Ukraine-Russia war latest: Zelensky accuses Moscow of ‘manipulation’ over Kremlin demands on Black Sea truce

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of “manipulation” over a Black Sea ceasefire agreed during talks in Saudi Arabia, after the Kremlin insisted it would only come into force once certain conditions were met.

Following three days of parallel US-led talks in Riyadh, the White House said on Tuesday that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to a ceasefire in the Black Sea, with Mr Zelensky saying the truce was effective immediately.

But the Kremlin appeared to contradict this, saying the deal would only come into force after a series of conditions were met – including the lifting of restrictions and sanctions on a major agricultural bank, exporters of food and fertiliser and on Russian vessels.

In his nightly address, Mr Zelensky later said: “Unfortunately, even now, even today, on the very day of negotiations, we see how the Russians have already begun to manipulate.

“They are already trying to distort agreements and, in fact, deceive both our intermediaries and the entire world.”

Russia and Ukraine agree to halt strikes in Black Sea, says White House

Zelensky accuses Russia of ‘manipulation’ over Black Sea deal

Moscow has learnt ‘wealth of lessons’ about Western militaries through Ukraine war

Russia blames Kyiv for lack of joint statement with US after Saudi talks

Analysis | Black Sea deal is a concession by Kyiv to keep favour with Trump

21:26 , Andy Gregory

While the White House said in a joint statement with Russia that it would help Moscow restore its access to the world market for agricultural and fertiliser exports, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv had not agreed to put that in its statement with Washington.

“We believe that this is a weakening of position and sanctions,” he said.

20:44 , Andy Gregory

A Kremlin official has said that the talks between US and Russian officials in Riyadh the previous day would likely lead to further contacts between Washington and Moscow, but that no concrete plans have yet been made.

20:01 , Andy Gregory

The Royal Navy has shadowed three Russian ships through the English Channel.

British minehunter HMS Cattistock and a Wildcat helicopter were deployed on Wednesday to escort Russia’s Admiral Vladimirskiy as it travelled along the UK’s south coast.

This operation was followed rapidly by another, as HMS Somerset and tanker RFA Tidesurge were deployed to escort Russian landing ship RFN Alexander Otrakovsky and merchant vessel MV Ascalon through the Channel and North Sea.

Admiral Vladimirskiy – a Russian oceanographic survey ship – was accused in 2023 of involvement in an operation to map the UK’s critical undersea infrastructure, during which it allegedly sailed for a month with its transmitter turned off and loitered near UK wind farms.

Read more details in this report:

Royal Navy shadows three Russian ships through English Channel

19:42 , Andy Gregory

In an apparent reference to Russia’s demands, the White House statement on the talks with Russia said that the US “will help restore Russia’s access to the world market for agricultural and fertiliser exports, lower maritime insurance costs, and enhance access to ports and payment systems for such transactions”.

Russia has appeared to demand that such conditions must be met before the Black Sea ceasefire can begin.

19:23 , Andy Gregory

Oil refineries, oil and gas pipelines, and nuclear stations are among the targets that Russia and Ukraine have agreed to temporarily suspend strikes on, the Kremlin has said.

The list also includes fuel storage facilities, pumping stations, electricity generation and transmission infrastructure, such as power plants, substations, transformers, distributors, and hydroelectric dams.

According to the statement, the temporary moratorium on strikes on energy infrastructure starts from 18 March and is valid for 30 days, but it could be extended by mutual agreement. If the agreement is breached by one party, the other party is also released from compliance, the Kremlin added.

19:05 , Andy Gregory

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that despite an agreement being reached through the United States on a truce for Black Sea shipping and energy sites, Russia was already engaging in manipulation.

“Unfortunately, even now, even today, on the very day of negotiations, we see how the Russians have already begun to manipulate,” Mr Zelensky said in his nightly video address.

“They are already trying to distort agreements and, in fact, deceive both our intermediaries and the entire world.”

Mr Zelensky said the Kremlin was lying when it said accords on Black Sea shipping were linked to the sanctions regime imposed on Moscow.

But he said Ukraine would do everything to implement the accords, although Russia had to understand that if it launched strikes, “they will receive a strong response”.

18:50 , Andy Gregory

Russia’s foreign ministry has insisted that Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant – occupied by Moscow’s forces since March 2022 – is a Russian facility and transferring control of it to Ukraine or any other country is impossible.

The ministry also claimed that jointly operating the plant was not admissible as it would be impossible to properly ensure the physical and nuclear safety of the station.

18:17 , Andy Gregory

Following the talks in Saudi Arabia, Washington said it had agreed with Ukraine “that the United States remains committed to helping achieve the exchange of prisoners of war, the release of civilian detainees, and the return of forcibly transferred Ukrainian children”.

17:59 , Andy Gregory

17:37 , Andy Gregory

Downing Street has said it is “hopeful of the progress” following the White House announcement that Ukraine and Russia have agreed to pause hostilities in the Black Sea.

But the UK government was unclear whether it would follow American efforts to ease some sanctions on Russia as part of the deal agreed on Tuesday – after the US appeared to signal its intention to ease sanctions on Russian fertiliser and agricultural goods and improve Moscow's access to maritime insurance, ports and payment systems.

Immediately following news of the agreement, a No 10 spokesperson declined to say whether the UK would follow any easing of sanctions, saying: “Our position at the moment is that we are obviously hopeful of the progress.

“We are following developments closely.”

Western nations, including the UK, have imposed a series of sanctions on Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, including increased tariffs on Russian fertiliser and agricultural products and prohibiting companies from providing insurance for shipments of certain Russian goods.

17:20 , Andy Gregory

The Royal Navy has shadowed three Russian ships through the Channel.

Minehunter HMS Cattistock and a Wildcat helicopter were deployed to escort survey ship Admiral Vladimirskiy during its voyage, the Royal Navy said.

This operation was followed quickly by another, as HMS Somerset and tanker RFA Tidesurge were deployed to escort Russian landing ship RFN Alexander Otrakovsky and merchant vessel MV Ascalon through the Channel and North Sea as the pair sailed towards the Baltic.

The two Russian ships had recently left the Mediterranean.

The latest operations follow a similar mission last week which saw Royal Navy warships and helicopters track a Russian task group returning from Syria.

17:05 , Andy Gregory

While Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has said the Black Sea ceasefire deal will be effective immediately, the Kremlin said that the deal was dependent upon Western sanctions being lifted against Russian companies involved in food and fertiliser exports.

The Kremlin said that the US had agreed to help to restore Russia’s access to the world market for agricultural and fertilizer exports, but said implementation of the deal would require Western sanctions on Russia’s Rosselkhozbank – which services agriculture firms – to be lifted, and the bank’s access to the Swift international messaging system restored.

Sanctions on Russian food and fertiliser exporters, insurance firms, servicing food and fertiliser shipments, restrictions on vessels and trade finance operations, would have to be lifted as well, it said.

16:54 , Andy Gregory

The crew of one of Ukraine’s few patrolling vessels, a reconditioned former US coastguard Island-class cutter, is tired. They were up all night manning the ship’s double barrelled cannon, shooting at Russian Shahed drones that swarmed the skies over Odesa.

But, as merchant ships sailed quietly into the ports along Ukraine’s southern coast, the crew was confident. They haven’t seen a Russian vessel for months.

Russian skippers are probably more anxious. Since 2022, Ukraine - with a navy numbering around 11,000 personnel – has sunk at least 20 Russian vessels; among them cruisers, the Moskva flagship, several troop landing ships, and numerous smaller vessels.

These losses have all been down to a new form of naval warfare now pioneered by Ukraine’s navy because, aside from the Island-class patrol boat, and a handful of small boats in what’s known as a “mosquito force”, Ukraine isn’t bothering with ships.

Former Royal Navy mine hunters transferred to the Ukrainian navy are stuck in the UK because they cannot travel through the Bosphorus Straights. Turkey has banned military traffic through the strategic route since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The focus instead has been to use long range rockets, cruise missiles, underwater and surface drones - almost all of them home-made in Ukraine. They’ve almost harried Moscow’s Black Sea fleet out of business.

Our world affairs editor Sam Kiley reports from the Black Sea:

How Ukraine is beating Russia in the Black Sea – and pushed Putin towards a ceasefire

16:45 , Alex Croft

The ceasefire agreed by Moscow and Kyiv in the Black Sea will be effective immediately, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said.

Ukraine will seek more weapons and sanctions on Russia from Donald Trump if Moscow broke the deals, Mr Zelensky added.

The United States said earlier it had made separate agreements with Kyiv and Moscow to ensure safe navigation in the Black Sea and to implement a ban on strikes against energy facilities in the two countries.

"If the Russians violate this, then I have a direct question for President Trump. If they violate, here is the evidence - we ask for sanctions, we ask for weapons, etc," Mr Zelensky told reporters at a news conference in Kyiv.

16:20 , Alex Croft

World affairs editor Sam Kiley writes:

Ukraine has agreed to a ceasefire over the Black Sea and in attacks between Russia and Ukraine on energy resources.

This is a concession by Kyiv. Ukraine has been winning the war against Russia's energy infrastructure supplying its forces in Ukraine. And Ukraine rules the Black Sea.

The Kyiv ministry of defence has warned Russia that its ships should not stray out of the "eastern Black Sea" or risk attack, because it knows that Russian ships have been stuck in ports hiding from Ukrainian missiles and drones for months.

This ceasefire is an effort to keep in favour with Donald Trump long enough to continue to get intelligence feeds from the US, until Europe and other allies can step in. Similarly European efforts to replace unreliable military supplies from the US to Ukraine will take some time.

So Kyiv is gambling with its naval dominance in the hope that eventually it won’t have to rely on an administration that so publicly and materially is rooting for a Putin victory.

Putin, however, is presiding over a collapsing economy, a land war that has left untold numbers of bodies abandoned in the Donbas "meat grinder" and has flattened the Ukrainian provinces he claimed to be saving.

If Ukraine can last another year and get the support it once got from Washington from elsewhere... it could win this war.

16:10 , Alex Croft

Further contacts between US and Russian officials on achieving a proposed ceasefire in Ukraine are likely to follow a round of talks Monday, a Kremlin official said Tuesday, but no concrete plans have yet been made.

The American and Russian negotiators held talks throughout the day on Monday in the capital of Saudi Arabia to hammer out details on a partial pause in the 3-year-old war in Ukraine, a day after US officials held separate talks in Riyadh with a team from Kyiv.

It has been a struggle to reach even a limited, 30-day ceasefire — which Moscow and Kyiv agreed to in principle last week -- with both sides continuing to attack each other with drones and missiles and disagreement over what kinds of targets would be included in a pause on strikes.

Read more here:

Ukraine and Russia agree Black Sea ceasefire deal after US-led Saudi talks: Latest

15:44 , Alex Croft

Following three days of intense negotiations in Saudi Arabia, the White House has confirmed that both sides have agreed to halt strikes in the Black Sea.

A number of other measures have been agreed, including measures towards implementing a ceasefire on energy infrastructure.

Notably, the deals are agreed between the US and the respective countries, rather than directly between Moscow and Kyiv.

Here is a look at what has been agreed, according to the White House:

Eliminate force and ensure safe navigation of ships in the Black Sea (*Ukraine specifies that Russian vessels moving beyond the eastern area of the Black Sea will constitute a violation of the deal in its view).

Develop measures for implementing the agreement to ban strikes on energy facilities.

Work with third party countries to implement the energy and sea agreements.

Work towards achieving a durable and lasting peace.

US will help “restore Russia’s access to the world market for agricultural and fertilizer exports”.

US will help Russia to lower maritime insurance costs and enhance access to ports and payment systems.

The US remains committed in “helping achieve the exchange of prisoners of war, the release of civilian detainees, and the return of forcibly transferred Ukrainian children”.

15:26 , Alex Croft

Any movement of Russian military vessels outside of the eastern part of the Black Sea will be regarded as a violation of the Black Sea agreement, Ukraine’s defence ministry has said.

“The Ukrainian side emphasizes that all movement by Russia of its military vessels outside of Eastern part of the Black Sea will constitute violation of the spirit of this agreement, will be regarded as violation of the commitment to ensure safe navigation of the Black Sea and threat to the national security of Ukraine,” the ministry wrote on X.

“In this case Ukraine will have full right to exercise right to self-defense,” the statement added.

Kyiv confirmed it had agreed to “ensure safe navigation, eliminate the use of force, and prevent the use of commercial vessels for military purposes”.

15:20 , Alex Croft

Russia and Ukraine have agreed to ensure the safety of commercial shipping in the Black Sea, the White House has said.

It comes after three days of intense discussions between US officials and delegations from Ukraine and Russia in Saudi Arabia since Sunday.

A White House statement said US, Russian and Ukrainian officials had “agreed to ensure safe navigation, eliminate the use of force, and prevent the use of commercial vessels for military purposes in the Black Sea”.

14:46 , Alex Croft

Russia has learnt a “wealth of lessons” about Western military capabilities following the Ukraine war, according to a US intelligence report.

Moscow's war in Ukraine has afforded it a "wealth of lessons regarding combat against Western weapons and intelligence in a large-scale war," the report said.

It also found that Russia will be unable to achieve a “total victory” in Ukraine - but that it retains momentum in the war effort.

The war has also increased the risk to the US of unintended escalation, included the potential use of nuclear weapons, the report added.

14:10 , Athena Stavrou

Downing Street said the UK would continue to work closely with the US on defence and security after the US defence secretary accused Europe of “freeloading”.

Asked whether the Government was sure the US administration understood UK contributions to defence and security in the Middle East, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “We work daily with the US on regional security and stability in the Middle East and indeed in relation to Ukraine.

“The PM has always said that we’ve got one of the closest relationships with the US when it comes to defence and security and we expect that to continue.”

13:55 , Athena Stavrou

Europe must acquire all means to defend itself against military aggression, the European Council president has said.

Antonio Costa said on Tuesday that peace without defence is an illusion and added: "If Russia considers that Ukraine's borders are just a line on a map, why should it respect any other country's borders?”

"If Russia considers that Ukraine's borders are just a line on a map, why should it respect any other country's borders?", he also said

13:29 , Alex Croft

White House officials are into the third day an intense round of Ukraine ceasefire talks in Saudi Arabia – as Donald Trump is said to be pushing for a truce deal by Easter.

In the grand rooms of Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton hotel, Washington’s team met with Ukrainian officials on Sunday, Russian officials on Monday, before reentering talks with Kyiv’s team for a time on Tuesday.

"We're talking about territory right now. We're talking about lines of demarcation, talking about power, power plant ownership. Some people are saying the United States should own the power plant...because we have the expertise," Mr Trump said during a press briefing on Monday. He appears to be referring to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, a topic which Volodymyr Zelensky said had come up in a recent phone call between the two presidents.

Read the full report:

Ukraine ceasefire talks: What is being discussed as Trump pushes for truce by Easter

13:13 , Alex Croft

Russia is struggling to protect its strategic military locations due to stretched air defences, the UK defence ministry has said, as it hails Ukraine’s “successful” targeting of a munitions depot.

Ukraine struck Russia’s Engels airfield overnight on 20 March, a site which holds Moscow’s nuclear-capable bomber planes and large amounts of munitions. The hit sparked a large blaze, evacuations and a number of injuries, according to Russian officials.

The UK Ministry of Defence said in its intelligence report that the strike will “disrupt strike operations from the airfield in the short term, forcing Russia to improve its defensive posture and replenish munitions stocks”.

The strike was “Ukraine's most successful targeting of a Russian munitions depot in 2025 so far” and it “highlights the continuing struggles that stretched Russian air defence face in protecting its strategic military locations”, the ministry added.

13:02 , Alex Croft

Ukraine has said it detained a “mole” who was helping Moscow attack Ukrainian troops in Russia’s Kursk region by giving away their location.

Kyiv’s forces crossed the border into the Kursk region last August in a rapid and unexpected offensive. Since then, Russia has taken back much of territory that was captured in the Ukrainian advance into Kursk - but fighting there continues.

Ukraine’s SBU security service said the “mole” was “preparing coordinates for the aggressor’s missile and bomb attacks on the locations of Ukrainian troops”. They had been recruited by Russia’s GRU military intelligence service on Telegram.

The GRU made no comment on Tuesday.

12:51 , Alex Croft

Russian forces have captured two villages in eastern Ukraine, the defence ministry said on Tuesday according to Interfax.

Myrne in the eastern Donetsk region and Mali Scherbaky in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region are both now under Russian control, Moscow claims.

12:36 , Alex Croft

Ukraine launched three attacks on Russia’s civilian infrastructure, Russia’s Defence Ministry has claimed.

Washington had hoped that talks being held between Russian, US and Ukrainian officials in Saudi Arabia could lead to a ceasefire on energy infrastructure.

Russia says it has agreed to halt attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure after a phone call between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump last Tuesday. Ukraine has not declared the same halt, but said it would do so if a formal agreement setting out the precise terms for a deal was reached.

Moscow said on Monday that Ukraine had launched attacks on multiple gas distribution and storage facilities in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.

12:25 , Alex Croft

Russia and the US did not adopt a joint statement after 12 hours of talks in Saudi Arabia due to Ukraine’s position, a senior Russian senator said according to the Interfax news agency.

Reports this morning that a joint statement was due to drop at 8am GMT were followed by silence from both sides, with no statement in sight.

Officials from Washington and Moscow had wrapped up the day-long talks on Monday focussing on a partial ceasefire in Ukraine, hoping to pave the way for longer-term peace negotiations.

"The fact that they sat for 12 hours and apparently agreed on a joint statement, which was not adopted though because of Ukraine's position, is very typical and symptomatic,” senator Vladimir Chizhov told state TV channel Rossiya-24 according to Interfax.

12:21 , Alex Croft

11:56 , Alex Croft

Russia launched 139 drones and an Iskander-M ballistic missile during an overnight attack, the Ukrainian air force said this morning.

The air force shot down 78 drones and 34 more did not reach their targets, it added in a statement on Telegram.

The air force did not say what happened to the remaining 27 drones or the missile.

Over the past day, one person was killed and at least 117 injured in an overnight attacks on Ukraine, local authorities said according to the Kyiv Independent.

11:41 , Alex Croft

Mark Almond writes:

Although Starmer and Emmanuel Macron have tried to herd the European Nato members into backing a ceasefire line monitoring force, potential big players like Italy and Spain have rejected it. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni has no desire to break with Trump, whose domestic “anti-woke” agenda mirrors her own culture war in Italy, while Spain’s Pedro Sanchez runs a country that is far from the Russo-Ukrainian front line, and has a strong left-of-centre pacifist tradition.

Not only are America’s European allies splitting from Trump’s Washington: they are divided among themselves. They might be united in deploring Russian aggression and Trump’s appeasement-style approach to mediation, but their disunity over what to do about it confirms the US administration’s belief that making big deals with authoritarians like Putin, or the Saudi hosts of the Ukraine talks is the way to go, rather than trying to keep an army of squabbling “allies” in line.

Allies who don’t contribute much – even when they can agree on policy – can be ignored completely.

Read more here.

11:23 , Alex Croft

11:10 , Alex Croft

A new deal on Black Sea shipping is possible but with strict conditions attached, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has said following talks between Washington and Moscow.

The US hopes to push through a ceasefire in the Black Sea as part of its intense round of diplomacy in Saudi Arabia, where a White House delegation is meeting with its counterparts from Ukraine and Russia.

Lavrov has said an agreement, which US negotiators hope would guarantee the security of shipping lanes in the Black Sea, would need to have strict conditions attached to it.

Russia wants to inspect ships to ensure empty ships were not used for weapons deliveries, he said. Other issues relating to the export of Russian grain and fertilisers have posed serious problems in the past, Lavrov added.

11:03 , Alex Croft

The CEO of Ryanair has hit out at Ukrainian airports after the airline’s proposals for reopening airspace to commercial flights was met with “radio silence”.

Restarting flights will be central to rebuilding Ukraine’s economy, Michael O’Leary told a Kyiv conference organised by ‘We Build Ukraine’, according to the Kyiv Independent.

Ukraine’s skies have been closed to commercial flights since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

In summer 2023, Ryanair submitted a proposal to airports in thw western city of Lviv and Boryspil near Kyiv to “deliver 5 million passengers to Ukraine within the first year of the skies reopening”, Mr O’Leary said.

"But disappointingly, we haven't heard back from them for over two years," the CEO added.

"I am somewhat at a loss to understand why the airports are not getting ready for the resumption of flights and why the airports are not doing the agreement with Ryanair."

10:49 , Alex Croft

When you imagine receiving the news that you’re on the kill list of one of the world’s cruellest dictators, you perhaps don’t imagine it while holding a glass of champagne. But, in January 2023, that’s exactly – or, almost exactly – what happened to Christo Grozev, an internationally renowned investigative journalist who I had been filming for a documentary about his work for months, and who told me at a glitzy awards ceremony in New York that Vladimir Putin wanted him dead.

The Bulgarian-born journalist had long been rustling feathers at the Kremlin – his exceptional work for Bellingcat (a Netherlands-based investigative journalism group that Grozev headed up from 2015) exposed Putin’s killing network of spies and assassins.

Investigative journalist James Jones writes:

What it’s really like to be on Putin’s kill list

10:28 , Alex Croft

Moscow has accused the Ukrainian military of deliberately targeting a group of Russian journalists working in Russian-controlled eastern Ukraine.

Alexander Fedorchak, a war correspondent from Russia's Izvestia media outlet, camera operator Andrei Panov and driver Alexander Sirkeli who worked for the Zvezda television channel, were all killed according to the Russian foreign ministry.

The reports have not been independently verified.

"The (artillery) fire was targeted. They were deliberately targeted to kill them. The Kyiv regime continues its atrocities against journalists and people who do not have weapons in their hands," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

10:15 , Alex Croft

As we reported, officials from Washington and Kyiv have been engaged in a second round of talks in Saudi Arabia this morning, after first meeting on Sunday night.

These talks have now concluded, Ukrainian media reports.

Discussions appear to have lasted little over an hour, following the mammoth 12-hour talks between US and Russian delegations on Monday.

10:10 , Alex Croft

10:06 , Alex Croft

For the past few weeks, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has been scrambling to rebuild ties with the White House after the infamous Oval Office clash with Donald Trump.

But Mr Zelensky, it turns out, made one mistake which could have altered the entire course of the visit.

The wartime leader had brought with him a gift - the championship belt of Ukrainian heavyweight boxer Oleksandr Usyk. Taking his seat next to Mr Trump in the Oval Office, he placed the belt on a side table.

He had initially planned to reach over and hand the belt to Mr Trump in front of the journalists, according to an in-depth interview with Time.

Instead, the president picked up a folder containing gruesome photographs of the victims of the war in Ukraine, a move which US officials say the meeting started going in the wrong direction.

“He has family, loved ones, children. He has to feel the things that every person feels,” Zelensky told the magazine. “What I wanted to show were my values. But then, well, the conversation went in another direction.”

09:46 , Alex Croft

No plans have been made for a conversation between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Mr Peskov said that such a conversation could be quickly organised whenever needed.

The leaders spoke over the phone one week ago, when Putin declined the US president’s proposal for a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine - but agreed to a moratorium on attacking energy infrastructure.

09:41 , Alex Croft

The contents of yesterday’s bilateral talks between Russia and the US will not be made public, the Kremlin has said.

Moscow and Washington are analysing the outcome of the discussions after reporting back to their respective governments, spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

"You see, we are talking about technical negotiations that go deep into details. Therefore, of course, the content of these negotiations will definitely not be published. This should not be expected," Peskov said.

"Secondly, I repeat once again, the reports back to the capitals are now being analysed. Only then will it be possible to talk about some understandings."

It comes despite reports that the two countries were set to release a joint statement. Sources familiar with the matter told CBS News that the statement was scheduled for 4am EDT (8am GMT) - but no statement has yet been released.

09:35 , Alex Croft

A portrait of President Donald Trump, commissioned by Russian President Vladimir Putin, has been gifted to the US leader, the Kremlin has confirmed.

Putin's spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, confirmed the gift was given to Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, during a meeting in Moscow earlier in March.

Peskov declined to offer further details.

The existence of the portrait came to light in an interview between Witkoff and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

Witkoff told Carlson that Trump was "clearly touched" by the "beautiful" painting.

Trump praises ‘beautiful’ portrait gifted by Putin

09:09 , Alex Croft

Ukraine’s air force struck a cluster of Russian troops, wounding and killing around 30 soldiers, Kyiv’s General Staff has claimed.

“The Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine successfully struck the area in Kondratovka in Kursk Oblast where enemy personnel were concentrated.

“The target was completely destroyed and up to 30 occupiers were killed or wounded,” the military write on Telegram.

Ukrainian troops have lost control over large swathes of land in Russia’s Kursk region in recent weeks, following a major counteroffensive by Putin’s forces.

08:57 , Alex Croft

Bloomberg News reports that officials from the US and Ukraine have opened a new round of talks in Saudi Arabia.

It follows a long round of talks between delegations from Moscow and Washington in the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Saudi Arabia on Monday.

08:45 , Alex Croft

Mark Almond, director of Oxford’s Crisis Research Institute, considers whether Russia wants peace fast - and whether Ukraine could be abandoned by Washington:

Behind a smokescreen of talks about “technical details” in the Saudi capital, secret dealings on the big questions of the peace deal are likely in play. The question is: will Putin accept Trump’s rush for peace – or does he think drawn-out negotiations can better serve the Kremlin’s aim of permanently weakening Ukraine?

If the Russian media are celebrating Witkoff’s praise for Putin’s “sincerity”, Ukrainian newspapers are pondering whether their country is going to suffer the fate of South Vietnam, abandoned by Washington 50 years ago.

America is the only superpower that survives – even prospers – despite its proxies falling like dominoes.

Read more.

08:34 , Alex Croft

The US and Russia are expected to release a joint statement following bilateral talks on Monday, CBS News reports.

In Saudi Arabia’s Ritz-Carlton hotel, US officials have met with delegates from Ukraine and Russia as they attempt to bring the two sides towards common ground.

A member of the Russian delegation described yesterday’s Russia-US meeting as “challenging” but “useful”.

08:20 , Alex Croft

In the grand rooms of Riyadh's Ritz-Carlton hotel, a US delegation has been deployed for an intense round of diplomacy with officials from Moscow and Kyiv.

Here’s everything we know so far about the separate talks between US officials and their Russian and Ukrainian counterparts.

Ukraine and US officials met on Sunday night. Defence minister Rustem Umerov hailed the talks as “productive and focussed”, as the delegations prepare to meet again today.

Talks between Moscow and the US began yesterday, and were described as “challenging” but “useful” by Russian negotiator Grigory Karasin.

The United Nations and other countries will now be invited to join the talks, Karasin told the TASS state news agency.

Along with a ceasefire on energy infrastructure and the prospect of longer-term peace, Washington is seeking to achieve a Black Sea ceasefire in the intense round of diplomacy. This would ensure safe navigation for commercial vessels in the Black Sea.

The Russian side on Monday played down the possibility of ceasefire talks moving quickly. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that many aspects of a peace deal are yet to be sorted, while Moscow’s Foreign Ministry said current negotiations “should not be expected to produce a breakthrough”.

Russia’s delegation is being led by 70-year-old security service advisor Sergei Beseda, and 75-year-old Grigory Karasin, a career diplomat and former ambassador to Britain.

Sources close to Donald Trump have told the Telegraph that he will begin to get “frustrated” if Russia and Ukraine both continue bombing energy infrastructure - accusations they have both levelled at each other.

08:01 , Barney Davis

Two people were wounded after a Shahed drone strike in Zaporizhzhia.

“A 58-year-old woman and a 30-year-old man were injured as a result of enemy shelling of Zaporizhzhia district,” the head of the regional military Ivan Fedorov, said on Tuesday.

Fedorov clarified that the Russians attacked the area with “Shaheds”.

In one of the villages, a private house was partially destroyed, outbuildings and a car were damaged.

According to him, the two victims refused to be hospitalised.

07:45 , Barney Davis

Poltava regional military administration, Volodymyr Kohut, said a drone strike had injured two workers in a hanger.

He reported on Telegram: “Last night and tonight in Poltava region, air defence repelled another enemy attack.

“As a result of the fall of the UAV debris in Myrhorod district, the hangar of one of the enterprises was damaged.

“A fire broke out and was promptly extinguished”, he said.

Kohut said that two employees of the company were injured. One of them was hospitalised, while the other was treated at the scene.

07:20 , Arpan Rai

Russia launched 139 drones and an Iskander-M ballistic missile during an overnight attack, the Ukrainian air force said this morning.

The air force shot down 78 drones and 34 more did not reach their targets, it added in a statement on Telegram.

The air force did not say what happened to the remaining 27 drones or the missile.

07:00 , Arpan Rai

Russia wants to include representatives of the UN as well as other unspecified countries in its talks with the US about ending the Ukraine war, a member of the delegation from Moscow said this morning.

Regarding Monday's talks in Saudi Arabia, Russian senator Grigory Karasin said: "Everything was discussed – there was an intense, challenging dialogue, but it was very useful for us and for the Americans. Many problems were discussed."

Mr Karasin, a former diplomat, said that talks would continue and that the United Nations and other – as yet unidentified – countries would be brought in.

"We will continue to do this, involving the international community, first of all, the United Nations and individual countries," he said.

"In general, the impression was of a constructive dialogue, which is needed and necessary. The Americans are also interested in this," Mr Karasin said.

A draft joint statement is also expected to be released after the Russia-US talks today, pending approval from Moscow and Washington, a Russian source told Reuters.

05:26 , Arpan Rai

China has said it it will not send any peacekeepers to Ukraine to enforce any peace deal.

On being asked about reports speculating that China might send peacekeepers to Ukraine in the event of a negotiated ceasefire agreement, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun dismissed the idea.

"Let me stress that the report is completely false. China's position on the Ukraine crisis is clear and consistent," Mr Guo said at a briefing.

China has provided Russia with trade earnings from oil and other natural resources, along with diplomatic backing, but has not given any weapons or sent any personnel.

China is, however, on close terms with North Korea, which has sent troops to fight alongside the Russian army.

05:00 , Andy Gregory

British troops sent to Ukraine as part of a planned peacekeeping force could face “lawfare” under human rights legislation, Tory MPs have warned.

They called on the defence secretary to create an exemption from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) for any soldiers sent to the region.

Our Whitehall editor Kate Devlin reports:

Fears Putin will abuse human rights laws against British peacekeepers in Ukraine

04:58 , Arpan Rai

04:25 , Arpan Rai

Ukraine said its special forces destroyed four military helicopters in Russia’s Belgorod region with US-provided Himars rocket systems yesterday.

Drone footage published by the special operations team and Ukraine’s ministry of defence showed an aerial view of the attack.

“Special operations forces in cooperation with the GUR of the ministry of defence, missile forces and artillery destroyed two enemy Ka-52 and two Mi-8 helicopters in the Belgorod region of the Russian Federation,” the statement said.

“Ukrainian forces appear to be leveraging long-range strikes to complicate Russian logistics and command and control (C2) in the area,” the US-based think tank The Institute for the Study of War said.

“Ukrainian forces recently conducted two strikes on Russian command posts in western Belgorod Oblast, destroying communications equipment."

03:56 , Arpan Rai

Russian president Vladimir Putin has gifted Donald Trump a portrait he commissioned of the US president, the Kremlin confirmed yesterday.

Mr Putin gave the painting to Mr Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, in Moscow earlier this month, the Russian president's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in a response to a journalist's question. He declined any further comment.

The gift was first mentioned last week by Mr Witkoff in an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

Mr Witkoff said the US president "was clearly touched" by the portrait from his Russian counterpart, which he described as "beautiful."

It was not immediately known if the portrait Mr Putin gave to Mr Trump had been examined for bugs. The White House hasn't commented on the portrait.

03:34 , Arpan Rai

Senior US and Ukrainian officials are set to discuss territory and the ownership of Ukraine’s power plants today as negotiators work to a agree a partial ceasefire.

While the White House has previously said it wants "energy and infrastructure" covered in an initial truce, the Kremlin declared that the agreement referred more narrowly to "energy infrastructure."

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has said he would also like to see infrastructure like railways and ports protected.

In an exchange with reporters at the White House, Donald Trump said territorial lines and the potential for US ownership of a key nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine have been part of the talks.

Last week, he floated the idea of the US taking control of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

The six-reactor facility – one of the world's largest – was seized by Russia early in the war.

"Some people are saying the United States should own the power plant – work it that way because we have the expertise" to get the plant operating, Mr Trump said. "Something like that would be fine with me,” he said.

03:30 , Arpan Rai

The Ukrainian and US delegations will meet for further talks in Saudi Arabia today, according to the Ukrainian national broadcaster Suspilne, which cited an unnamed source in the country's delegation.

The talks come a day after Russia-US negotiations on a narrow ceasefire proposal between Kyiv and Moscow.

03:00 , Andy Gregory

A powerful cyberattack knocked out the online ticketing system for Ukraine’s state railway service, causing long queues at stations on Monday in what Kyiv officials said appeared to be a Russian attempt to “destabilise” the situation.

Blaming the cyberattack on the “enemy”, officials said rail travel had not been affected but that work was still under way to restore the online ticketing system more than 24 hours after the hack.

An outage was first reported on Sunday when the rail company notified passengers about a failure in its IT system and told them to buy tickets on-site or on trains.

“The latest attack was very systemic, unusual and multi-level,” rail company Ukrzaliznytsia said.

A Ukrainian security official and a senior government source, both of whom were speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that the attack looked like it had been carried out by Russia.

“It was some hacker group. We think that they are Russians. It is a strong strike but not critical,” the government source said.

02:55 , Arpan Rai

The US-led talks in Saudi Arabia with delegations from Ukraine and Russia have been making good progress and an announcement is expected soon, a White House source told Reuters yesterday.

"Talks facilitated by the Trump administration’s technical teams in Riyadh are going extremely well and all parties involved have been working all day and into the night. We expect to have a positive announcement in the near future," the source said.

02:00 , Andy Gregory

01:01 , Andy Gregory

Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff has praised Russian president Vladimir Putin as “super smart”, as talks over a ceasefire in Ukraine get underway in Saudi Arabia.

Ahead of Sunday’s discussions in Riyadh, Mr Witkoff – a former real estate mogul tasked by Mr Trump with leading negotiations on Ukraine’s future – met with Mr Putin in Moscow for a second time on Thursday for talks on ending the war.

Speaking to far-right commentator Tucker Carlson in an interview broadcast on Friday, Mr Witkoff said he “liked” the Russian president, who he described as “gracious”. He added: “I don't regard Putin as a bad guy. He’s super smart.”

And in remarks that will do little to assuage European fears that the White House is increasingly parroting Kremlin propaganda, Mr Witkoff claimed the “elephant in the room” in peace talks is whether Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky can acknowledge Moscow’s claimed right to Crimea and four “Russian-speaking” regions in eastern Ukraine.

Despite being unable to name two of the four mainland regions – which Mr Putin partly occupies, and attempted to illegally annex following sham referenda in September 2022 – and using the Russian name for a third, Mr Witkoff said he believed the “central issue” in the conflict was whether Ukraine would relent control of them to Moscow.

Read more details in this report:

Trump’s special envoy praises ‘super smart’ Putin ahead of Ukraine ceasefire talks

Monday 24 March 2025 23:59 , Andy Gregory

Officials from Russia are holding ceasefire talks with a US delegation in Saudi Arabia, as Donald Trump reportedly pushes to secure a truce in time for Easter.

Here, The Independent takes a look at what to expect from the US-led talks in Saudi Arabia, which began on Sunday just hours after Russia killed seven people – including a five-year-old child – in overnight drone strikes on Kyiv, and four people in Donetsk:

Ukraine ceasefire talks: What is being discussed as Trump pushes for truce by Easter

Monday 24 March 2025 23:00 , Andy Gregory

Former UK defence secretary Grant Shapps has criticised Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff for “parroting Kremlin-friendly guff while Ukrainians fight for freedom”.

Monday 24 March 2025 22:14 , Andy Gregory

A group of Republican and Democratic US senators is pushing Donald Trump’s administration to transfer more than $300bn of seized Russian assets to help Ukraine, rather than just use the debt’s interest to support Kyiv.

“How does the Administration view using all financial tools at its disposal to increase pressure on Russia to end the war?” the senators asked in a letter sent to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Reuters reported.

“Specifically, does the Administration believe that U.S. and EU-held assets should be used as leverage in negotiations with Russia to bring an end to the war? If so, how?” the letter asked.

The letter was signed by Republicans Todd Young and Lindsey Graham, and Democrats Richard Blumenthal and Tim Kaine.

Monday 24 March 2025 21:26 , Andy Gregory

Austria's DSN domestic intelligence agency says it has uncovered an extensive Russian disinformation campaign centred around a Bulgarian national accused of spying and disseminating false information about Ukraine.

The DSN said the unnamed woman had acknowledged working on behalf of Russia, especially in 2022 when Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine, to turn public opinion in favour of Russia and against Kyiv.

A spokesperson for the Vienna prosecutor's office said that, despite its request to formally place the woman in custody when she was detained in December, a regional court had let her go. She was not currently under arrest, the office said.

A Vienna district court spokesperson said that while a judge had confirmed she was suspected of the crime, the arrest order was denied because the suspect had assured the court that she would not try to evade proceedings.

In a search of the woman’s home in an undisclosed location in Austria, the DSN said its investigators had found evidence of a group working for Russian secret services since shortly after the invasion of Ukraine.

It said the group executed an extensive disinformation campaign for German-speaking countries focusing on Austria. The campaign, it said, included “activities in the media landscape” and offline activity that included graffiti and stickers.

“The spread of false narratives, fake news and manipulative content undermines trust in our institutions and jeopardises social cohesion,” said senior Austrian interior ministry official Joerg Leichtfried.