Zelenskyy and European allies push peace talks as Russia rejects meetings amid drone attacks

Leaders urge Donald Trump to stand behind Ukraine and pressure Putin to negotiate; Russia allows sale of substandard fuel amid supply crisis. What we know on day 1,574World leaders were lining up in support of Ukraine and Volodymyr Zelenskyy as the G7 summit began in France. Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, vowed to “choke off” Russian revenue with further sanctions, writes Alexandra Topping, and to provide hundreds of millions of pounds worth of energy support for Ukraine including enriched uranium for its nuclear power plants.Summit host Emmanuel Macron, the French president, said as he prepared to meet with Donald Trump that he wanted the US to say “we are with you, we will continue to support Ukraine, and we will increase the pressure on Russia to achieve a meaningful negotiation … The right negotiation is one in which Ukraine and Russia are at the table, but with Europeans and Americans present as well.”Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, expressed hope that “for the first time, a window can open for diplomacy” on ending the war in Ukraine, Reuters reported. He added that he wanted to discuss this further with Trump. The US president, who arrived for the summit on Monday, said: “We had a very good conversation yesterday with President Zelenskyy and President Putin, and I think maybe we can do something there. I really do. I think they’re both open to it.”A Russian Tu-22M3 strategic bomber plane ⁠of the type used to attack Ukraine crashed on Monday in Siberia’s Irkutsk region during a training flight, the Russian defence ⁠ministry said. The ⁠aircraft’s ​four-person crew ejected safely, the ministry said. The bombers are used to fire cruise and ballistic missiles at Ukraine.Volodymyr Zelenskyy said two Russian drones “deliberately” targeted Kyiv’s monastery quarter in a mass overnight barrage that set the Unesco-listed Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra site ablaze and killed 11 across the country. ⁠Amid a chorus of international condemnation, Zelenskyy described the cathedral attack as “one of Russia’s most serious crimes ​against Christian culture to date” and urged G7 leaders meeting in France on Monday to take “decisive and substantive” action against Moscow. “More pressure on the aggressor and more support for Ukraine’s air defence, especially anti-ballistic capabilities,” the Ukrainian president said. Continue reading...

Frontline soldiers to get better salaries and revised fixed-term contracts; Putin reacts to Ukraine’s increasing drone strikes. What we know on day 1,571Ukraine will hike military wages and seek to recruit more fighters abroad, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has confirmed, as the army faces a manpower shortage after four years of war with Russia. Zelenskyy’s government said in May it would study possible measures to boost military personnel numbers after talks on how to end the war with Russia stalled. “We agreed on how to increase the financial resilience of our defence and further transformation of the Ukrainian army,” Ukraine’s president said on Friday after meeting key cabinet ministers. “The cabinet of ministers will approve a specific mechanism, and the government should start the first new payments as early as June,” he added.Ukraine has secured a €90bn ($104bn) loan from the EU allowing the government to increase defence spending to a record 4.4tn hryvnias ($97bn) this year. The funds are due to start flowing this month. Zelenskyy said his government would raise the basic military wage by one-third to 30,000 hryvnias ($700). The step was aimed at matching the country’s average monthly salary, which has steadily risen during the war due to staff shortages, military analysts and economists said. Infantry soldiers fighting on the frontline will receive an average monthly salary of 300,000 hryvnias (about $7,000), up from about 100,000 to 150,000 hryvnias at present. They will also be offered a new type of fixed-term contract for 10, 14 or 24 months for combat duties.Kyiv also wants to recruit more foreign fighters. “I have instructed to create significantly more opportunities to recruit foreign volunteers into the Ukrainian army, and there will be more recruitment channels in this regard,” Zelenskyy said. About 10,000 foreign volunteers have joined the Ukrainian army from more than 70 countries since the war began, according to estimates by Ukrainian military publications.Ambassadors from the EU’s 27 countries agreed on Friday to advance membership talks with Ukraine and Moldova, with the first phase of negotiations to begin on Monday. Zelenskyy has made EU membership a key strategic goal. Writing on Telegram, he thanked the EU and its leaders “for this strong step for Europe”. He added: “Ukraine is carrying out what is necessary and it is important that the EU is also keeping its word.”Vladimir Putin said Ukraine’s increasing drone strikes on Russia aimed to “sow confusion” and damage the country’s economy. Ukraine has hit ever deeper into Russia in recent months, regularly striking oil refineries and export hubs. “Their goal is to create a split in Russian society, sow confusion and inflict economic damage,” the Russian president told soldiers in a meeting at the Kremlin on Friday. “But they will not succeed.” The comments came hours after Kyiv said it hit a major oil refinery more than 1,000km (about 620 miles) from the frontline. Putin admitted that Ukrainian strikes had caused “economic damage” but claimed that “everything is quickly restored”.The governor of Russia’s border Bryansk region said one person was killed and another injured in a drone strike on Friday, while the defence ministry said Russian air defence units had downed 185 Ukrainian drones over a 12-hour period. The region’s general headquarters, quoted by Russian news agencies, said air defence units had destroyed 62 drones, but gave no time frame for the action. Russia’s defence ministry reported 185 drones intercepted between 8am and 8pm (0500-1700 GMT) over about a dozen regions, most in central Russia.Britain on Friday said a full ban on diesel and jet fuel made in Russia would happen by 2027 as it set out its timeline to end a temporary licence for Russian oil products. Britain last month said it would continue to allow imports of diesel and jet fuel refined from Russian crude in third countries, deferring a previously announced ban, citing supply issues caused by the Iran war. The government said existing sanctions were not being lifted but new sanctions were being phased in. On Friday the business and trade ministry said the temporary licence for phasing in the ban would expire by 1 January. Continue reading...

Ambassadors from ‘E3’ group of Ukraine’s allies meet with Russian minister and urge direct negotiations; Crimea’s fuel supplies dry up. What we know on day 1,570British, French and German ambassadors to Russia urged direct talks between Moscow and Kyiv in a rare meeting at Russia’s foreign ministry on Thursday. The leaders of the UK France and Germany – known as the E3 – this week met with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, in London. In a joint statement after Thursday’s Moscow meeting, the three countries said they conveyed to the Russians the key conclusions of the UK summit, including “the support for president Zelensky’s urge to hold direct talks between Russia and Ukraine”.European ambassadors have rarely held talks with Russian officials during the war, but have been frequently summoned by the foreign ministry. The E3 grouping have been some of Ukraine’s most staunch allies. Moscow said the ambassadors had been told of their countries’ “destructive” policy on Ukraine, accusing them of wanting to “continue the war against Russia on behalf of and at the expense of” European countries.Several western European countries – including France – have floated the idea of restarting a dialogue with Moscow to end the war. US-led talks to end it have led nowhere and have been sidelined by the Iran war, but Russia has in the past preferred to talk to Donald Trump’s administration, with the Kremlin not wanting European countries involved.Peter Beaumont has documented how Ukrainian forces are crippling Russian supply lines along what has been dubbed the “highway of death”. The R-280 constitutes a crucial route for Moscow’s military convoys as it snakes through Ukrainian territories under Moscow’s occupation, linking Rostov-on-Don in Russia to Melitopol, Mariupol and Crimea via the Sea of Azov coastline. Ukrainian drone operators say dozens of trucks and tankers have been destroyed as part of an intensified effort known as the “middle strike campaign”. Robert Brovdi, the commander of Ukraine’s drone forces, said military cargo traffic along the highway had fallen by 71% over the past two weeks. Traffic was suspended this week on the Chonhar Bridge – a key section of the road connecting Russia-occupied Kherson province to Crimea – after a series of Ukrainian drone strikes. Continue reading...

In a wide-ranging interview, an upbeat Ukrainian president also discusses Donald Trump, King Charles, and how Kyiv is prepared to share its experience of drone warfare with the westSitting down with the Guardian in London, Volodymyr Zelenskyy seems cheerful. More than four years after Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion, he believes Europe’s biggest war since 1945 appears to be slowly turning in Ukraine’s favour. The military situation is the most promising it has been for Kyiv for two and a half years, Zelenskyy says. “We can’t say Russia is losing this war. But we can say they are losing the initiative each day, day by day,” he insists.Over the past week the Kremlin has suffered a series of setbacks. Long-range Ukrainian drones have hit Putin’s home city of St Petersburg, setting fire to oil terminals and sending smoke billowing above the skyline. Similar attacks have crippled occupied Crimea. A key supply road is littered with burning lorries and tankers and the peninsula seized by Russia in 2014 is experiencing severe fuel shortages. Continue reading...

Russian billionaire offered to take a ‘silent’ message on peace talks back to Moscow, Ukraine’s president says. What we know on day 1,566Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Roman Abramovich, the Russian magnate and former owner of Chelsea football club, had met him in Kyiv where he offered to take a message to the Kremlin on peace prospects. Zelenskyy’s comments to Sky News marked his first acknowledgment that the billionaire had travelled to Ukraine’s capital and was involved to some extent in negotiations. “He came to Kyiv. He said ‘I am messaging direct to you. And I want to take a message from you and give it to [Russian president Vladimir] Putin’. But he said it has to be silent without any kind of public messages,” Zelenskyy said.“You are fighting against us on our territory,” Zelenskyy said of his message to Abramovich. “We will not leave and we will not go out from our territory, no we will not give you victory,” he said, adding he had reiterated his request to meet Putin face-to-face. Zelenskyy said the meeting was “not a secret”, adding that the Russians wanted to know what Kyiv was “ready to do”. Abramovich has been sanctioned by the UK government after ministers accused him of having “clear connections” to Putin’s regime.Abramovich has not commented on the Kyiv meeting. However, he played a role in unsuccessful negotiations to end the fighting in the first weeks of the invasion, but has been less visible since. Putin has made it clear Russia is not prepared to stop fighting in Ukraine until Kyiv abandons the Donbas region, made up of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.Zelenskyy met the leaders of the UK, France and Germany in London on Sunday, and discussed the “urgent need” to ramp up production of weapons to combat Russia’s powerful hypersonic Oreshnik ballistic missiles, write Alexandra Topping and Luke Harding. “The leaders underlined the urgent need to scale up the production of interceptors and co-develop anti-ballistic missile and deep strike capabilities,” a joint statement said after the meeting. No details, financial or otherwise, on how this would be done were provided. Zelenskyy will meet King Charles on Monday. Ukraine’s shortage of air defence systems, in part because of the depletion of US stocks during the Iran war, has left civilians especially vulnerable to ballistic missiles, even as Kyiv’s defences stop most of Moscow’s drones and its forces have made advances elsewhere on the battlefield.A Russian drone struck a storage facility for spent nuclear fuel near Ukraine’s Chornobyl power plant over the weekend. While the structure was empty of containers at the time, the targeting of the sensitive site appeared to be direct messaging from Moscow amid an intensifying battle of long-range aerial strikes in which high-profile locations on both sides have been hit, writes Peter Beaumont.Russia fired waves of drones and other munitions at Ukraine on Sunday, killing at least five people. A bombardment of a public transport stop in the Zaporizhzhia region killed at least two people, while a nearby drone strike killed a 56-year-old minibus driver, authorities said. A separate attack on Dnipro in central Ukraine killed a 59-year-old man, the region’s governor, Oleksandr Ganzha, posted on Telegram.Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday its air defences had downed 500 Ukrainian drones in the past 24 hours, Interfax news agency reported.Moldova’s President, Maia Sandu, said the war in neighbouring Ukraine showed that her country badly needed high-technology interceptor drones and new legislation was required to facilitate their manufacture. Moldova, which is seeking EU membership by 2030, has dealt with numerous incidents of Russian drones flying over its territory or debris landing in areas near the border. Sandu, a fierce critic of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, expressed particular concern over a drone last month that struck a residence in Galati, a Romanian city near the border with Moldova and Ukraine, injuring two people. Continue reading...

Ukraine targets St Petersburg in wave of strikes; Keir Starmer to host Volodymyr Zelenskyy and EU leaders for talks. What we know on day 1,565Ukraine fired hundreds of drones at Russia early on Saturday, leaving one person dead and setting an oil depot ablaze on the final day of Russia’s flagship economic forum in St Petersburg, officials said. Many of the drones targeted St Petersburg itself, the second Ukrainian attack on the city in less than a week, with Ukraine’s SBU security services saying it had hit a naval base.The strikes come a day after the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, rejected Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s proposal for a meeting, drawing criticism from the Ukrainian president, who accused him of “choosing war again”.More than 140 drones were shot down over the Leningrad region, which surrounds St Petersburg, governor Aleksandr Drozdenko said. The city’s governor, Alexander Beglov, issued a rare call for residents to stay indoors during the attack. “Russian air defences prevented any damage. The condition of the three injured is assessed as minor and they have been discharged,” he said.Russian air defences intercepted a total of 376 drones over the regions of “Belgorod, Bryansk, Kaluga, Kursk, Leningrad, Novgorod, Oryol, Pskov, Rostov, Ryazan, Smolensk, Tver, and Tula, the Moscow region, Crimea Republic, Abkhazia Republic, and over the waters of the Azov and Black Seas”, Russia’s defence ministry said.Ukraine’s SBU said it had targeted St Petersburg’s Kronstadt naval base, as well as “the Russian Navy’s 15th Arsenal in the Leningrad region”. The attacks also sparked a fire at an oil depot in the southern town of Ust-Labinsk, while drone debris killed a man in the western Tver region, according to local officials.Zelenskyy described the strikes as a “just response” to Russian aggression against Ukraine. “It is time to end this war. But Russia’s ruler wants to keep fighting. That is why Ukrainian sanctions against this aggression are working,” he said on X. “Any manifestation of injustice against Ukraine will receive a just response.”Russia renewed its strikes on Ukraine early on Saturday. A Russian drone killed a 64-year-old man in the southern Mykolaiv region, while a strike on the nearby Zaporizhzhia region wounded a 10-year-old boy and his father, regional authorities said. Russian drone and artillery attacks in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region killed one person and left three others wounded, regional governor Oleksandr Ganzha wrote on Telegram.Russian forces also attacked two civilian search and rescue vessels in Ukrainian waters, causing injuries, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Oleksiy Kuleba said on Saturday. “The enemy launched strikes on two boats of the maritime search and rescue service which were carrying out a humanitarian mission within the Ukrainian sea corridor,” he wrote on Telegram, referring to a Black Sea route used to take vessels to Romanian ports. “Unfortunately, there are injured. Evacuation by boats of the Ukrainian navy is currently under way.”The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, will host Zelenskyy, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz for talks in Downing Street on Sunday to discuss support for Ukraine. The Ukrainian leader will visit the UK with the French president and German chancellor after a week of heightened hostilities and Vladimir Putin’s rejection of his proposal of face-to-face talks on Moscow’s war. The three countries meeting the Ukrainian leader are some of Kyiv’s staunchest allies. The UK and France are leading the “coalition of the willing” initiative to provide security guarantees for Ukraine as part of a peace process. Continue reading...