Russia says Ukraine not responding on Istanbul talks
Diplomatic efforts to end the three-year conflict have gained pace in recent months, but Russia has maintained an intense bombardment of Ukraine and repeatedly rebuffed calls for an immediate ceasefire.
Moscow offered to hold a second round of direct talks with Ukraine in Istanbul on June 2, when it said it would present a "memorandum" outlining its conditions for a long-term peace settlement.
Ukraine said the meeting would not yield results unless it saw a copy of the memorandum in advance, a proposal the Kremlin dismissed.
"As far as I know, no response has been received yet... we need to wait for a response from the Ukrainian side," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, calling Kyiv's demand to hand over its peace terms "non-constructive".
Ukraine said it had already submitted its own vision of a peace settlement to Russia and demanded Moscow do the same.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia was "doing everything they can to make the meetings empty. And this is another reason why there must be sufficient sanctions, sufficient pressure on Russia."
"We continue to urge (Russia) to share this document," said Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson Georgiy Tykhy.
Moscow's refusal to send the document "suggests that it is likely filled with unrealistic ultimatums", he said.
'Shut the door'
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on Russia and Ukraine not to "shut the door" on dialogue ahead of the anticipated second round of talks in Istanbul.
Negotiations in Istanbul on May 16 -- the first direct talks on ending the conflict in more than three years -- yielded only a prisoner exchange and promises to stay in touch.
Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharov told state television the Kremlin planned to send the same negotiating team as was at the earlier talks. That was led by Vladimir Medinsky, a Kremlin aid who also took part in talks in 2022 in the weeks after Russia launched its offensive.
After the May 16 talks, Ukraine accused Russia of outlining unrealistic demands, including calls to cede territory Kyiv still controls.
The Russian offensive, launched in February 2022, has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and the destruction of large parts of eastern and southern Ukraine.
Russian forces have moved forward on the battlefield while pushing peace demands that include Ukraine abandoning its NATO ambitions and giving up around a fifth of its land.
The Russian army said Thursday it had captured three villages in Ukraine's Donetsk and Kharkiv regions in its latest advance.
Turkey's Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan was expected to travel to Kyiv on Thursday to meet Zelensky, after talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday.
US President Donald Trump, who has been pushing for a peace deal, has become increasingly frustrated with Moscow's apparent stalling, and warned Wednesday he would determine within "about two weeks" whether Putin was serious about ending the fighting.
Local authorities in Ukraine said Thursday Russia had fired 90 drones overnight.
At least seven people were killed in drone, missile and artillery strikes across five frontline Ukrainian regions, officials said.
Russia said it had repelled 48 Ukrainian drones overnight, including three near Moscow.
Trump told reporters he was "very disappointed" at Russia's deadly bombardment during the negotiating process, but rebuffed calls to impose more sanctions on Moscow.
Kyiv has accused Russia of deliberately stalling the peace process to pursue its offensive.
Zelensky earlier this week said Russia was "amassing" more than 50,000 troops on the front line around Sumy, where Moscow's army has captured a number of settlements as it seeks to establish what Putin has called a "buffer zone" inside Ukrainian territory.
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France 24
an hour ago
- France 24
Ukraine expands evacuations in Sumy region amid offensive fears
Russia claims to have captured several villages in the northeastern region in recent weeks, and has massed more than 50,000 soldiers on the other side of the border, according to Kyiv. The evacuations came just two days before a possible meeting between the two sides in Istanbul, as Washington called on both countries to end the three-year war. Russia has confirmed it will send a delegation to the Turkish city, but Kyiv has yet to accept the proposal, warning the talks would not yield results unless the Kremlin provided its peace terms in advance. On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow of doing "everything" it could to sabotage the potential meeting by withholding its peace terms. Authorities in Ukraine's Sumy region said Saturday they were evacuating 11 villages within a roughly 30-kilometre (19-mile) range from the Russian border. "The decision was made in view of the constant threat to civilian life as a result of shelling of border communities," the regional administration said on social media. A spokesman for Ukraine's border guard service, Andriy Demchenko, said Thursday that Russia was poised to "attempt an attack" on Sumy. In total, 213 settlements in the region have been ordered to evacuate. Russia's defence ministry said Saturday that its forces had taken another Sumy region village, Vodolagy. Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, launched in February 2022, has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and the destruction of towns and villages across parts of the east and south of the country. The Kremlin's army now controls around a fifth of the country and claims to have annexed five Ukrainian regions as its own, including Crimea, which it seized in 2014. 'Strong delegations' US President Donald Trump has spearheaded diplomatic efforts to bring an end to the fighting, but Kyiv and Moscow have both accused each other of not wanting peace. The Kremlin has proposed further negotiations in Istanbul on Monday, after a May 16 round of talks that yielded little beyond a large prisoner-of-war exchange. Kyiv has not yet said whether it will attend the Monday meeting, and said Friday it did not expect any results from the talks unless Moscow provided its peace terms in advance. Russia says it will provide its peace memorandum in person on Monday. But Ukraine suspects it will contain unrealistic demands that Kyiv has already rejected, including that Ukraine cede territory still under its control and abandon its NATO ambitions. In a statement to the United Nations on Friday, Russia's UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia suggested the memorandum might call for Western countries to halt arm supplies to Kyiv and for Ukraine to abandon its military mobilisation. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has fostered warm relations with both Zelensky and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, has become a key mediator amid efforts to end the conflict. In a call with Zelensky late Friday, the Turkish leader urged both sides to send "strong delegations" to ensure momentum towards peace, according to Turkish state news agency Anadolu. Turkey has offered to host a summit between Putin, Zelensky and Trump, but the Kremlin has turned down the offer. © 2025 AFP
Euronews
2 hours ago
- Euronews
How a Russian spy couple became Portuguese citizens
Creating a new identity is perhaps the most important concern of Russia' s so-called 'illegals' - as intelligence officers who work underground are known. Constructed step by step, without rushing to arouse suspicion and with attention to every detail, it is this cover story - in intelligence circles known as a 'legend ' - that will allow them to fit in and go unnoticed in the social environment in which they are deployed to fulfil a mission, whatever it may be. This is what Vladimir Aleksandrovich Danilov and Yekaterina Leonidovna Danilova, the Russian spy couple who passed through Portugal under the names Manuel Francisco Steinbruck Pereira and Adriana Carolina Costa Silva Pereira and whose identity was revealed last week by The New York Times, did for years - methodically and with utmost discretion. They first constructed a Brazilian identity and then a Portuguese one. And they would have succeeded if the Russian invasion of Ukraine hadn't led Western intelligence services to redouble their efforts dismantling Russian spy cells. The first record we could find of their presence in Brazil, with their new identities, dates back to February 2016. That month, Manuel Pereira, Vladimir Danilov's alias, set up the company MP Collection, based in a building in Barra da Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro, dedicated to buying and selling antiques and second-hand items. At the same address, an art objects trading company was later registered in Adriana Pereira 's name. But it wasn't until the two began to create a life - and a 'legend' - together that their businesses sprang to life. According to the documents consulted by Euronews and Nascer do SOL, the construction of that life began on 14 April 2016. On the morning of that day, shortly after 10am, the two entered the Registry Office of the 12th Civil Registry in Rio de Janeiro. They waited their turn, handed over their identification documents and were taken to a room where Judge Salete dos Santos Norte was sitting. He presented documents identifying him as Manuel Francisco Steinbruck Pereira, born on 24 November 1985, the son of Ligia Steinbruck, from Rio de Janeiro, and a Portuguese man, Camilo Pereira, from Vila Real. She showed documentation identifying her as Adriana Carolina Silva Costa, born on 5 June 1986, also in Rio de Janeiro, daughter of Juan Castro and Maria Paes. Before the judge, they declared that they were there of their own free will to celebrate their marriage. When the documents were signed, the woman changed her name: she changed the order of her surnames and adopted her new husband's family name. She was then called Adriana Carolina Costa Silva Pereira. The couple would then live in that building in Barra da Tijuca. It would be more than a year before the couple took another step towards building their identity. On 23 May 2017, Manuel Pereira went to the Portuguese consulate in Rio de Janeiro to register and apply for Portuguese nationality. To do this, according to the birth certificate obtained by Euronews and Nascer do SOL from the Lisbon Civil Registry Office, he presented a mandatory document for acquiring nationality: proof of the establishment of filiation when he was a minor, a declaration of which was made before a public official. In other words, a document allegedly signed by Camilo Pereira legally recognising Manuel Pereira's paternity was presented. A former court clerk who emigrated to Brazil many years ago, where he had three children, Camilo Pereira is now retired and living in Rio de Janeiro. In recent days, Euronews has tried to contact him by various means to find out if he has ever had contact with the two Russian spies. At his address in Lisbon, his family, one of his sons and his daughter-in-law didn't want to talk about the case. He deleted or blocked his social media accounts after being approached by Euronews and Nascer do SOL. Manuel Pereira's birth certificate was to be filed with the Central Registry Office in Lisbon on 23 January 2018. Only then did the Russian spy move on to the next stage of the plan: obtaining Portuguese nationality for his wife. According to information gathered by Euronews and Nascer do SOL, it was then that the couple travelled to Portugal for the first time. They arrived in mid-February and stayed until March, when they returned to Brazil. On 26 April of that year, just over two years after their wedding, the couple once again went to the Portuguese consulate in Rio de Janeiro, this time to officially register their marriage. They travelled to Portugal for the second time in October 2018. They returned again in 2019, by which time Adriana Pereira was already a Portuguese citizen under the terms of Article 3(1) of Law 37/81, which allows foreigners who have been married for more than three years to a Portuguese national to acquire Portuguese nationality. According to the weekly Expresso, the two rented a flat in the Bonfim area of Porto. They entered and left Portugal several times until their false identities were unmasked. The dismantling of the cell of Russian illegals in Brazil began when another spy was exposed by the American authorities as he was preparing to take up a trainee post at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Alerted by their American counterparts, the Dutch intelligence services prevented him from entering the country and sent him back to Brazil where he was arrested for falsifying documents. He was Sergey Cherkasov, a Russian intelligence officer who was travelling under the name Viktor Muller Ferreira and who, like Manuel Pereira, had a Portuguese father on his identity papers. On his return to Brazil, he was arrested and sentenced to 15 years in prison. It was his arrest that alerted the Federal Police to the possibility that there were more illegals in Brazil. According to The New York Times, this is how the remaining eight members of the network were discovered. However, Euronews understands that it was not the Brazilian authorities who informed the Security Intelligence Service of the Russian couple's presence in Portugal in the summer of 2022. Having identified them, the Portuguese intelligence agency SIS took two steps. Firstly, it informed its Russian counterpart that the two illegals had been revealed. They then informed the Institute of Registries and Notaries IRN, which cancelled the identification documents and opened an investigation into how the nationality was obtained. This information was placed on the respective birth certificates. However, the process has not yet been finalised. "When there is a decision, it has to be registered. If it is concluded that the process is null and void because it was false, the cancellation is recorded. If it is concluded that everything was fine with the seat, the process is cancelled," explains a registrar who asked not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the subject. Euronews and Nascer do SOL questioned the IRN about the status of the cases, but there was no reply. This is not the first time that Russian intelligence services have used or attempted to use identification data on nationals. One of the functions of spies placed undercover in Russian embassies around the world is to collect information on how different countries record and store personal data. They can also try to illegally obtain or forge documents whose information will be traceable to real people, living or dead, or fake individuals who exist only on paper. This is what happened in Lisbon in 2013. An official from the Russian embassy began travelling frequently to the Central Registry Office (CRC) in Lisbon to meet with the same official, with whom he would meet for long periods of time. The then director of the IRN, António Figueiredo, alerted the SIS, which sent a team to try and find out on what the official had been consulting. The spies' visit was eventually captured by PJ surveillance teams working on the gold visas at the time and caused controversy since Judge Carlos Alexandre didn't believe the justifications given by António Figueiredo for the presence of the intelligence officers. After these episodes, the SIS organised training for dozens of civil servants to alert them to the value of the information stored at the IRN for hostile foreign powers.
France 24
3 hours ago
- France 24
Ukraine orders evacuation of 11 villages on Russian border as Kyiv braces for Sumy offensive
Authorities in Ukraine 's Sumy region bordering Russia on Saturday ordered the mandatory evacuation of 11 villages because of bombardments, as Kyiv feared a Russian offensive there. "This decision takes into account the constant threat to civilian lives because of the bombardments of border communities," Sumy's administration said. Russia's defence ministry on Saturday said its forces had taken another Sumy village, Vodolagy, known as Vodolahy in Ukrainian. Russia in recent weeks has said it had taken several villages in the northeastern region, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said this week that Moscow was massing more than 50,000 soldiers nearby in a sign of a possible offensive. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he wants to create a buffer zone in Sumy, which was used to help launch Ukraine's incursion into Kursk last year. A spokesman for Ukraine's border guard service, Andriy Demchenko, on Thursday said that Russia was poised to "attempt an attack" on Sumy. He said the Russian troop build-up began when Moscow's forces fought Ukrainian soldiers who last year had entered the Russian side of the border, in the Kursk region. Russia has recently retaken control of virtually all of Kursk. Currently, Russia – which launched its all-out invasion in February 2022 – controls around 20 percent of Ukrainian territory. The ongoing conflict has killed tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians on both sides. Washington has been leading diplomatic efforts to try to bring about a ceasefire, but Kyiv and Moscow accuse each other of not wanting peace. The Kremlin has proposed further negotiations in Istanbul on Monday, after a May 16 round of talks that yielded little beyond a large prisoner-of-war exchange. Kyiv has not yet said whether it will attend the Istanbul meeting, and is demanding that Moscow drop its opposition to an immediate truce.
