todd Korol/Reuters]
Tariffs
According to European Commission executive vice president, Valdis Dombrovskis, the ministers discussed a proposal to lower the $60-a-barrel price cap to $50 on Russian oil exports since Russian crude was selling below that level.
However, the official G7 communique did not present the plan as the US was “not convinced” about lowering the price cap, an unnamed European official told the Reuters news agency.
According to the European Union bill, duties will be enforced from July 1 and gradually increase over three years, from 6.5 percent to about 100 percent, halting trade.
‘Yet to be agreed’
As international entities continue to place sanctions on Russia for invading Ukraine, diplomatic efforts to end the war have increased after the two sides held their first face-to-face meeting last week.
However, Moscow appears set to continue to stall, as it has been doing since the US launched its push to broker a truce.
The Kremlin said on Thursday that new talks were “yet to be agreed” after reports that the Vatican was ready to host a future meeting to discuss a ceasefire.
Still, Russia and Ukraine are trading attacks.
On Friday morning, Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its air defence systems had downed 112 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 24 over the Moscow region.
A day earlier, Russia said it had fired an Iskander-M missile at part of the city of Pokrov in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region.
Ceasefire negotiations between Russia and Ukraine may soon be under way, but Ukraine’s economic recovery will be hobbled unless the European Union fast-tracks the war-torn country’s membership and provides hundreds of billions of euros’ worth of insurance and investment, experts tell Al Jazeera.
“I think what Ukraine needs is some kind of future where it will have a stable and defendable border, and that will only come, I would think, with EU membership,” historian Phillips O’Brien told Al Jazeera.
The US administration of President Donald Trump last month handed Ukraine and Russia a ceasefire proposal that excluded future NATO membership of Ukraine, satisfying a key Kremlin demand and leaving Ukraine without the security guarantees it seeks.
“What business is actually going to take the risk of getting involved there economically?” asked O’Brien. “With NATO off the table, I think if Ukraine is going to have a chance of rebuilding and being integrated into Europe, it will have to be through a fast-tracked EU membership.”
That membership is by no means assured, although the European Commission started negotiations in record time last June, and Ukraine has the support of EU heavyweights like France and Germany.
[Al Jazeera]
If Ukraine becomes an EU member, it would still face a devastated economy requiring vast investment.
The Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) estimated that between Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 and November last year, Moscow’s onslaught had destroyed $170bn of infrastructure, with the housing, transport and energy sectors most affected.
That figure did not include the damage incurred in almost a decade of war in the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk since 2014 or the loss of 29 percent of Ukraine’s gross domestic product (GDP) from the invasion in 2022. The estimate also did not put a value on the loss of almost a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, which Russia now occupies.
That territory contains almost half of Ukraine’s unexploited mineral wealth, worth an estimated $12.4 trillion, according to SecDev, a Canadian geopolitical risk firm.
It also does not include some types of reconstruction costs, such as chemical decontamination and mine-clearing.
The World Bank put the cost of infrastructure damages slightly higher this year, at $176bn, and predicts the cost of reconstruction and recovery at about $525bn over 10 years.
‘The Kremlin has certainly looted occupied territory’
Economic war has been part of Russia’s strategy since the invasion of Donetsk and Luhansk in 2014, argued Maximilian Hess, a risk analyst and Eurasia expert at the International Institute of Strategic Studies.
“The Kremlin has certainly looted occupied territory, including for coking coal, agricultural products, and iron,” Hess told Al Jazeera.
The KSE has estimated Russia stole half a million tonnes of grain, included in the $1.9bn damages bill to the agricultural sector.
Using long-range rocketry, Russia also targeted industrial hubs not under its control.
Ukraine inherited a series of factories from the Soviet Union, including the Kharkiv Tractor Plant, the Zaporizhia Automobile Plant, the Pivdenmash rocket manufacturer in Dnipro and massive steel plants.
“All were targeted by Russian forces,” wrote Hess in his recent book, Economic War. “Russia’s attacks were, of course, primarily aimed at devastating the Ukrainian economy and weakening its ability and will to fight, but they also raised the cost to the West of supporting Ukraine in the conflict, something the Kremlin hoped would lead to reduced support for Kyiv.”
Through occupation and targeting, Russia managed to deprive Ukraine of a flourishing metallurgy sector.
According to the United States Geological Survey, metallurgical production decreased by 66.5 percent as a result of the war.
That is a vast loss, considering that Ukraine once produced almost a third of the iron ore in Europe, Russia and Central Eurasia, half of the region’s manganese ore and a third of its titanium. It remains the only producer of uranium in Europe, an important resource in the continent’s quest for greater energy autonomy.
Ukraine’s claims to have built a $20bn defence industrial base with allied help, a rare wartime economic success story.
That can make up for the losses in metallurgy, Hess said, “but only in part and in different regions of the country from which those mining and metallurgical ones were concentrated. Boosting [metallurgical activities] in places like Kryvyi Rih, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, and ideally territory ultimately freed from Russian occupation, will be necessary to win the peace.”
Trump’s minerals deal, and other instruments
Weeks ago, Ukraine and the US signed a memorandum of intent to jointly exploit Ukraine’s mineral wealth.
Ukraine committed to putting half the proceeds from its metallurgical activities into a Reconstruction Fund, but experts doubted the notion that mineral wealth can rebuild Ukraine.
“Projects have a long launch period … from five to 10 years,” Maxim Fedoseienko, head of strategic projects at the KSE Institute, told Al Jazeera. “You need to make documentation, environmental impacts assessment, and after that, you can also need three years to build this mine.”
The US and EU might invest in such mines, Fedoseienko said, because “we have more than 24 kinds of materials from the EU list of critical [raw] materials,” but they would only contribute to the Ukrainian economy if investments were equitable.
Trump presented the minerals deal as payback for billions in military aid.
“There’s nothing remotely fair about it. The aid was not given to be paid back,” said O’Brien.
As Fedoseienko put it, “It is not fair if everyone will say, ‘OK, we will help you in a time of war, so you are owned [by] us.’”
Residents are seen next to houses heavily damaged by a Russian drone strike outside of Kyiv [File: Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters]
In addition to fairness, Ukraine needs money. Some of that needs to come in the form of insurance.
A state-backed war-risk insurance formula Kyiv reached with the United Kingdom in 2023, for example, brought bulk carriers back to Ukraine’s ports and defeated Russian efforts to blockade Ukrainian grain exports.
As a result, Ukraine exported 57.5 million tonnes of agricultural goods in 2023-2024, and was on track to export 77 million tonnes in the 2024-2025 marketing year, which ends in June, its agriculture ministry said.
“There needs to be a substantial expansion of public insurance products in particular, as well as a move to seize frozen Russian assets,” said Hess.
Seizing some $300bn in Russian central bank money held in the EU was deemed controversial, but the measure is now receiving support.
“The Russian state has committed these war crimes, has broken international law, has done this damage to Ukraine – that actually becomes a just way of helping Ukraine rebuild,” said O’Brien. “[Europeans] have a very strong case for this, but they, right now, lack the political will to do it.”
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has already repeatedly asked Europe to use the money for Ukraine’s defence and reconstruction.
What Europeans have done in the meantime is going some way towards rebuilding Ukraine.
Some $300m in interest payments proceeding from Russian assets are diverted to reconstruction each year.
A European Commission programme provides 9.3 billion euros ($10.5bn) of financial support designed to leverage investment from the private sector.
Financial institutions such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Investment Bank are providing loan guarantees to Ukrainian banks, which gives them liquidity.
“So Ukrainian banks can provide loans to Ukrainian companies to invest and operate in Ukraine. This is a big ecosystem to finance investment and operational needs to the Ukrainian economy,” said Fedoseienko.
Together with the finance ministry, the KSE operates an online portal providing information about the various instruments available, which has already helped bring 165 investments to fruition worth $27bn.
“Is it enough to recover the Ukrainian economy?” Fedoseienko asked. “No, but this is a significant programme to support Ukraine now.”
These are the key events on day 1,184 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Here is where things stand on Friday, May 23:
Fighting
Ukrainian drones disrupted air traffic around Moscow, grounding planes at several major airports on Thursday, as 35 drones targeting the city were downed, according to Russia’s Ministry of Defence.
According to the ministry and Moscow mayor’s office, a total of 46 Ukrainian drones targeted Russia’s capital, while an additional 70 drones were launched against other targets across the country.
Russia launched 128 drones at Ukraine overnight, according to Ukraine’s air force, with 112 of those drones either shot down, jammed or were lost en route to their targets.
Russia said that 12 civilians were injured in a “massive” Ukrainian strike on the town of Lgov in Russia’s Kursk region.
Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the former top commander of Ukraine’s military who was known for clashing with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said it was unlikely Ukraine would be able to return to the borders with Russia it held from 1991 until the Russian invasion of 2014. Even keeping Ukraine’s borders up until Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 may also not be possible, he said.
“I hope that there are not people in this room who still hope for some kind of miracle or lucky sign that will bring peace to Ukraine, the borders of 1991 or 2022 and that there will be great happiness afterward,” Zaluzhnyi told a forum in Kyiv.
Russia said it has received a list of names from Ukraine for a prisoner of war swap. A swap of 1,000 prisoners from each side was agreed to during a meeting last week between Russian and Ukrainian officials in Istanbul aimed at ending the war.
Regional security
Finland said it is closely monitoring a Russian military build-up along its 1,340km (832-mile) joint border with Russia. Finland closed the border with its neighbour in December 2023 when 1,000 migrants crossed its frontier without visas.
Economy
Following a meeting in Canada this week, the G7’s finance ministers said they would explore further sanctions on Russia if it fails to reach a ceasefire with Ukraine. They also said they will work to ensure “no countries or entities” that fuelled “Russia’s war machine” will be able to benefit from Ukraine’s reconstruction.
Moscow is moving to block foreign companies returning to Russia from accessing “buyback” options for assets left there when they pulled out following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The bill before Russia’s legislature allows “Russian citizens and companies to refuse to return assets to foreign investors, subject to a number of conditions”.
The group said it would call for analysis on international supply chain resilience.
Finance ministers and central bank governors from the Group of Seven (G7) democracies have pledged to address “excessive imbalances” in the global economy and said they could increase sanctions on Russia.
The G7 announced the plan on Thursday as the officials, who met in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, said there was a need for a common understanding of how “non-market policies and practices” undermine international economic security.
The document did not name China, but references by the United States and other G7 economies to non-market policies and practices often are targeted at China’s state subsidies and export-driven economic model.
The final communique called for an analysis of market concentration and international supply chain resilience.
“We agree on the importance of a level playing field and taking a broadly coordinated approach to address the harm caused by those who do not abide by the same rules and lack transparency,” it said.
Lowering Russian oil price cap
European Commission Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis said the G7 ministers discussed proposals for further sanctions on Russia to try to end its war in Ukraine. They included lowering the G7-led $60-per-barrel price cap on Russian oil, given that Russian crude is now selling under that level, he said.
The G7 participants condemned what they called Russia’s “continued brutal war” against Ukraine and said that if efforts to achieve a ceasefire failed, they would explore all possible options, including “further ramping up sanctions”.
Russia’s sovereign assets in G7 jurisdictions would remain immobilised until Moscow ended the war and paid for the damage it has caused to Ukraine, the communique said. It did not mention a price cap.
Brent crude currently trades at around $64 per barrel.
A European official said the US is “not convinced” about lowering the Russian oil price cap.
Earlier this week, the US Treasury said Secretary Scott Bessent intended to press G7 allies to focus on rebalancing the global economy to protect workers and companies from China’s “unfair practices”.
The communique also recognised an increase in low-value international “de minimis” package shipments that can overwhelm customs and tax collection systems and be used for smuggling drugs and other illicit goods.
The duty-free de minimis exemption for packages valued below $800 has been exploited by Chinese e-commerce companies including Shein and Temu.
Russia and Ukraine are expected to each swap 1,000 prisoners of war as part of deal reached at recent talks in Istanbul.
Russia has received a list of names of prisoners of war (POWs) that Ukraine wants freed as part of an expected exchange between the two countries, a Kremlin spokesperson told the Russian news agency Interfax.
Dmitry Peskov told Interfax on Thursday that the list had been received after Moscow gave Kyiv its own list of prisoners it wants released.
The exchange – which will see each side free 1,000 POWs in what would be the largest swap of the war – was agreed to during talks last week in the Turkish capital, Istanbul.
Those discussions marked the first direct peace negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian delegations since 2022, the year the war began.
In advance of the meeting, Ukraine had called for a 30-day ceasefire, but Moscow rejected the proposal, agreeing only to the prisoner swap.
Ukrainian officials have since accused Russia of deliberately delaying peace talks while consolidating territorial gains on the battlefield.
The major prisoner swap is a “quite laborious process” that “requires some time”, said Peskov, adding that “the work is continuing at a quick pace.”
“Everybody is interested in doing it quickly,” the Kremlin spokesperson said.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Thursday that the deal “to release 1,000 of our people from Russian captivity was perhaps the only tangible result of the meeting in Turkiye”.
“We are working to ensure that this result is achieved,” he said in a post on X.
Zelenskyy added that Defence Minister Rustem Umerov is overseeing the exchange process, supported by several Ukrainian government ministries, intelligence agencies and the president’s own office.
“The return of all our people from Russian captivity is one of Ukraine’s key priorities,” Zelenskyy said. “I am grateful to everyone who is contributing to this effort.”
As Ukraine, the European Union, and the United States press Moscow to return to negotiations, Peskov dismissed reports about future peace talks taking place at the Vatican, saying, “There is no concrete agreement about the next meetings.”
US President Donald Trump spoke with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on Monday and urged an end to the “bloodbath”.
Putin thanked Trump for supporting the resumption of direct talks between Russia and Ukraine, and said his government “will propose and is ready to work with the Ukrainian side on a memorandum on a possible future peace accord”.
Meanwhile, Russia’s defence ministry said on Thursday that its air defences shot down 105 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 35 over the Moscow region.
The ministry said it downed 485 Ukrainian drones over several regions and the Black Sea between late Tuesday and early Thursday.
In southern Ukraine, Kherson Governor Oleksandr Prokudin also said on Thursday that one person was killed in a Russian artillery attack on the region.
He said 35 areas in the Kherson region, including the city of Kherson, came under artillery shelling and air attacks over the past day, wounding 11 people.
Zelenskyy said the “most intense situation” remains in the Donetsk region, however, while Ukrainian forces continue “active operations in the Kursk and Belgorod regions” inside Russia.
European Parliament backs bill that will enact duties in July and gradually increase them over three years.
The European Parliament has voted to impose tariffs on fertiliser and certain farm produce imports from Russia and its ally Belarus, despite European farmers’ fears that the move could lead to higher prices.
The European Parliament on Thursday voted 411 to 100 in support of the bill that will enact duties in July and gradually increase them to a point where they would make imports unviable in 2028.
In 2023, more than 70 percent of EU fertiliser consumption was of nitrogen-based fertiliser, of which Russia accounted for 25 percent of EU imports worth about 1.3bn euros ($1.5bn).
According to the bloc, the tariffs for certain fertilisers will increase over three years from 6.5 percent to an amount equivalent to about 100 percent, effectively halting trade by 2028.
For farm produce, an additional 50 percent duty will apply.
While Russia and Belarus were hit with prohibitive tariffs last year over the war in Ukraine, the new measures will apply to 15 percent of agriculture imports from Russia that were not previously hit, including meat, dairy produce, fruit and vegetables.
EU lawmaker Inese Vaidere, spearheading the push for increased tariffs, said the bloc must stop fuelling “the Russian war machine” and “limit the dependency of Europe’s farmers to Russian fertilisers”.
Member states still must formally give the bill their final approval, having already supported the idea.
Russia said on Thursday that the tariffs would cause fertiliser prices in the EU to rise.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that demand for Russian nitrogen fertilisers on other export routes remained high, adding that Russian fertilisers were of the highest quality.
Farmers’ fears
The pan-European farmers’ group Copa-Cogeca told the AFP news agency that using Russian fertilisers was the “most competitive in terms of price, due to well-established logistics”.
The tariff could be “potentially devastating” for the agriculture sector, the group warned, adding, “European farmers must not become collateral damage”.
A farmer in Belgium accused the EU of hurting its farmers.
Amaury Poncelet told AFP that he “doesn’t understand the European Union’s idea of punishing its farmers”.
“We’re losing money because of these European decisions that treat us like pawns who don’t matter,” he said.
The European Commission has argued the tariffs will help support domestic production and suggested duties on imports from other regions could be removed to alleviate price pressures, among other mitigating measures, in case of price shocks.
Russia questioned Ukrainian sovereignty and undermined the authority of its president as the two countries engaged in their first direct talks since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in Istanbul on May 15 for the talks his Russian counterpart suggested days earlier. Accompanying him were his foreign and defence ministers.
But Russian President Vladimir Putin did not show up, nor did his cabinet members. He sent a junior delegation, headed by ambassador-at-large Rodion Miroshnik, that was not empowered to sign a ceasefire.
However, in sour tones, Russia cast aspersions on the legitimacy of the Ukrainian team.
“The delegation is waiting for the clown to speak out, for the hallucinogens to wear off, and for him to finally allow those he’s banned from negotiating for three years to sit down at the table,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova wrote on social media, referring to Zelenskyy’s decree against direct talks while Russia waged war in Ukraine.
“We analysed Ukrainian legislation, and according to it, we understand that Zelenskyy’s powers as the legitimate leader of the country have expired,” said Russian lead negotiator Rodion Miroshnik on May 16, the day of the talks.
He was referring to the fact that Zelenskyy did not hold a scheduled presidential election last year. The Ukrainian constitution allows Zelenskyy to remain in office at a time of national crisis, and the Ukrainian parliament extended Zelenskyy’s term until the end of martial law. But Russian officials have used the extension to paint Zelenskyy as illegitimate.
“There is a risk that agreements reached and signed in an illegitimate manner may be disavowed,” said Miroshnik.
“The most important and fundamental thing for us remains who exactly will sign these documents on the Ukrainian side,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov the day after the talks.
(Al Jazeera)
But Russia’s stance has stirred suspicion that Moscow is laying the groundwork to eventually wriggle out of any agreement.
“This rhetorical campaign is part of efforts to set conditions for Russia to withdraw from any future peace agreements at a time of Russia’s choosing,” wrote the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.
What the two sides proposed
Ukraine proposed a ceasefire followed by a meeting between Zelenskyy and Putin.
Russia rejected both demands, proposing instead an exchange of 1,000 prisoners of war from each side, followed by a submission of ceasefire proposals in writing.
“We agreed that each side would present its vision of a possible future ceasefire, laying it out in detail,” said Putin aide Vladimir Medinsky, a member of the negotiating team.
The war will meanwhile continue – in its favour, Russia believes.
During the talks, Russian forces launched assaults near Pokrovsk and Toretsk in Ukraine’s east, capturing some turf.
On Saturday night, Russia unleashed 273 drones on Ukraine’s cities – its largest barrage of the war.
And on Monday, the Russian Ministry of Defence claimed to have captured two settlements, Maryino in Sumy and Novoolenovka in Donetsk.
(Al Jazeera)
Moscow has answered Kyiv’s calls for a ceasefire by insisting on talks without preconditions, but it reportedly demanded them on Friday.
Sources familiar with the proceedings told Bloomberg the Russian delegation demanded a priori recognition that the four provinces Russia partly occupies, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, be handed over in their entirety.
Russian Security Council deputy chairman Dmitry Medvedev insisted that the four regions Russia invaded in 2022 were Russian by law.
“They first proclaimed themselves the subjects of international law following referendums and then addressed us with a request to accede to the Russian Federation. So, from the standpoint of international law, everything is fine here,” he told the St Petersburg International Legal Forum on Tuesday.
It appeared that Russia was trying to set another precondition for a second round of talks, which should entail an agreement on Ukraine’s non-aligned status, Leonid Slutsky, the head of the State Duma’s committee on international affairs, told the pro-Kremlin newswire TASS on Tuesday.
The surrendering of the four regions and neutrality – an agreement never to join NATO and the European Union – are among conditions Putin set in a speech last June.
As delegations resumed their talks on Monday, Zakharova confirmed that those still constituted Russian goals.
“Russia is ready and will continue to work with the Ukrainian side on a memorandum on a potential future peace treaty outlining a number of positions, such as, for instance, settlement principles, the timeframe for signing a potential peace agreement, and so on, including a potential ceasefire for a certain period in case relevant agreements are reached,” Putin told reporters .
The next day, Putin called Ukrainians Neonazis for tearing down World War II monuments, and “idiots” who “would come second in a contest of idiots”, as he visited the border region of Kursk for the first time since Russian forces reclaimed it following a Ukrainian counter-invasion.
(Al Jazeera)
Trump urged Putin to meet with Zelenskyy.
Peskov downplayed the demand, saying they “touched upon the issue of direct contact”.
“It is important that America remains engaged in the process of bringing peace closer. It is America that Russia fears, and it is American influence that can save many lives, if used as leverage to make Putin end the war,” Zelenskyy said in his Tuesday evening address.
But others had doubts that Trump’s negotiating tactics were going to produce a good result for Ukraine.
US former ambassador to Kyiv Bridget Brink explained on Monday why she resigned her post last month.
“I resigned from Ukraine and also from the foreign service because the policy since the beginning of the [Trump] administration is to put pressure on the victim, Ukraine, rather than on the aggressor, Russia,” she told CBS’s Face the Nation. “Peace at any price is not peace at all. It’s appeasement. And as we know from history, appeasement only leads to more war.”
Europe, Canada and Australia remain the holdouts among Ukraine’s allies in favour of a harder line against Russia.
A 17th EU sanctions package came into force on Monday, restricting the movement of 189 tankers considered to be smuggling Russian oil, and bringing the total to 342. The EU also sanctioned Russian arms manufacturers and 28 Russian judges for human rights violations.
These are the key events on day 1,183 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Here is where things stand on Thursday, May 22:
Fighting
Russia’s Defence Ministry said air defences shot down 105 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions, including 35 over the Moscow region, after the ministry said a day earlier that it had downed more than 300 Ukrainian drones.
Kherson Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said one person was killed in a Russian artillery attack on the region.
H said over the past day, 35 areas in Kherson, including Kherson city, came under artillery shelling and air attacks, wounding 11 people.
Ukrainian President Zelenskyy said the “most intense situation” is in the Donetsk region, and the army is continuing “active operations in the Kursk and Belgorod regions”.
Diplomacy
Legislators from the European Union are expected to greenlight tariffs on fertiliser imports from Russia. A United States Senate bill to pressure Russia with new sanctions over the war gained the support of more than 80 members of both parties.
The Kremlin rejected Ukrainian and European accusations that it was stalling peace talks, saying it plans to name its conditions for a ceasefire without a timeframe.
Poland said its military intervened after a ship from the Russian “shadow fleet” was seen performing suspicious manoeuvres near a power cable connecting Poland with Sweden.
Zelenskyy said he had spoken by phone to NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, and that they had discussed joint steps and the need to put pressure on Russia to secure “a just peace”.
Ukraine’s allies, including the US and UK, issued an advisory warning of a Russian cyber campaign targeting logistics and tech firms involved in delivering foreign assistance to Ukraine.
Armenia has long relied on Russian weapons in its bitter dispute with neighbouring Azerbaijan.
Russia’s top diplomat has blamed the war in Ukraine for affecting the supply of arms to Armenia, and has expressed concern that Moscow’s longstanding ally would now look to the West for military support instead.
Speaking in Yerevan on the second day of a two-day visit to Armenia, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that some of Russia’s weapons contracts with the former Soviet republic had been delayed or reassigned due to the pressures created by the war in Ukraine.
Armenia has long relied on Russian weapons in its bitter dispute with neighbouring Azerbaijan, against whom it has fought a series of conflicts since the late 1980s.
“We are currently in a situation where, as has happened throughout history, we are forced to fight all of Europe,” Lavrov said, in a barbed reference to European support for Ukraine in response to the Russian invasion.
“Our Armenian friends understand that in such conditions, we cannot fulfil all our obligations on time.”
As Russia has failed to deliver on weapons contracts paid for by Armenia, Yerevan has increasingly turned to countries like France and India for military supplies.
Lavrov said that Russia would not oppose these growing ties, but said that they raised concerns about its traditional ally’s strategic intentions.
“When an ally turns to a country like France, which leads the hostile camp and whose president and ministers speak openly with hatred toward Russia, it does raise questions,” he said.
Armenia has strengthened its ties with the West amid recent ongoing tensions with Azerbaijan, fallout from the last major eruption of conflict and Russia’s role in that.
In September 2023, Azerbaijan launched a military operation to retake Nagorno-Karabakh, a separatist enclave in Azerbaijan with a mostly ethnic Armenian population that had broken away from Baku with Armenian support amid the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Armenia accused Russian peacekeepers of failing to protect the more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians who fled the region, fuelled by decades of distrust, wars, mutual hatred and violence, after Azerbaijan’s lightning takeover.
Yerevan also suspended its involvement in the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, a Russian-led security umbrella of ex-Soviet countries, last year, saying it would not participate or fund the alliance.
These are the key events on day 1,182 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Here is where things stand on Wednesday, May 21:
Fighting
United States President Donald Trump told reporters he is not worried about reports that Russia is massing its forces along the border of Finland. “No, I don’t… worry about that at all,” he said, adding that Finland and Norway were “going to be very safe”.
Moscow accused NATO of “aggressive actions” after Estonia last week tried and failed to seize a Russian tanker suspected of ferrying oil in violation of international sanctions.
Diplomacy
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni confirmed that Pope Leo XIV and the Vatican are willing to host peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he expects Putin to present a peace plan in the coming days, which will signal how serious he is about ending the war.
Moscow will offer “just broad terms that would allow us to move towards a ceasefire, and that ceasefire would then allow us to enter into detailed negotiations to bring about an end of the conflict,” Rubio said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia is just trying to “buy time in order to continue its war and occupation”, in a social media post.
Poland indicted a man accused of helping Russian foreign intelligence services prepare a possible assassination attempt against Zelenskyy.
Economy
The United Kingdom announced sanctions against 100 new Russian targets, with the intention of disrupting “Putin’s war machine” and its supply chain. The European Union also announced its 18th package of sanctions against Russia.
Canada invited Ukrainian Minister of Finance Sergii Marchenko to attend a meeting of the G7 finance ministers this week in Banff, Alberta, as a guest.
On the sidelines of the meeting, Marchenko called for more international sanctions on Russia, including further lowering the $60-per-barrel price cap imposed on Russian crude oil exports by many countries, including G7 members.
The meeting precedes a major G7 summit in June, also hosted by Canada, which is expected to discuss the reconstruction of Ukraine.
Brussels and London acting ‘in concert’ after Trump failed to secure ceasefire promise from Putin.
The European Union and the United Kingdom have announced coordinated packages of sanctions against Russia in a bid to ramp up pressure on President Vladimir Putin to end the war against Ukraine, as diplomatic momentum to reach a ceasefire accelerates.
The packages, which were unveiled Tuesday, will see both the EU and the UK taking aim at Russia’s so-called shadow fleet of oil tankers that illicitly transport oil to circumvent Western restrictions, with Brussels targeting 189 ships.
The UK’s wide-ranging package will also target the supply chains of Russian weapons systems, including Iskander missiles, Kremlin-funded information operations, and financial institutions that help Russia evade sanctions.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said an 18th package of sanctions was already being prepared by the EU, to follow the newly adopted 17th, with further meaningful measures.
“It’s time to intensify the pressure on Russia to bring about the ceasefire,” she posted on X, after a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Reporting from London, Al Jazeera’s Jonah Hull noted that the EU and UK were “acting in concert”, simultaneously releasing the new sanctions after sealing a new defence and security pact during reset talks in London the previous day.
Responding to the sanctions, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on Tuesday that Russia would never bow to ultimatums from anyone, adding that it was clear Europe wanted to re-arm Ukraine to continue the war.
The coordinated action came a day after United States President Donald Trump failed to secure a promise for a ceasefire in Ukraine from Putin in the pair’s highly anticipated phone call on Monday – without any corresponding steps from Washington, despite intense lobbying from European leaders and Zelenskyy.
‘Buying time’
Eager to set the terms, Putin said after the call that Moscow was ready to work with Ukraine on a memorandum about a future peace accord, saying that discussions on the memorandum would include the principles of a settlement and the timing and definitions of a possible ceasefire.
The Kremlin’s Zakharova told reporters “the ball is in Kyiv’s court,” adding that she hoped Ukraine would take a constructive position on the proposed memorandum for the sake of its own “self-preservation”.
Zelenskyy said on Telegram on Tuesday that it was “obvious that Russia is trying to buy time to continue the war and occupation”.
“We are working with partners to put pressure on the Russians to behave differently,” he added, in an apparent reference to further international sanctions on Russia.
After announcing their measures, Brussels and London both suggested that more sanctions could follow, and France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot called for further action to “push Vladimir Putin to put an end to his imperialist fantasy”.
Germany’s Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said: “Putin is clearly playing for time; unfortunately we have to say Putin is not really interested in peace.”
Ukraine’s European allies are considering the possibility of using their air forces to defend the country’s western skies from drone and missile attacks without the help of the United States, sources familiar with the talks tell Al Jazeera.
The plan, known as Skyshield, could put NATO planes and pilots into Ukrainian airspace for the first time, sending a powerful political message to Russia that Europe is committed to Ukraine’s defence.
Skyshield is more likely to come into effect as part of any ceasefire, especially if European ground forces are committed. But it was designed by Ukrainian and British aviation experts to work under combat conditions as well.
“It’s being taken very seriously into consideration by the UK, France,” said Victoria Vdovychenko, an expert on hybrid warfare at Cambridge University’s Centre for Geopolitics, who has sat at some of the meetings. “German colleagues and Italian colleagues also do know about that, as well as the Scandinavian colleagues,” she said.
When it comes to implementing Skyshield in wartime conditions, she admits, “some of the partners are still fluctuating in their decision making”.
Skyshield was published in February and is the brainchild of Price of Freedom, a Ukrainian think tank founded by Lesya Orobets. She came up with the idea during an air defence crisis last spring, when Republican lawmakers in the US delayed the passage of a $60bn bill to send more aid to Ukraine.
During a phone call with the head of Ukraine’s air force, Orobets was told, “We are in the middle of a missile crisis. We don’t have enough [interceptors] to shoot down the missiles.”
Skyshield calls for the deployment of 120 European aircraft to protect Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and export corridors along the Danube River and the Black Sea, freeing up the Ukrainian Air Force to focus on the first line of defence in the contested east of the country.
“There would be a piece of land of 200 kilometres [125 miles] between them at least,” said Orobets.
European jets would be based in neighbouring Poland and Romania, and fly mostly west of the Dnipro, protecting Kyiv on both sides of the river in the north of the country.
A higher-risk strategy
Western commanders are wary of costs, casualties and military implications.
Hourly flight costs, which include training, parts and maintenance, range from $28,000 for an F-16 to about $45,000 for a fourth-generation Rafale jet, Colonel Konstantinos Zikidis of the Hellenic Air Force told Al Jazeera.
“We’d have to pay for people to be there, several shifts a day in all specialities … it will be exhausting,” he said, referring to aircraft technicians and pilots.
“On the other hand, the proposal downplays the effectiveness of air defence systems, which are very effective against cruise missiles and have a far lower hourly operating cost than aircraft,” Zikidis said.
“It’s also not really the job of aircraft to hunt down cruise missiles. They can do it if they are given coordinates by air command. They can’t go out on flight patrol and spot them by chance. So you need a very thick radar array to cover a given area, especially at low altitude.”
European NATO members do not operate AWACS airborne radar, which would be the ideal tool for the job according to Zikidis, but Ukrainian pilots have already downed Russian cruise missiles using air-to-air missiles, suggesting the ground-based radar assets are there.
Europe has provided Ukraine with Patriot and Samp-T long-range air defence systems and Iris-T medium-range systems, but these are enough only to protect larger urban centres, said Vdovychenko. Russia is also stepping up its attacks. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on May 4 that Russia had launched almost 1,200 long-range kamikaze drones and 10 missiles in just a week.
These types of weapons are routinely directed at civilian and industrial infrastructure, not the front lines, and Russian President Vladimir Putin is increasing production. Last year, Russia’s factory at Alabuga produced 6,000 Shahed/Geran long-range drones, said Ukraine’s head of the Center for Countering Disinformation, Andriy Kovalenko, last month. He said Putin set production at 8,000-10,000 drones this year.
The effects are visible. High-profile attacks on Kryvyi Rih, Kharkiv and Kyiv have killed dozens of people this year.
The second problem European air forces would face is that of casualties.
“If one European plane falls and a pilot is killed, it will be very difficult for a European government to explain it,” said Zikidis. “For a Greek pilot to go and get killed in Ukraine could bring the government down,” he added.
“I don’t think that there is a political will [for that], and that is what stops this partially,” said Vdovychenko.
But Orobets put this risk in a wider context.
“We’re talking about catching cruise missiles and putting down the offensive drones, which is quite an easy target for trained pilots,” she told Al Jazeera. “So we do consider Skyshield to be less risky [than enforcing a no-fly zone] or any participation of the European troops closer to the front line.”
Strategic intimidation
Thirdly, there are the military implications. Skyshield is partly about freeing up the Ukrainian Air Force to strike deeper inside Russia, deploying the estimated 85 F-16s it is being given.
That is because Russia has this year intensified its use of controlled air bombs (CABs), which are directed against front lines, reportedly dropping 5,000 in April versus 4,800 in March, 3,370 in February and 1,830 in January.
Ukraine would target the airfields from which Russian jets take off to drop the CABs. It would also move missile launch systems closer to the front lines, increasing their reach inside Russia.
CABs are Russia’s most effective weapon at the front, and it has successfully leveraged its nuclear arsenal to intimidate NATO into allowing them to be flown in.
The Biden administration had refused to allow Ukraine to deploy Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMSs), which have a range of 300km (190 miles), because Russia considered their use dependent on US intelligence, in its view, making the US a cobelligerent in the war.
It has expressed exactly the same view of Germany sending its 500km (310-mile) range Taurus missile to Ukraine.
In the same vein, Russia has threatened to act against any European force deployment to Ukraine.
Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu last month told a summit of the foreign ministers of the BRICS group of states in Rio de Janeiro that “military units of Western states on Ukrainian territory … will be considered as legitimate targets”.
These threats have been effective. The Biden administration was against the idea of allowing the Polish and Romanian air forces to shoot down drones and missiles in Ukrainian airspace that were headed into Polish and Romanian airspace, Orobets said.
The Biden administration “thought that if any American pilot on any American jet or any Western jet would enter the Ukrainian airspace, then America or another country would become cobelligerent”, she said.
The same applied to the notion of Europeans entering Ukraine’s airspace.
“They were scared that Russians would then escalate to the level of a conflict they could not sustain. So that was the only reason. There was no reason like, ‘Oh, we cannot do that’,” she said.
With peace talks on the horizon, Russia currently controls about one-fifth of Ukrainian territory. Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to ask for Ukrainian forces to retreat from four regions of Ukraine during peace talks.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ruled out withdrawing troops from parts of eastern and southern Ukraine currently under Kyiv’s control in an interview with The Kyiv Independent.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence said on Telegram it seized the village of Marine, in Ukraine’s northern Sumy region, and Novoolenivka village in the eastern Donetsk region. Ukraine did not immediately comment on the claims.
Ceasefire talks
United States President Donald Trump said Moscow and Kyiv “will immediately start negotiations towards a ceasefire and an end to their war” following a phone call with Putin that lasted for more than two and a half hours on Monday night.
Following the call, Putin told reporters that Russia is “ready to work with the Ukrainian side on a memorandum on a possible future peace accord, defining a number of positions, such as, for example, the principles of settlement, [and] the timing of a possible peace agreement”.
Putin repeated his oft-spoken point that any ceasefire would need to also address the “root causes of the crisis”, a reference to Ukraine’s potential entry into NATO.
Zelenskyy said in a statement that Ukraine remains committed to peace talks, but Russia needs to also demonstrate its readiness to engage in meaningful dialogue. He also said the US is needed, saying: “It is crucial for all of us that the United States does not distance itself from the talks and the pursuit of peace, because the only one who benefits from that is Putin.”
Moscow and Kyiv are also in talks about a major prisoner exchange, following a phone call on Monday, according to Zelenskyy.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said European Union leaders told Trump they are ready to put more pressure and sanctions on Moscow. “Europe will increase the pressure on Moscow through sanctions. This is what we agreed upon with @POTUS after his conversation with Putin,” Merz said on X.
Germany has joined Denmark in calling on China to exert its influence on Russia over the war in Ukraine.
Pope Leo XIV is interested in hosting talks between Russia and Ukraine, Trump said, a suggestion that was welcomed by US and European leaders, including Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who said Italy is “ready to do its part to facilitate contacts and work for peace”. The Vatican did not confirm any such offer by the pope.
Economy
Finland’s Ministry of Defence said it will use about 90 million euros ($101.35m) in proceeds from frozen Russian assets to buy ammunition for Ukraine. About $300bn of Russian assets have been frozen across the EU since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The EU is expected to lower the current $60 per barrel price cap on Russian oil as far as $50 per barrel as part of its new sanctions package this week, the Reuters news agency reported, citing EU officials.
Poland seized 5 million metric tonnes of tyres for civilian Boeing aircraft bound for Russia in violation of international sanctions.
United States President Donald Trump has said, after a more than two-hour call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, that Moscow and Kyiv “will immediately start negotiations” toward a ceasefire and an end to the war, now in its fourth bloody year.
Putin said that efforts to end the conflict seemed “on the right track” and that Moscow was ready to work with Ukraine on a memorandum about a future peace accord.
Putin thanked Trump for supporting the resumption of direct talks between Russia and Ukraine, and said that Trump noted Russia’s support for peace, though the key question was how to move towards peace.
“We have agreed with the president of the United States that Russia will propose and is ready to work with the Ukrainian side on a memorandum on a possible future peace accord, defining a number of positions, such as, for example, the principles of settlement, the timing of a possible peace agreement,” Putin told reporters near the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
If appropriate agreements are reached, then there could be a ceasefire, Putin said, adding that direct talks between Russia and Ukraine “gives reason to believe that we are generally on the right track”.
“I would like to note that, on the whole, Russia’s position is clear. The main thing for us is to eliminate the root causes of this crisis,” Putin said. “We just need to determine the most effective ways to move towards peace.”
For his part, Trump said the call went very well. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that the Vatican, “as represented by the Pope, has stated that it would be very interested in hosting the negotiations. Let the process begin!”
Al Jazeera’s Yulia Shapovalova, reporting from Moscow, said the call was “very important” for Putin.
“He [Putin] believes that the US – because of its influence – can resolve any problems. Vladimir Putin believes that initially the US was standing behind Ukraine in this conflict, masterminding it,” Shapovalova said.
“So, to address the so-called root causes of the conflict, it was important to speak directly with Donald Trump and with the US.”
‘I think we’ll solve it’
Trump briefed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders on the call. Zelenskyy has insisted if Putin doesn’t commit to a ceasefire stronger sanctions on Russia should be imposed.
Trump, who has promised to bring a swift end to Europe’s deadliest war since World War Two, has repeatedly called for a ceasefire after years in which Washington joined other Western countries in arming Ukraine.
Putin recently rejected an offer by Zelenskyy to meet in-person in Turkiye, for talks between the two nations the Russian leader suggested himself, as an alternative to a 30-day ceasefire urged by Ukraine and its Western allies, including Washington.
Those inconclusive direct talks, the first in three years, between delegations from Ukraine and Russia in Turkiye’s Istanbul on Friday were brief and only yielded an agreement to swap 1,000 prisoners of war, according to the heads of both delegations, in what would be their biggest such exchange since the war began.
A senior Ukrainian official familiar with the talks said Russian negotiators demanded Kyiv pull its troops out of all its regions claimed by Moscow before they would agree to a ceasefire. That is a red line for Ukraine, and as it stands, Russia does not have full control in those regions.
Ukraine’s intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, told Ukrainian television Saturday that the exchanges could happen as early as this week.
While wrapping up his four-day trip to the Middle East, Trump said Friday that Putin had not gone to Istanbul because Trump himself wasn’t there.
“He and I will meet, and I think we’ll solve it or maybe not,” Trump told reporters after boarding Air Force One. “At least we’ll know. And if we don’t solve it, it’ll be very interesting.”
European leaders have said they want the United States to join them in imposing tough new sanctions on Russia for refusing a ceasefire. The leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Italy spoke to Trump on Sunday ahead of his call with Putin.
Al Jazeera’s John Hendren, reporting from Kyiv, said there has been no reaction in Ukraine so far.
“There’s probably not going to be a lot of celebrations unless the details are much more revealing than what we’ve seen so far,” Hendren said.
The calls have taken place a day after Russia launched its largest drone attack on Ukraine since the start of the war.
Ukraine’s intelligence service said it also believed Moscow intended to fire an intercontinental ballistic missile on Sunday, though there was no confirmation from Russia that it had done so.
Russia claims members of the international rights group have backed ‘extremist’ organisations and ‘foreign agents’.
Russian authorities have designated Amnesty International as an “undesirable” organisation, alleging that the rights group propagates pro-war content backed by the Western allies of Ukraine, in the latest crackdown on Kremlin critics.
The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office said in a statement on Monday that Amnesty’s London office has acted as a “centre for the preparation of global Russophobic projects paid for by accomplices of the Kyiv regime”, according to state-run media.
It claimed that since the start of the war in February 2022, Amnesty has been “doing everything possible to intensify the military confrontation in the region”, including by “insisting on the political and economic isolation of our country”.
The office also emphasised that members of the international rights group “support extremist organisations and finance the activities of foreign agents”.
Amnesty did not immediately respond to the allegations.
The designation means the international human rights group must stop any work in Russia, and those accused of cooperating with or supporting it will be exposed to criminal prosecution.
This could even include anyone who shares Amnesty International’s reports on social media.
Russia currently recognises 223 entities as “undesirable” organisations, including some prominent independent, as well as Western-backed news outlets and rights groups. Some of those include Transparency International, Latvia-based outlet Meduza, and US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).
Amnesty International was established in 1961 to document and report human rights violations around the globe and campaign for the release of those deemed unjustly imprisoned.
The organisation won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977, having been recognised “for worldwide respect for human rights” and efforts to combat torture, advocate for prisoners of conscience, and promote global adherence to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In addition to covering human rights violations during the Ukraine war, the group has documented massacres in the Gaza Strip and Israeli apartheid, as well as atrocities in Sudan and many other countries.
Moscow has intensified its crackdown on human rights groups and civil society organisations as relations with the West plummeted over the Ukraine war and the expansion of NATO.
This has included expanding the “undesirable” and “foreign agent” designations to shut down opposing voices, as well as the suppression of some minority groups’ rights.
The move on Monday came as US President Donald Trump was due to hold a phone call with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy amid efforts to end the fighting.
The diplomatic efforts follow inconclusive direct talks, the first in three years, between delegations from Ukraine and Russia in Turkiye’s Istanbul on Friday.
The brief talks yielded only an agreement to swap 1,000 prisoners of war, according to the heads of both delegations, in what would be their biggest such exchange since the war began.
A senior Ukrainian official familiar with the talks said Russian negotiators demanded Kyiv pull its troops out of all its regions claimed by Moscow before they would agree to a ceasefire. That is a red line for Ukraine, and as it stands, Russia does not have full control in those regions.
These are the key events on day 1,180 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Here is where things stand on Monday, May 19:
Fighting
Russia launched its largest drone attack on Ukraine since the start of the war, destroying homes and killing at least one woman, a day before United States President Donald Trump is due to discuss a proposed ceasefire with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 273 drones at Ukrainian cities, more than the previous record Moscow had set in February, on the war’s third anniversary.
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said Russia planned to conduct a “training and combat” launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile to intimidate Ukraine and the West, as ceasefire talks continue.
Russian forces have taken control of the settlement of Bahatyr in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, Russia’s Ministry of Defence said. It also said that Russian forces had downed 75 Ukrainian drones on Sunday, according to Russia’s state TASS news agency.
Ceasefire talks
The leaders of France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom again pressed the need for sanctions against Russia in a call with Trump before his telephone summit with Putin on Monday, the office of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said.
Putin told Russian state television that he wanted to “eliminate the causes that triggered” its war on Ukraine, “create the conditions for a lasting peace and guarantee Russia’s security”, two days after the first direct talks with Kyiv since 2022 failed to produce a ceasefire deal.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Rome, on the sidelines of Pope Leo XIV’s inauguration, to discuss the latest developments on ceasefire talks with Russia. It was their first meeting since their heated White House encounter in February.
The pope held his first private audience as Catholic leader with Zelenskyy, after highlighting hopes for peace for a “martyred Ukraine”.
Pope Leo XIV condemned hatred, prejudice and exploitation of the earth and poor, during his inauguration mass at the Vatican. World leaders were among the hundreds of thousands who attended, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy who was seen shaking hands with US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The first US pontiff arrived at St Peters Square riding his popemobile for the first time.
