Russia-Ukraine Negotiations

Russia's Shoigu says war in Ukraine will end when Putin's 'tasks' are completed

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday Moscow’s war in Ukraine will end once all of President Vladimir Putin’s "tasks" there are completed. "Today, the main priorities for us are the preservation of life and health of subordinate personnel, and the elimination of threats to the safety of the civilian population," he said speaking to Russian media outlets. "The special military operation will continue until the tasks assigned by the Supreme Commander are completed"...

Ukraine Doubts Deal to Unblock Grain Exports Will Happen Soon

Ukraine’s top diplomat cast doubt on a near-term breakthrough in talks to unblock crop exports from the war-ravaged nation’s Black Sea ports, as fears of a global hunger crisis intensify. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said a number of logistical details need to be worked out in talks brokered by Turkey and United Nations between Ukraine and Russia, though breaking the deadlock will be difficult...

G-20 meeting may lead to wider divisions over war in Ukraine

Foreign ministers from the world’s largest nations are looking to address Russia’s war in Ukraine and its impact on global energy and food security when they meet in Indonesia this week. Yet instead of providing unity, the talks may well exacerbate existing divides over the Ukraine conflict... And, unlike in recent leader-level meetings with NATO partners and other like-minded partners, Blinken will find himself among diplomats from countries wary of the U.S. approach to Ukraine and concerned about its impact on them...

Ukraine in talks with Russia only on humanitarian issues

Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to the head of the Ukrainian President's Office, has said that only a subgroup on humanitarian issues is holding negotiations with Russia... "There are certain contacts, but at the level of humanitarian subgroups. Because we always need to solve issues related to the exchange of prisoners and the exchange of bodies. And if possible, certain humanitarian corridors should also be opened. From a political and diplomatic point of view, [Ukraine-Russia talks] have been paused," Podoliak said...

Ukraine summons Turkish envoy after ‘stolen’ grain ship allowed to leave port

Ukraine has summoned the Turkish ambassador after it said Turkey had allowed a Russian-flagged ship carrying what it has claimed was thousands of tonnes of stolen Ukrainian grain to leave the port of Karasu. “We regret that Russia’s ship Zhibek Zholy, which was full of stolen Ukrainian grain, was allowed to leave Karasu port despite criminal evidence presented to the Turkish authorities,” said the foreign ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko. “Turkey’s ambassador in Kyiv will be invited to Ukraine’s ministry of foreign affairs to clarify this unacceptable situation”...

Russia taking ‘operational pause’ in Ukraine, analysts say

Foreign analysts say Russia may be temporarily easing its offensive in Ukraine as the Russian military attempts to reassemble its forces for a renewed assault. On Wednesday, Russian forces made no claimed or assessed territorial gains in Ukraine “for the first time in 133 days of war,” according to the Institute for the Study of War. The think tank based in Washington suggested that Moscow may be taking an “operational pause,” but that it does not entail “the complete cessation of active hostilities”...

Ukraine: Why Russia wants to take last three major cities in Donbas region

The fight over the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas is entering its final stages. After taking over Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, Russian troops now control most of Luhansk region. Fierce fighting currently rages in the west and south, as Russia pushes to take Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and Bakhmut, three cities still remaining under Ukrainian control. All three hold strategic as well as symbolic significance...

Is Putin Closer to Declaring Victory in Ukraine?

Russia's grinding and bloody capture of Ukraine's Luhansk Oblast puts President Vladimir Putin closer to one of the Kremlin's stated war goals: the "liberation" of the entire eastern Donbas region, comprising Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts. Putin officially recognized the two Russian-backed, self-declared "people's republics" in the region days before he launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The breakaway states claim sovereignty over all of Donetsk and Luhansk...

Russia Has Used Only a Fraction of Its Potential in Ukraine

Russia has used only a small portion of its potential in its "special military operation" in Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday. President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia had barely started in Ukraine and dared the West to try to defeat it on the battlefield, while insisting that Moscow was still open to the idea of peace talks...

Russia ‘won’t chase after US’ for talks, Lavrov says

Sergei Lavrov says Russia will not chase after the US for talks after Antony Blinken snubbed the Kremlin’s top diplomat at a G20 summit in Indonesia. The meeting in Bali was the first time Russia’s top diplomat was meeting some of the country’s harshest critics since it invaded Ukraine in February. Earlier the Kremlin warned Ukraine must strike a peace deal with Russia or face "slipping down this hill" to ruin...

Russian forces unlikely to leave southern Ukraine, ambassador says

Russia is unlikely to withdraw from a swathe of land across Ukraine's southern coast and will defeat Ukrainian forces in the whole of the eastern Donbas region, Russia's ambassador to London told Reuters. Since the Feb. 24 invasion, Russian forces have taken control of a big chunk of territory across Ukraine's southern flank above Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. Russia is slowly pushing Ukrainian forces out of two Russian-backed rebel regions of east Ukraine which it has recognised as independent states...

Zelensky says Ukraine will not give up territory for peace with Russia

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Thursday that Ukraine is unwilling to cede any of its land to Russia, standing firm that a concession of Ukrainian territory won't be part of any diplomatic negotiations to end the war. "Ukrainians are not ready to give away their land, to accept that these territories belong to Russia. This is our land," Zelensky said in an exclusive interview aired Thursday on CNN's "The Situation Room"...

Russia Says It Is Open to Talks With Ukraine, Turkey on Grain Exports

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that Moscow is ready to negotiate with Ukraine and Turkey about grain exports but it is unclear when such talks might take place. U.S. and Western officials have said that Russia has effectively blockaded Ukrainian ports and exerted tight control on Ukraine’s grain exports. The Kremlin has said that Kyiv is free to ship grain from its ports. Turkey and the United Nations have been leading efforts to transport Ukrainian grain out of the country...

Lavrov walks out of G20 talks after denying Russia is causing food crisis

The Russian foreign minister left the G20 meeting of leading economies early after telling his counterparts that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was not responsible for a global hunger crisis and that sanctions designed to isolate Russia amounted to a declaration of war. The gathering on Friday was Sergei Lavrov’s first direct confrontation with leaders from the west since Russia mounted its attack on Ukraine, and he accused the west of frenzied criticism of what he claimed were Moscow’s justified actions...

Every Army Fighting In Ukraine Is Suffering Horrific Casualties

As Russia’s wider war on Ukraine grinds toward its fifth month, the army of the separatist “republic” in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast still is losing 10 soldiers killed in action and another 50 wounded, every day on average. That’s half as many daily KIAs—and two-thirds as many WIAs—as the Donetsk People’s Republic army suffered in the first three months of the war, when DPR units most visibly concentrated in the south. Casualties are down, in other words, as the fighting has shifted east. But the DPR army still is losing the equivalent of 15 percent of its pre-war strength every month—a rate of loss that clearly is unsustainable over the long term...

Russia ‘struggling’ to give troops in Ukraine breaks from combat

The United Kingdom’s Defense Ministry said that Russia is “struggling” to give its military forces breaks as its months-long conflict with neighboring Ukraine continues to rage on. In a Twitter thread on Monday, the U.K. Defense Ministry noted complaints from wives of Russian military members, saying a video published showed the wives pleading to a local politician to have their husbands return to the country, citing that one Russian military unit is already “mentally and physically exhausted”...

Desperate for Recruits, Russia Launches a ‘Stealth Mobilization’

Ordinarily, these sort of complaints might be ignored, but the swift rebuke underscores how Russian officials want to stamp out any criticism about military service in Ukraine. They need more soldiers, desperately, and are already using what some analysts call a ‘‘stealth mobilization’’ to bring in new recruits without resorting to a politically risky national draft. To make up the manpower shortfall, the Kremlin is relying on a combination of impoverished ethnic minorities, Ukrainians from the separatist territories, mercenaries and militarized National Guard units to fight the war, and promising hefty cash incentives for volunteers...

Ukraine war: 7,200 Ukrainian service personnel missing

As many as 7,200 Ukrainian service personnel have gone missing since the start of the Russian invasion, Ukraine's ombudsman Oleh Kotenko says. The majority of them are in Russian captivity, he told Ukraine's Suspilne TV channel. Mr Kotenko said Ukraine's armed forces had earlier reported some 2,000 missing troops. But he said the much higher number included members of the National Guard, border guards and the security service...

Ukraine has one million ready for fightback to recapture south

Ukraine is massing a million-strong fighting force equipped with western weapons to recover its southern territory from Russia, the nation’s defence minister has revealed to The Times. In his first interview with a British newspaper since the invasion began, Oleksii Reznikov said President Zelensky had ordered Ukraine’s military to retake occupied coastal areas which are vital to the country’s economy...

Ukraine Recalls Ambassador to Germany

The president of Ukraine has dismissed the country’s controversial ambassador to Germany. Volodymyr Zelenskyy recalled Andriy Melnyk Saturday. The president’s move follows recent remarks by Melnyk, defending Stepan Bandera, a Ukranian who collaborated with the Nazis when they occupied Ukraine during World War II. Melnyk said in an interview that Bandera, a leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists during the war, was not a mass murderer of Jews and Poles...

Ukraine's President Zelenskyy has fired 5 of his ambassadors to Germany and other countries, citing 'diplomatic process'

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has fired five of Ukraine's senior envoys abroad, citing the "diplomatic process." The Ukrainian president released a number of statements announcing that he had fired his country's ambassadors to Germany, India, the Czech Republic, Norway, and Hungary. No reason was given for these changes, but he said, "This rotation is a normal part of diplomatic practice," he said in a statement, according to Reuters, and gave no further details...

Putin expands fast-track Russian citizenship to all Ukraine

As Russian missiles struck a key Ukrainian city, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree Monday expanding a fast-track procedure of obtaining Russian citizenship available to all Ukrainians, yet another effort to expand Moscow’s influence in war-torn Ukraine. Until recently, only residents of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as residents of the southern Zaporizhzhia and the Kherson regions, large parts of which are now under Russian control, were eligible to apply for the simplified passport procedure...