Russia and Ukraine exchange more bodies of war dead, Kremlin aide says
Vladimir Medinsky, the head of Russia's delegation at those peace talks, said in a statement on Telegram that Moscow had handed over the bodies of 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers and had received 19 bodies of its own fallen soldiers in return.
The RIA state news agency reported, citing a source, that Russia plans to return the bodies of 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers and that the exchange on Thursday was the beginning of that process.
The warring sides have carried out a series of swaps of captured troops and the remains of dead soldiers since renewing peace talks in Istanbul in May following a gap of more than three years.
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The Independent
20 minutes ago
- The Independent
Ukraine-Russia war latest: Zelensky says fresh round of peace talks with Putin's team set for Wednesday
Volodymyr Zelensky has said the next set of peace talks between Ukraine and Russia is planned to be held in Turkey tomorrow after previous round of talks to end the war failed to yield conclusive results. "Today I discussed with Rustem Umerov the preparation for a prisoner exchange and another meeting with the Russian side in Turkey," Mr Zelensky said in his nightly video address. "Umerov reported that the meeting is planned for Wednesday. More details will follow tomorrow." This comes as Europe has promised more air defence systems and ammunition for Ukraine hours after Kyiv was hit by another barrage of Russian drones and missiles overnight. Speaking at a meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group (UDCG) yesterday, UK defence secretary John Healey said Ukraine and its allies stand at a moment of 'maximum opportunity' to bolster Kyiv for negotiations to end the war. He called on the UK and other allies to use Donald Trump 's 50-day ultimatum to Vladimir Putin to start a '50-day drive' to arm Ukraine ahead of any talks. Ukraine gears for American Patriot missiles as Germany and Switzerland step up Germany said it had offered to finance two new Patriot systems for Ukraine and raised the possibility of supplying systems it already owned and having them replaced by the US. But delivery could take time, German chancellor Friedrich Merz suggested, because "they have to be transported, they have to be set up; that is not a question of hours, it is a question of days, perhaps weeks". Other Patriot systems could come thanks to Switzerland, whose defence ministry said on Thursday it was informed by the US defence department that it would "reprioritise the delivery" of five previously ordered systems to support Ukraine. While Ukraine waits for Patriots, a senior Nato official says the alliance is still coordinating the delivery of other military aid — such as ammunition and artillery rounds — which includes briefly paused supplies from the US. The official spoke to AP on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Arpan Rai22 July 2025 05:58 Russia launches major aerial attack on Kyiv hours before talks Russia carried out one of the largest aerial assaults of recent months on Ukraine hours before Britain and Germany chaired a meeting to discuss US president Donald Trump's plans for Nato allies to provide Kyiv with weapons. The drone and missile attack on the capital Kyiv killed two people and wounded 15, including a 12-year-old, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said. A drone struck the entrance to a subway station in the Shevchenkivskyi district where people had taken cover. Videos posted on social media showed the station platform engulfed by smoke, with dozens of people inside. The heaviest strikes hit the city's Darnytskyi district, where a kindergarten, a supermarket and warehouse facilities caught fire. French foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot, who arrived in Kyiv on Monday for talks with Mr Zelensky, visited some of the damaged areas. The assault underscored the urgency of Ukraine's need for further Western military aid, especially to boost air defence, a week after Mr Trump said deliveries would arrive in Ukraine within days. Arpan Rai22 July 2025 05:40 Putin 'open to peace' despite intensifying bombardment of Ukraine Vladimir Putin is open to peace after Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky suggested fresh ceasefire talks, Moscow said. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the Russian president was ready to negotiate, but that Russia remained committed to 'achieving its goals'. It comes after Mr Zelensky offered Moscow another round of peace talks for this week, saying he wanted to speed up ending the conflict, following US president Donald Trump 's 50-day deadline of ceasefire or sanctions. Putin 'open to peace' despite intensifying bombardment of Ukraine At least 57 Russian Iranian-made Shahed drones were launched at Ukraine overnight, according to officials Arpan Rai22 July 2025 05:20 A look at previous talks between Ukraine and Russia to end war Ukraine and Russia held two rounds of talks in Istanbul on 16 May and 2 June that led to the exchange of thousands of prisoners of war and the remains of dead soldiers. But they have made no breakthrough so far towards a ceasefire or a settlement to end almost three and a half years of war. The Kremlin says Ukraine must abandon four regions it insists have been incorporated into Russia. Ukraine has backed US calls for an immediate ceasefire. Moscow says certain arrangements must be put in place before a ceasefire can be introduced. Russian president Vladimir Putin, who is under increasing pressure from US president Donald Trump to show progress towards ending the conflict, turned down a previous challenge from Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky to meet him in person. The growing pressure comes as Mr Trump said last week he would impose new sanctions in 50 days on Russia and countries that buy its exports if there is no deal before then to end the conflict. Russia-Ukraine war: A timeline of peace talks in 3-year quest to end conflict If both Putin and Zelenskyy sit down with each other, it would be a first in the 3-year-old war Arpan Rai22 July 2025 05:09 UK targets 135 Russian 'shadow fleet' tankers with fresh sanctions Britain imposed new sanctions on Russia's so-called "shadow fleet", targeting 135 oil tankers along with two Russian firms, shipping company Intershipping Services LLC and oil trader Litasco Middle East DMCC. The oil tankers are critical to Russia's energy and oil sectors, with the British government saying they form part of the fleet responsible for carrying $24bn worth of cargo since the start of 2024. Foreign minister David Lammy said the new sanctions would further "dismantle" Russian President Vladimir Putin's so-called "shadow fleet and drain Russia's war chest of its critical oil revenues". The government said Intershipping Services LLC is responsible for registering vessels under the Gabonese flag, enabling them to transport up to $10bn worth of goods annually on behalf of the Russian state. Sanctions were also imposed on Litasco Middle East DMCC for its continued role in shipping large volumes of Russian oil, the government said. The Russian embassy in London did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the latest sanctions. Moscow has previously called Western sanctions illegal and said they destabilise global energy markets. On Friday, the European Union agreed an 18th package of sanctions against Russia over its war in Ukraine, including measures aimed at dealing further blows to the Russian oil and energy industry. As part of that, the EU and Britain set out plans to lower the crude oil price cap from $60 per barrel to $47.60 to disrupt Russia's oil revenues. Arpan Rai22 July 2025 04:44 Western defence chiefs hold Ukraine meeting The virtual meeting of high-level military officials yesterday was led by British defence secretary John Healey and his German counterpart Boris Pistorius. US defence secretary Pete Hegseth and Nato leader Mark Rutte, as well as Nato's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Gen Alexus Grynkewich, attended the meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group. Moscow has intensified its long-range attacks on Ukrainian cities, and analysts say the barrages are likely to escalate as Russian drone production expands. Ukraine's new defence minister Denys Shmyhal urged allies to speed up deliveries of American air defence systems under the plan put forward by the US president Donald Trump. "I request the US to make these weapons available for purchase, and our European partners to extend all the needed financing for their procurement," Mr Shmyhal, who until recently served as prime minister, said as the meeting began. At yesterday's meeting, Mr Healey was expected to urge Ukraine's Western partners to launch a "50-day drive" to get Kyiv the weapons it needs to fight Russia's bigger army and force Russian president Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table, the UK government said in a statement. Nato's Grynkewich told The Associated Press on Thursday that "preparations are underway" for weapons transfers to Ukraine while US ambassador to Nato Matthew Whitaker said he couldn't give a time frame. Mr Trump's arms plan, announced a week ago, involves European nations sending American weapons, including Patriot air defence missile systems, to Ukraine via Nato — either from existing stockpiles or buying and donating new ones. In an shift of tone toward Russia, Mr Trump last week gave Moscow a 50-day deadline to agree to a ceasefire or face tougher sanctions. Arpan Rai22 July 2025 04:41 Russia confirms peace talks will take place tomorrow Officials in Russia have said peace talks for Ukraine war will take place in Turkey tomorrow, Russia's state Tass news agency quoted a source. The RIA news agency, also quoting a source, said they would take place over two days, Thursday and Friday. The Kremlin said it was waiting for confirmation of the date of the talks but said the two sides were "diametrically opposed" in their positions on how to end the war. Arpan Rai22 July 2025 04:35 Next set of Ukraine-Russia peace talks planned for tomorrow in Turkey, says Zelensky The next set of peace talks between Ukraine and Russia is planned for tomorrow in Turkey, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky quoted the head of Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council as saying yesterday. "Today I discussed with Rustem Umerov the preparation for a prisoner exchange and another meeting with the Russian side in Turkey," Mr Zelensky said in his nightly video address. "Umerov reported that the meeting is planned for Wednesday. More details will follow tomorrow,' he said.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Putin is living on borrowed time – and this is when the clock stops ticking
Vladimir Putin is living on borrowed time – at least if Donald Trump keeps his word and follows through on the threat he made last week to crash Russia 's economy if there is no ceasefire within 50 days. Over the last three years, 18 announcements of European Union sanctions have failed to make much of an economic dent in the Kremlin's war machine. That is because, despite its rhetoric around support for Ukraine, Europe still keeps the money flooding into Moscow. Russia is still its third-largest supplier of liquefied natural gas (LNG), and it increased its imports from Russia by 25 per cent in 2024. If Trump went ahead and imposed his threatened secondary sanctions on countries importing Russian oil, gas and uranium – a customer list headed by China, India, and the EU itself – then Putin would quickly find himself running out of money. Yet somehow, the Russian leader does not seem to be quaking in his boots. If anything, he seems to be upping the ante. Despite Trump's threats to impose sanctions that could cripple the Russian economy, Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday morning that more than 420 drones and at least 20 missiles, including ballistic missiles, had been fired at cities and communities across Ukraine in waves of intense overnight attacks. While the UK defence secretary John Healey has used a meeting of the European Ukraine Defence Contact Group (UDCG) to back Trump's proposal and pledge that the UK will 'play our full part in its success to bolster Ukraine's immediate fight', Putin clearly does not take Trump's threat remotely seriously. Indeed, Russia's president hasn't deigned to comment on Trump's latest threats at all – and nor has Russia's state-controlled media given Trump's threat any serious airtime. The capital markets also barely twitched after the US president threatened to unleash a global trade war directed at Russia. Trump's sweeping new sanctions would, in theory, deprive the world of the 5 million barrels of oil a day that Russia exports – yet the price of crude did not move an inch. There are three sound reasons why Putin believes that Trump's words are hollow and feels he can confidently call his bluff. One is that Trump has barely implemented any of the punitive tariffs that he has threatened against most of the world over the last six months. An executive order Trump signed in March imposing 25 per cent tariffs on countries importing Venezuelan oil, for instance, has yet to be implemented. Then there's the question of the economic damage to the US itself if Trump actually followed through. Levelling 100 per cent tariffs against China, India, Turkey, Belgium, Spain and other major importers of Russian oil would quickly bring the world economy to a juddering halt. It would also wreck Washington's relationship with Delhi and force India and China into a closer partnership. Cutting off Europe from Russian oil and gas would trigger immediate economic chaos. Finally, actually imposing an effective embargo on Russian oil would take more than 10 per cent of world supply off the markets and precipitate a serious 1973-style price shock that would send energy costs through the roof and pitch the US and Europe into recession. You can see why Putin is hedging that it is inconceivable that Trump would pay that kind of price simply for ending what the American president often describes as 'a war that should never have happened'. Putin may be safe from Trump's secondary sanctions. However, that does not mean that his economy is in good shape. 'The remarkable resurgence the Russian economy has experienced since Putin's invasion of Ukraine is losing momentum,' observes Alexander Kolyandr, a senior fellow at the Centre for European Policy Analysis. 'The party is over.' For the first two years of the war, state spending on the military fuelled a runaway 4.3 per cent GDP growth rate. That's set to fall to a much more modest 1.4 per cent in 2025. For the first time in years, Russia has begun running a fiscal deficit of some 1.5 per cent of GDP. And most seriously of all, global oil prices have fallen a precipitous 35 per cent this year. As a result, Russia's Central Bank is set to print 15 trillion roubles (£142bn) in cash come October – the largest issuance since the hyperinflation of the 1990s, according to internal documents leaked by Ukrainian hackers. By winter, Russia may face a looming inflation shock. Pro-Ukrainian online warriors have gleefully shared videos of Russian holidaymakers sleeping on the floors of airports shut down because of drone threats, and angry passengers complaining that they have missed their onward flight to Venice. Yet interrupted luxury holidays don't really stack up against the near-nightly horrors that ordinary Ukrainians face as Russia steps up the intensity and frequency of its drone attacks. And while Russia's economy may face structural challenges, Russians are still managing to buy more luxury German cars than the Germans are. Car Industry Analysis reports that BMW sold 3,504 of its latest X7 SUVs in Russia in 2024 – compared to 3,323 in Germany. That's despite sanctions, which force importers to go via former Soviet neighbours, bumping the price to Russian consumers from $87,000 (£64,000) to $170,000 (£126,000). Putin, evidently, remains set on pursuing his obsession with subjugating Ukraine, apparently at any cost. This spring, Trump brusquely railroaded Zelensky into dropping most of Kyiv's red lines in pursuit of a ceasefire deal that would effectively have left Putin in undisputed control of the 22 per cent of Ukrainian territory he has already occupied. But Putin rejected that peace deal and still continued to demand regime change in Kyiv, plus a promise that Ukraine would never join Nato and restrictions on the size of the country's army. The polls suggest that the number of ordinary Russians who agree with their leader's dogged obsession is dwindling. According to a study by Levada, Russia's last independent pollster, in June, 64 per cent of respondents favoured peace talks, which is six percentage points up since March. At the same time, the number of people who wanted the war to continue fell to 28 per cent, down from 34 per cent in March. While there has been little to no sign of popular discontent with the regime, there is evidence that infighting among Russia's elites over cash flow and state resources is intensifying. Earlier this month, recently sacked minister of transport Roman Starovoit shot himself, becoming the latest high-ranking Russian to die in suspicious circumstances. A number of prominent individuals, including government officials, military officers and prominent businessmen, have now died in suspicious circumstances since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For the time being, as long as the oil and gas money continues coming in, Putin faces no serious opposition to his rule. But it's also clear that there is no way that Russia can achieve the military and political subjugation of Ukraine of which Putin dreams. The war has been a colossal strategic mistake for Russia, objectively weakening its geopolitical position and costing hundreds of thousands of lives. Trump's 50-day ticking clock may be a transparent bluff. But it is clear that Washington is losing patience with Putin's stalling, and is ready to tighten the economic screws in small ways – even if the economic nuclear bomb that is secondary sanctions remains a boastful fantasy. This means that Putin's room for manoeuvre is shrinking, and the time he has left to bring the war to an end is running out. Crucially, Trump is willing to permit the Kremlin to keep its territorial winnings, which will in turn allow Putin to claim a kind of victory even as the majority of Ukraine remains independent and free. And it will mean that Trump, for all his flaws, might make good on his promise to end the war, if not in 24 hours, then at least within the first year of his presidency. Putin, meanwhile, must decide how much more blood is to be shed before he cuts his losses.
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Oligarchs living in fear as Putin purges take bloody toll
Dead by suicide. Detained on a private jet. Sentenced to more than a decade in prison. It has long been a cut-throat world for the Russian elite, but the recent spate of blood-letting – both literal and figurative – has shocked serving and former government officials, who spoke with The Telegraph anonymously amid fear of reprisals. People who might once have been seen as untouchable, either through their political connections or loyalty to Vladimir Putin, have found themselves out of favour, out of office and, on occasion, falling out of windows. The war in Ukraine has upended the status quo, with the Kremlin nationalising businesses to plug its coffers while corporate 'raiders' compete ever more violently for a shrinking piece of the pie. 'It all looks horrifying,' said a former official from the Russian presidential administration. 'If you look at the recent arrest of top state company executives, the mysterious deaths, people in government and politics are, pardon my French, s----ing themselves.' In July alone, Andrei Badalov, the vice-president of state-owned pipeline company Transneft, fell to his death from a balcony at his home. A former deputy defence minister was sentenced to 13 years imprisonment on charges of corruption, only for a fellow military official to go down for 17. Meanwhile, state security drove the nationalisation of the country's largest airport, taking it from the hands of owners with dual citizenship, while the Bombardier jet of billionaire gold tycoon Konstantin Strukov was boarded to prevent him from fleeing the country.
