Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Donald Trump for a “potentially historic” one-on-one meeting in St Peter’s Basilica on the sidelines of Pope Francis’s funeral.
The two leaders met for private talks amid speculation “funeral diplomacy” could bring a breakthrough on their differences over ending the war in Ukraine.
They were pictured hunched over and facing each other on two simple red chairs inside the Italian high renaissance church, moments before the ceremony began.
h/t Mauser
A senior Russian military commander was killed on Friday in a car explosion in a suburb of Moscow, investigators said.
The Investigative Committee of Russia, the country’s equivalent to the F.B.I., issued a statement identifying the officer as Lt. Gen. Yaroslav Moskalik, a senior figure in the Russian General Staff who was directly involved in planning operations. The investigators said that they had opened a criminal inquiry into the explosion, which took place in the town of Balashikha, east of Moscow.
BREAKING:
Looks like Ukraine’s military intelligence has eliminated one of Russia’s top-level war criminals.
Deputy Chief of the Main Operations Directorate of the Russian General Staff, Major General Yaroslav Moskalik, was killed in a car bomb explosion in Moscow this morning pic.twitter.com/mUPLv1UAP5
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) April 25, 2025
It’s the summer of 2023 and Ukrainian troops are furiously digging trenches under Russian fire in the pine forests outside Kreminna. Suddenly, a rocket crashes to the ground, and Zhakhar, a special forces sergeant, shouts at his troops to retreat to the car.
It was a dispiriting pushback, but at least it gave him a chance to inspect his latest battlefield trophy. Examining two boxes in his hand, he saw markings that were not Russian, but clearly Chinese.
Donald Trump has accused Volodymyr Zelenskyy of jeopardising what he claimed was an imminent peace deal to end the war in Ukraine, as he gave the clearest hint yet that the US would be willing to formally recognise Russia’s seizure of Crimea as part of any agreement.
The US president claimed a deal to end the war – largely negotiated between Washington and Moscow – was close, while the vice-president, JD Vance, said the agreement would include a proposal to freeze the conflict roughly along the current frontlines.
It was unclear how Ukraine and its European allies, who were meeting in London on Wednesday, would respond to a plan largely constructed in their absence. Zelenskyy countered by proposing a simple ceasefire without conditions on both sides, though this did not immediately gain any traction from the US.
President Putin’s Easter truce ended with explosions this morning as missiles hit a port city in the south of the country, signalling the start of a potentially crucial week for floundering peace talk efforts.
“With the end of the ceasefire, the armed forces of the Russian Federation continued to conduct the special military operation,” the Russian defence ministry said after Putin’s 30-hour truce expired at midnight.
Putin’s truce was widely seen by analysts as an attempt to convince President Trump that Moscow remains serious about a lasting peace, despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary.
Ukraine’s military has reported Russian drone attacks on several regions overnight, just hours after the end of a 30-hour “Easter truce” declared by Moscow.
Air raid alerts were issued by Ukraine’s air force for the Kyiv region, as well as Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, Cherkasy, Mykolaiv and Zaporizhzhia.
In the southern city of Mykolaiv, Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych said “explosions were heard”. It was not immediately clear whether there were any casualties.
The US is open to recognising the annexed Crimea peninsula as Russian territory as part of a wider Ukraine peace deal.
On Thursday, Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy, presented allies with proposals in Paris that would freeze current battle lines and leave most Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory under Moscow’s control.
The potential concession comes as Donald Trump, the US president, signalled on Friday that his administration would abandon peace-brokering efforts without quick progress.
Vladimir Putin has declared an “Easter truce” in his invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian president said all military operations in Ukraine would cease from 6pm local time on Saturday (4pm UK) until midnight on April 21.
Ukraine has not responded, although Putin said he expected President Zelensky to “follow our example”.
The US will abandon its efforts “within days” to broker a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine unless there are clear signs a settlement can be reached, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has said, as Kyiv says it has signed a memorandum with the US over a controversial minerals deal.
Speaking in Paris on Friday after meeting European and Ukrainian leaders, Rubio said Donald Trump was still interested in a deal. But he added that the US president had many other priorities around the world and was willing to move on unless there were signs of progress.
Rubio’s comments are the clearest signal yet that the White House is ready to walk away from its diplomatic attempts to negotiate an end to the war. Last month Ukraine agreed unconditionally to a US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire.
WASHINGTON — The US and Ukraine will finally sign a long sought-after mineral rights agreement next week after months of negotiations, according to officials from both countries.
President Trump announced in the Oval Office Thursday that an agreement had been reached, estimating that it would be formalized April 24 at a location to be determined later.
In a little-noticed series of X posts early Wednesday, Ukrainian Minister of the Economy Yulia Svyrydenko announced that “a positive new step has been made in the ongoing progress with the United States on the Economic Partnership Agreement and the creation of an investment fund for the reconstruction of Ukraine.”
Two Chinese citizens captured fighting against Ukraine said they were “fed lies” by Russia and that Vladimir Putin’s forces were not as strong as they claimed.
In an evening press conference organised by the Ukrainian security service, Wang Guanjung and Zhang Renbo said: “All Russia fed us are lies. They’re fake. Russia isn’t as strong as they claim, and Ukraine isn’t as backward as they say.”
While Joe Biden publicly led the charge to punish Russia for its first invasion of Ukraine, he used his role as vice president to quietly open a backdoor for Moscow’s gas to flow to its neighbor in fall 2014, at a time when his son Hunter’s Ukrainian energy company sought such help, according to government messages in a private email account kept from Americans for more than a decade.
Germany’s prized Leopard 2 tanks are failing on the battlefield in Ukraine, according to an assessment by its defence ministry.
In a classified transcript of a meeting between a German defence attaché stationed in Kyiv and about 200 Bundeswehr soldiers, the diplomat revealed the difficulties Ukrainians are facing in operating the heavy weaponry.
Eighteen of the Bundeswehr’s mainstay Leopard 2 tanks made their way to Ukraine in 2023 after months of foot-dragging by Chancellor Olaf Scholz and a full-on national public debate about whether Berlin should send heavy weapons to Ukraine.
At least 32 people have been killed and 84 injured, including 10 children, after a Russian attack on the centre of Sumy, according to Ukrainian authorities.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the “terrible strike by Russian ballistic missiles” hit an “ordinary city street, ordinary life”, adding that without strong pressure, “Russia will continue to drag out this war”.
This is how Palm/Good Sunday looks like in Sumy, Ukraine. Served by Russian, orthodox terrorists.
I am asking MAGA “Christians” again, are you ok with that?! pic.twitter.com/RpFZougQ9s
— Mario (@PawlowskiMario) April 13, 2025
General Keith Kellogg suggests UK and France could lead western zone of control in interview with The Times
President Trump’s envoy to Ukraine has said the country could be partitioned “almost like Berlin after World War Two” as part of a peace deal.
General Keith Kellogg, a leading figure in US efforts to end the three-year war, suggested that British and French troops could adopt zones of control in the west of the country as part of a “reassurance force”, with Russia’s army in the occupied east. Between them would be Ukrainian forces and a demilitarised zone.
