Category Archives: Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Zelenskyy says Russia has intensified shelling despite ‘Easter truce’ as Moscow also accuses Ukraine of breaching ceasefire – as it happened

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‘Easter truce’ ordered by Putin on Saturday but Ukraine president says Russian army continuing efforts to advance. This live blog is closed

Easter falls on the same day this year for orthodox and western churches, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged Ukrainians not to give up hope that peace will one day return.

Here are some of the latest images coming out of the newswires from Ukraine where festivities continue despite Russian attacks:

We are documenting every Russian violation of its self-declared commitment to a full ceasefire for the Easter period and are prepared to provide the necessary information to our partners.

In practice, either Putin does not have full control over his army, or the situation proves that in Russia, they have no intention of making a genuine move toward ending the war, and are only interested in favorable PR coverage. It’s a good thing, at least, that there were no air raid sirens.

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Zelenskyy dismisses Putin ceasefire as ‘PR’ and says Russian attacks continue

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Ukraine reports drone and artillery strikes over Easter weekend, while Moscow also claims ceasefire breaches by Kyiv

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has dismissed Vladimir Putin’s Easter ceasefire as a fake “PR” exercise and said Russian troops had continued their drone and artillery attacks across many parts of the frontline.

Citing a report from Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, Zelenskyy said Russia was still using heavy weapons and since 10am on Sunday an increase in Russian shelling had been observed.

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Orbán’s stance on Ukraine pushes Hungary to brink in EU relations

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Member states are considering removing the country’s voting rights after its attempts to stymie support for Kyiv

The posters are going up all over Hungary. “Let’s not allow them to decide for us,” runs the slogan alongside three classic villains of Hungarian government propaganda.

They are: Ukraine’s wartime leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy; the European Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen; and Manfred Weber, the German politician who leads the centre-right European People’s party in the European parliament, which counts Hungary’s most potent opposition politician among its ranks.

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Russia-Ukraine war: Rubio threatens to walk away from peace talks as outline of US minerals deal revealed – as it happened

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This blog is now closed, you can read on our report here

The Kremlin said on Friday that some progress had already been made in talks about a possible peace settlement to end the war in Ukraine but that contacts were rather complicated with the United States.

“Contacts are quite complicated, because, naturally, the topic is not an easy one,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “Russia is committed to resolving this conflict, ensuring its own interests, and is open to dialogue. We continue to do this.”

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Macron hosts ‘excellent’ ceasefire talks with top US, European and Ukrainian officials

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Senior diplomats set to meet again in London next week after ‘very productive’ Paris summit to revive stalled efforts

Senior US, European and Ukrainian diplomats will meet again in London next week, the Élysée Palace has said, after what a French official described as an “excellent” day of talks in Paris aimed at reviving stalled ceasefire efforts.

“We have started a positive process in which Europeans are a part,” the spokesperson said after the meetings attended by top British, French, German and Ukrainian officials as well as the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff.

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Ex-UK defence minister ‘disgusted’ by Trump’s attitude to Putin and Russia

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Grant Shapps also compares calling Sumy strike a ‘mistake’ to statements by IRA terror group when it killed civilians

Pronouncing himself “disgusted” by Donald Trump’s favorable attitude to Russia and Vladimir Putin, the former UK defence minister Grant Shapps said the US president calling a Russian missile strike that killed dozens in Ukraine last weekend a “mistake” was an example of “weasel language we used to hear … from the IRA” terrorist group.

“All anybody needs Putin to do is get the hell out of a democratic neighboring country,” Shapps told the One Decision podcast, regarding attempts to end the war in Ukraine that has raged since Russia invaded in February 2022.

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Tuesday briefing: How Donald Trump has left Ukrainian civilians in greater danger than ever

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In today’s newsletter: In describing the bombing of the city of Sumy as a “mistake” and sidelining dissenting voices, the White House’s passivity towards Russia questions its commitment to peace

Good morning. Russia claimed that its ballistic missile strike on the Ukrainian city of Sumy was aimed at Ukrainian army commanders. But the truth is that the attack’s brutal toll was exacted against ordinary people.

The deaths of at least 34 people made it the worst single attack on civilians in Ukraine this year. But the most Donald Trump would say was that he had been told it was a “mistake”. It appears unlikely he will take up Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s invitation, issued yesterday, to visit Ukraine and see the consequences of the invasion for himself.

British Steel | Senior Labour figures have urged the government to review Chinese investment in UK infrastructure in the wake of the British Steel crisis. Downing Street and the Treasury said they believed the row to be an isolated commercial dispute, even though the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, has not ruled out deliberate Chinese sabotage of the Scunthorpe plant.

Sudan | Sudan is suffering from the largest humanitarian crisis globally and its civilians are continuing to pay the price for inaction by the international community, NGOs and the UN have said, as the country’s civil war enters its third year. The UK is hosting ministers from 20 countries in London on Tuesday in an attempt to restart stalled peace talks.

Politics | The former Conservative MP Craig Williams is among 15 people, including several other senior Tories, charged by the Gambling Commission for alleged cheating connected to bets based on the date of the 2024 UK general election.

UK news | Bin workers have “overwhelmingly” rejected a deal that would have ended an all-out strike in Birmingham, during which bin bags have piled up in the streets and the city has faced an influx of rats.

Space | Six women safely completed a trip to the edge of outer space on a rocket belonging to Jeff Bezos, the Amazon co-founder. The crew included Bezos’s fiancee, Lauren Sánchez, and the pop star Katy Perry, who said on landing that she was “really feeling that divine feminine right now”.

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Zelenskyy urges Trump to view devastation in Ukraine caused by Russia’s invasion

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Ukrainian president calls on US counterpart to visit country as Trump appears to downplay Russia’s latest strike by calling it ‘mistake’

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged Donald Trump to visit Ukraine to see the devastation caused by Russia’s invasion, while the US president appeared to play down Moscow’s latest deadly attack, the worst on civilians this year, calling it “a mistake”.

International leaders condemned Russia’s strike on the centre of the Ukrainian city of Sumy on Sunday, which killed 34 people, including two children. Two ballistic missiles hit as people made their way to church for Palm Sunday.

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Civilian deaths in Sumy attack may force Washington to get tough with Putin

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Talks between US and Russia continue unabated as attacks on Ukraine’s cities appear to have stepped up

Even by the warped standards of wartime, Russia’s Sunday morning attack on Sumy was astonishingly brazen. Two high-speed ballistic missiles, armed, Ukraine says, with cluster munitions, slammed into the heart of the border city in mid-morning as families went to church, waited for a theatre performance or were simply strolling about on a mild spring day.

The death toll currently stands at 34, including two children. Images from the scene show bodies or body bags on the ground, a trolley bus and cars burnt out, rubble and glass scattered around. It was reckless, cruel and vicious and its consequences entirely predictable to those who gave the order and pressed “launch”.

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Eighteen people killed in Russian missile strike on Zelenskyy’s home city

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Missile attack on Kryvyi Rih left 61 injured including three-month-old baby and elderly residents

Eighteen people, including nine children, have been killed in a Russian missile strike on Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s home city, a Ukrainian official has said.

A further 61 people were injured in the attack on Kryvyi Rih on Friday, including a three-month-old baby and elderly residents, the regional governor, Serhii Lysak, said. Forty remain in hospital, including two children in critical condition and 17 in a serious condition.

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Donald Trump says he is ‘very angry’ with Vladimir Putin over Ukraine

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US president says his Russian counterpart’s questioning of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s credibility could delay ceasefire

Donald Trump has said he is “pissed off” with Vladimir Putin over his approach to a ceasefire in Ukraine and threatened to levy tariffs on Moscow’s oil exports if the Russian leader does not agree to a truce within a month.

The US president indicated he would levy a 25% or 50% tariff that would affect countries buying Russian oil in a telephone interview with NBC News, during which he also threatened to bomb Iran and did not rule out using force in Greenland.

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Putin suggests Ukraine could have UN-led government to organise elections

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US rejects suggestion and Kremlin later clarifies idea is just ‘one of the options’ and has not been raised with Trump

Vladimir Putin has suggested Ukraine could be placed under a temporary UN-led government to organise fresh elections as both Moscow and Kyiv accused each other of breaching an energy ceasefire agreed this week.

The idea was quickly rejected by a US spokesperson, and it was not clear how far it was meant to be taken seriously, given that the Kremlin clarified that Putin had not raised this idea in recent phone calls with Donald Trump.

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Zelenskyy employs strategic optimism to highlight Russia’s abundant bad faith

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Ukrainian president has learned Trump’s team demand positivity and there is little point in trying to ‘inject reality’

At a press briefing in Kyiv on Tuesday, explaining where initial US-brokered peace negotiations had got to, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, struck a notably different tone. Long gone is the tetchiness on display in London in the aftermath of the Ukrainian leader’s catastrophic trip to the White House. In its place was a degree of optimism so high that it could only be interpreted as political positioning.

Though he complained about comments made by Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s special envoy, that four Ukrainian regions wholly or partly occupied by Russia consisted of people who wanted Moscow’s rule in an “overwhelming majority” – these were “in line with the messages of the Kremlin”, Zelenskyy said – he insisted that had advantages too.

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Russian strikes show Moscow does not want ‘real peace’, says Zelenskyy

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Ukraine’s president says drone attacks just hours after ceasefire talks were ‘a clear signal to the whole world’

Ukraine’s president has accused Russia of being insincere about making peace as he reported an attack by 117 drones, before he headed to Paris for a discussion with EU and Nato leaders about establishing a post-conflict security force.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that launching nationwide strikes after negotiations over maritime and energy ceasefires was proof of Russia’s true intentions, though the Kremlin insisted the US-brokered talks were proceeding constructively.

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Ukraine accuses Moscow of ‘hollow statements about peace’ after latest attack

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Ukrainian officials say 88 injured in missile strike as US and Russian officials start talks on ceasefire deal

Ukraine has accused Moscow of making “hollow statements about peace” after 88 people were injured in a Russian missile attack as US and Russian officials began talks that Washington hopes will mark the first step toward lasting peace.

Seventeen children were among the casualties after the missile hit schools and residential buildings in the city of Sumy, Ukrainian officials said late on Monday, as Moscow appeared to be exploiting the window before any ceasefire to launch attacks on Ukraine.

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Ukraine war live: US and Russia start ceasefire talks in Saudi Arabia as Zelenskyy says Putin must give ‘real order’ to stop attacks

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Washington expresses optimism with latest round of negotiations beginning in Riyadh a day after Kyiv said it had ‘constructive’ US talks

Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces (SSO) say they have destroyed four Russian military helicopters in Russian border region of Belgorod using US-made Himars missiles with cluster munitions.

The SSO said, in a post on X, that two Ka-52 strike helicopters and two Mi-8 transport helicopters were concealed in a “hidden position” used for “rapid redeployment or attacks against Ukraine”.

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Gulf in US and Russian expectations marks start of latest ceasefire talks

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As Washington signals hope for ‘real progress’, Moscow warns ‘difficult negotiations’ lie ahead

US and Ukrainian officials have met for further talks aimed at hammering out a ceasefire in Russia’s war in Ukraine, with Washington signalling its hope for “real progress” even as Moscow warned that “difficult negotiations” lie ahead.

The gulf in expectations marked the start of the latest round of negotiations in Saudi Arabia, which was set to follow with a meeting between American officials and Russia on Monday. The US is pushing for a broad ceasefire in Russia’s war in Ukraine by 20 April, according to Bloomberg, though sources said the timeline may slip given the wide gap that exists between Kyiv and Moscow’s positions.

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Keir Starmer says he ‘likes and respects’ Donald Trump

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PM agrees with US president that Europe must bear greater burden for its collective self-defence

Keir Starmer has spoken of how he personally “likes and respects” the US president, Donald Trump, and understands what he is trying to achieve.

The prime minister made the comments in an interview with the New York Times, saying: “President Trump has a point when he says there needs to be a greater burden borne by European countries for the collective self-defence of Europe.”

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UK to accelerate military planning to support Ukraine, No 10 says

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Intensive talks to take place next week on detail and structure of any British deployments if ceasefire deal reached

The UK is to “accelerate the pace and scale” of its military planning to be ready to support Ukraine, with No 10 saying all options, including troops on the ground, are possible.

Keir Starmer’s spokesperson said thousands of troops would be needed to support Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire and agreement to end the war with Russia, whether by “sea, on land or in the air”.

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