Ukraine war latest: Zelensky sends delegation to Turkey, as peace talks with Russia are expected on May 16
Key developments on May 15:
Zelensky sends Ukrainian delegation to Istanbul, as peace talks with Russia are expected on May 16
Trump expects no progress in Russia-Ukraine peace talks until he meets Putin
Pro-Ukraine partisans sabotage railway track near Russia's Smolensk
Ukraine shows its latest 'ship-killer' Magura drone series to the public for the first time
US proposes reviving NATO-Russia Council, Bloomberg reports
President Volodymyr Zelensky announced during a press conference on May 15 that he will not personally participate in the upcoming negotiations with Russia in Istanbul, instead sending a Ukrainian delegation led by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov.
Speaking in Ankara, Zelensky clarified that Ukraine's delegation would not include the head of the General Staff, and the head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), as it was previously suggested.
Among other members of Ukraine's delegation are First Deputy Foreign Minister Serhiy Kyslytsya, Deputy SBU Chief Oleksandr Poklad, Military Intelligence Deputy Head Vadym Skibitskyi, as well as other national security and intelligence officials. The delegation will engage with representatives from Turkey, the United States, and Russia.
Agreeing on a ceasefire, according to Zelensky, remains a key priority.
"Out of respect for President Trump, the high level of the Turkish delegation, and President Erdogan, and since we want to try to achieve at least the first steps toward de-escalation, an end to the war – namely a ceasefire – I have decided to send our delegation to Istanbul," Zelensky said.
After Moscow proposed to hold peace talks in Turkey this week, Zelensky agreed and invited Russian President Vladimir Putin for a face-to-face meeting. The Russian leader declined to attend and appointed his aide, Vladimir Medinsky, to lead the talks.
"We see that they, unfortunately, are very unserious about real negotiations. So far, we do not see any real decision-makers among those present," Zelensky said at the press conference.
Zelensky said that, under the current circumstances, he sees no reason for his or certain other top officials' presence in Istanbul, given that Putin declined to attend.
Read also: 'It's a mess' — after all the hype, Ukraine-Russia peace talks in Istanbul descend into name-calling shambles
U.S. President Donald Trump said on May 15 that peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine will not move forward until he meets Russian President Vladimir Putin, Reuters reported.
"Nothing's going to happen until Putin and I get together," the U.S. president told journalists aboard Air Force One before landing in Dubai as part of his Middle Eastern tour.
Trump has previously suggested he might join the talks on May 16 if progress is made, but downplayed Putin's absence on the first day of the negotiations, saying, "Why would he go if I'm not going?"
Later on May 15, U.S. State Secretary Marco Rubio said peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Turkey are unlikely to yield meaningful progress, calling the low-level Russian delegation "not indicative of one that's going to lead to a major breakthrough."
"I hope I'm wrong. I hope I'm 100% wrong. I hope tomorrow the news says they've agreed to a ceasefire, they've agreed to enter serious negotiations," Rubio told reporters during a briefing in Ankara. "But I'm just giving you my assessment."
Rubio said that meaningful progress would likely only come through a meeting between Trump and Putin.
"The next thing that has to happen for there to be a breakthrough is going to involve President Trump's direct involvement," Rubio said. "And I believe the president shares my assessment."
Rubio also said he would meet with Ukraine's senior delegation and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, while other lower-level members of the U.S. team will attend the talks involving Russian representatives.
He added that Trump is "impatient to end this war," saying, 'Our goal here is to achieve peace — whether that begins with a 30-day ceasefire, a one-day ceasefire, or a final deal that's all negotiated in a single day. To us, the process is less important than the outcome.'
Join our community Support independent journalism in Ukraine. Join us in this fight. Support Us
Members of Ukraine's Atesh partisan group have set fire to a relay cabinet at a Russian railway track used by the Russian military, the group said on May 15.
The operation was allegedly carried out in Russia's Smolensk Oblast, a western region bordering Belarus, to disrupt arms and equipment shipments to Russian forces stationed at Ukraine's northeastern border.
The Ukrainian leadership has warned that Moscow is amassing forces near Ukraine's Sumy and Kharkiv oblasts in the northeast for a potential new offensive.
"Thanks for the courageous steps by our partisans, Russia faced serious disruption in timely deliveries of front-line supplies," Atesh said on Telegram.
A video shared by the partisans shows an unknown person behind the camera setting fire to the relay cabinet at night. According to the partisans, the targeted equipment was located close to the city of Smolensk, some 270 kilometers (170 miles) north of the Russia-Ukraine border.
The Kyiv Independent could not verify the claims.
Read also: Putin appoints Russian Ground Forces Commander Saliukov to Security Council role
Ukraine's military intelligence (HUR) on May 14 for the first time presented its latest versatile Magura naval drones to the public.
The Magura drones, as well as the Sea Baby drones of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), have been pivotal in turning the tide of the war in the Black Sea, destroying or damaging multiple Russian ships and other assets.
HUR's Group 13 has deployed Magura drones to successfully hit 17 naval and aerial Russian targets. Fifteen of them, including two Mi-8 helicopters, two Su-30 fighter jets, and theSergey Kotov, Ivanovets, and Ceasar Kunikov warships of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, have been destroyed, the agency said.
Several variants of the Magura drones exist, including the "ship-killer" V5, the V7 capable of carrying machine guns or anti-air missiles, and the multi-platform V6P.
As of 2024, Ukraine was reportedly able to destroy or disable one-third of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in a drone and missile campaign, despite Moscow's significant advantage in sheer naval power.
Black Sea hostilities have since then quieted down as Russia moved most of its naval assets from occupied Crimea further east and Ukraine managed to resume its maritime shipping.
Read also: Norway to complete F-16 deliveries to Ukraine by end of 2025, minister says
The United States is proposing to revive the NATO-Russia Council as part of a broader American plan to end the war in Ukraine, Bloomberg reported on May 15, citing unnamed sources.
In April, Axios reported that U.S. President Donald Trump's peace plan also included Washington's de jure recognition of Russia's control over occupied Crimea, along with de facto recognition of its occupation of other Ukrainian territories, offering sanctions relief, and freezing the war along current front lines.
The proposal to revive the NATO-Russia Council, a forum for military and political dialogue frozen since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, is a new part added to the American proposal, according to Bloomberg.
The NATO-Russia Council (NRC) was created in 2002 to promote cooperation and dialogue between NATO and Russia. Originally designed as a forum where NATO members and Russia could work as equal partners on shared security issues, the NRC has not convened since January 2022.
While formal cooperation was suspended after Russia's 2014 illegal annexation of Crimea, the council remained a key channel for communication, primarily on Ukraine, until ties were effectively severed following the 2022 invasion.
Ukraine War Latest is put together by the Kyiv Independent news desk team, who keep you informed 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you value our work and want to ensure we have the resources to continue, join the Kyiv Independent community.
We've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
16 minutes ago
A top Taliban official offers amnesty to Afghans who fled the country and urges them to return
A top Taliban official said on Saturday that all Afghans who fled the country after the collapse of the former Western-backed government are free to return home, promising they would not be harmed if they come back. Taliban Prime Minister Mohammad Hassan Akhund made the amnesty offer in his message for the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha, also known as the 'Feast of Sacrifice.' The offer comes days after U.S. President Donald Trump announced a sweeping travel ban on 12 countries, including Afghanistan. The measure largely bars Afghans hoping to resettle in the United States permanently as well as those hoping to go to the U.S. temporarily, such as for university study. Trump also suspended a core refugee program in January, all but ending support for Afghans who had allied with the U.S. and leaving tens of thousands of them stranded. Afghans in neighboring Pakistan who are awaiting resettlement are also dealing with a deportation drive by the Islamabad government to get them out of the country. Almost a million have left Pakistan since October 2023 to avoid arrest and expulsion. Akhund's holiday message was posted on the social platform X. 'Afghans who have left the country should return to their homeland,' he said. 'Nobody will harm them." "Come back to your ancestral land and live in an atmosphere of peace,' he added, and instructed officials to properly manage services for returning refugees and to ensure they were given shelter and support. He also used the occasion to criticize the media for making what he said were 'false judgements' about Afghanistan's Taliban rulers and their policies. 'We must not allow the torch of the Islamic system to be extinguished,' he said. 'The media should avoid false judgments and should not minimize the accomplishments of the system. While challenges exist, we must remain vigilant.' The Taliban swept into the capital Kabul and seized most of Afghanistan in a blitz in mid-August 2021 as the U.S. and NATO forces were in the last weeks of their pullout from the country after 20 years of war. The offensive prompted a mass exodus, with tens of thousands of Afghans thronging the airport in chaotic scenes, hoping for a flight out on the U.S. military airlift. People also fled across the border, to neighboring Iran and Pakistan. campaign against the Taliban.
Politico
16 minutes ago
- Politico
Graham wants to punish Russia with ‘bone-crushing' sanctions. It could backfire.
Sen. Lindsey Graham has pledged that his expansive sanctions bill would be 'bone crushing' for the Russian economy. But if enacted, the South Carolina Republican's proposal to impose 500 percent tariffs on any country that buys Russian energy would effectively cut the U.S. off from some of the world's largest economies — including allies in Europe. 'A 500 percent tariff is essentially a hard decoupling,' said Kevin Book, managing director of Clear View Energy Partners, an energy research firm. Graham appeared to acknowledge as much on Wednesday, when he proposed a broad carve-out for countries that provide aid to Ukraine. This exemption would spare the European Union, which continues to import almost 20 percent of its gas from Russia. But experts remain skeptical that the sky-high tariffs proposed in the Sanctioning Russia Act are in any way feasible. India and China buy roughly 70 percent of Russian energy exports, but several other countries that buy any oil, gas or uranium from Moscow — and aren't included in the carve-out — could also be exposed to tariffs under the bill. The United States, which is still reliant on imports of enriched uranium from Russia to fuel its nuclear reactors, could also run afoul of the bill. Edward Fishman, a senior researcher with the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, said countries in the crosshairs of the bill would struggle to halt their imports of Russian energy overnight. Tariffs of 500 percent on imports of goods made in China would send prices soaring, disrupt supply chains and could drive up U.S. unemployment to recessionary levels. Most likely, it would lead to a screeching halt in U.S. trade with China. 'It would hurt Americans quite a bit,' Fishman said. The legislation's goal, co-sponsored by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), is to starve Russia's war economy, which continues to earn hundreds of billions of dollars from energy exports. There is widespread support for the overall objective, with 82 senators signing on to Graham's bill so far, and growing support for a companion bill in the House. The bill is likely to change significantly as it moves through Congress and in consultations with the Trump administration, said Matt Zweig, senior policy director of FDD Action, a nonprofit advocacy organization affiliated with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. It may also take a long time. 'With sanctions legislation, you're also normally dealing with iterative processes where you would want to go through every nook and cranny,' Zweig said. Still, the widespread bipartisan support for the legislation suggests there is a high degree of support among lawmakers for tougher action on Russia. 'What Congress may be doing is pressuring the executive branch to act,' said Adam Smith, a partner at the law firm Gibson Dunn. 'There is a sense in the Senate that more sanctions on Russia need to be imposed, or ought to be imposed,' added Smith, who was a senior adviser to the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control during the Obama administration. Graham, the bill's most vocal Republican advocate, said as much in a meeting with reporters in Paris over the weekend, where he described the bill as 'one of the most draconian sanctions bills ever written.' 'The Senate is pissed that Russia is playing a game at our expense and the world's expense. And we are willing to do something we haven't been willing to do before — and that is go after people that have been helping Putin,' Graham said. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, dismissed concerns that the bill is too harsh. 'We need to make Putin understand he has to stop screwing around and come to the table. But we also need to follow it up and make clear we will be tough,' she said. Not everyone agrees. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who has long been skeptical about the effectiveness of sanctions to change the behavior of U.S. adversaries, bashed the bill on Monday as 'literally the most ill-conceived bill I've ever seen in Washington,' he said. 'It would be a worldwide embargo on 36 countries.' Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine have made little progress on peace talks. Officials from both countries met in Istanbul on Monday and agreed to a further prisoner swap, but failed to achieve any major breakthroughs. Graham and Blumenthal visited Ukraine, France and Germany during last week's congressional recess, where they discussed the sanctions bill, as well as efforts to push Russia to the negotiating table. The proposal has been welcomed by European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen, who met with Graham in Berlin on Monday. 'Pressure works, as the Kremlin understands nothing else,' Von der Leyen said in a statement. 'These steps, taken together with U.S. measures, would sharply increase the joint impact of our sanctions.' Senate Majority Leader John Thune indicated Monday that the chamber could take up the legislation later this month. Republican senators have said they would like to secure the approval of the White House before moving forward. The proposed use of blanket tariffs to target countries that continue to do business with Russia's energy sector is novel and appears to be pitched to Trump's interests. On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump viewed sanctions as 'a tool in his toolbox,' but declined to comment about his position on the bill. Trump appeared to be inching closer toward supporting the bill in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, which linked to an op-ed in The Washington Post supporting the legislation. Speaking in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump indicated he wanted lawmakers to secure his approval before moving forward with the bill. 'They're waiting for me to decide on what to do,' he said, describing the legislation as a 'harsh bill.' The president has liberally wielded tariffs to advance his foreign policy agenda, but his implementation has been spotty. Wall Street has even adopted a trading strategy referencing Trump's capriciousness called TACO, which stands for 'Trump Always Chickens Out.' Tariffs of 145 percent on China, imposed in April, lasted a month before being dramatically scaled back to make way for trade talks, which have so far failed to secure a breakthrough. As it stands, the bill includes some levers that Trump could pull to forestall the tariffs, requiring the president to make a formal determination that Russia is refusing to negotiate or has violated any future peace agreement. Nahal Toosi, Joshua Berlinger, Phelim Kine and Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.
Yahoo
16 minutes ago
- Yahoo
The West tried to make North Korea a pariah – but it's never been stronger
Kim Jong-un sits captivated. Leaning forward with binoculars raised, the North Korean dictator watches tanks manoeuvring over sandy terrain and troops rappelling down from helicopters. Occasionally, he turns to one of the uniformed officers behind him to point something out or ask a question. The scene, captured on video and shared by North Korea's state media last month, offered a rare glimpse into the secretive regime's expanding military capabilities. The isolated country, known for its intensely authoritarian regime, boasts the world's fourth-largest military, with nearly 1.3 million troops. It also has 50 nuclear warheads, with plans to build 150 more by 2027. A recent assessment from the US department of defence found North Korea had reached its 'strongest strategic position' in decades. 'North Korea has never been as strong – strong militarily as well as strong in oppressing its civilian population – as it is right now,' said Joanna Hosaniak, deputy director general of the Citizens' Alliance for North Korean Human Rights. This is, in part, thanks to a new mutual defence treaty signed between North Korea and Russia in November last year. But it is also down to its increasing ability to source foreign income through hacking and forced labour, despite Western sanctions, as it wages an information war against its enemies and its own population. Taken together, these three factors are allowing North Korea quietly to transform itself. Since striking a deal with Russia, North Korea has supplied Moscow with 15,000 soldiers, 100 ballistic missiles and millions of munitions to help Moscow wage war against Ukraine. In return, the Kremlin allowed Pyongyang to have its pick of sophisticated hardware – a huge boost for a regime that commands predominantly outdated, Soviet-era weaponry. While North Korea still has a long way to go in terms of upgrading all of its inventory, the newly strengthened ties with Moscow have reinforced the regime's strength and power. With a defence budget less than one per cent the size of China's, North Korea has had to choose between conventional and nuclear weapons. Kim has largely sided with the nuclear program. Earlier this year, a new intercontinental ballistic missile site was detected near Pyongyang where Kim's 'Winter Palace' once stood, marking the latest developments in the country's nuclear progress. Expanding these capabilities has allowed North Korea to create an effective deterrent against the US, especially in case of any future conflict with South Korea, but it has done this at the expense of upgrading conventional weapons like tanks, warships and fighter jets. 'North Korea has a lot of conventional military power – lots of troops, lots of tanks, but the aircraft are 1950s era,' said Michael Cohen, an associate professor at the Australian National University. 'I suspect Tom Cruise has had more time flying them than the North Korean pilots.' A year before Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed their defence treaty, Kim visited a rocket launch pad at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in far eastern Russia. Leonid Petrov, a leading North Korea expert and dean of the International College of Management in Australia, described the visit as a 'shopping trip' for Kim as he 'named the price for sending North Korean troops and conventional armaments' to Russia. North Korea has since received an unspecified number of short-range air-defence systems and 'advanced electronic warfare systems including jamming equipment' from Russia since the visit, according to South Korea's Yonhap News Agency. Pyongyang has also recently shown off a number of new weapons that closely resemble Russian arms, including a supersonic cruise missile, drones, and a new fighter jet. Satellite images have also shown a rapid expansion of North Korea's drone programme. A report from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies said that North Korea was 'likely incorporating Russian battlefield experience' as it enhanced its drone capabilities. 'North Korea is now getting unlimited access to Russian natural resources, technology, military and ideological support,' said Dr Petrov. North Korea is subject to dozens of sanctions, imposed by the United Nations, the European Union and governments including the United Kingdom, which aim to cut off Pyongyang from the international banking system as well as arms sales. While Russia has become an increasingly important partner in circumventing these restrictions, Pyongyang's relationship with China has also helped keep it afloat. Beijing is believed to have provided Pyongyang with military and nuclear expertise and a huge chunk of its foreign currency. 'China has been bankrolling the North Korean regime for a long time. About 95% of North Korean trade was with China for decades,' said Dr Petrov. Ms Hosaniak explained that North Korea is able to produce commercial goods domestically at a very cheap rate in forced labour camps, then sell them to the international market through China. She said: 'These goods can be sold in the EU, the UK…There are no restrictions, as long as the labels say 'Made in China', although the goods were produced in North Korea.' Companies facilitating this trade almost always need to have state backing to do so. 'In order to trade with North Korea you have to have an official North Korean trading partner so this is really a government-to-government kind of business that is operated by so-called private businesses,' Ms Hosaniak said. Beyond commercial ties with China, the North Korean regime has also brought in cash through cyber theft, especially from overseas workers. Local news outlet Daily NK reported that dozens of researchers from North Korea had been sent to China and Southeast Asia earlier this year to carry out attacks against cryptocurrency exchanges, engage in illegal cryptocurrency mining and target network firewalls. Pyongyang was also revealed to be carrying out an illegal scheme known as 'laptop farming', in which dozens of laptops in the US were being remotely controlled by thousands of North Koreans using stolen identities. Through these increasingly refined schemes, North Korean hackers have stolen an estimated $6 billion (£4.4 billion) in cryptocurrency, according to analysis firm Chainalysis. As Kim expands his country's defence and revenue streams, he also has to contend with a population of over 25 million people. The most effective way of doing this is to wage a full blown information war. 'The more information that North Koreans get, the more they would know that their government isn't being entirely truthful and life perhaps is better on the other side,' said Shreyas Reddy, the lead correspondent at local outlet NK News. Before the advent of the internet, it was significantly easier to do this, but now Pyongyang has had to develop its own technology and enforce new, draconian laws. A key way that outside information has entered the country was through USB sticks and CDs. These contain a wide variety of media, from South Korean media to much more sensitive information about human rights and politics. The COVID-19 pandemic dealt a major blow to these efforts, as North Korea shut its borders and erected an electric fence between it and China. A new law introduced in 2020 also increased the punishment for anyone caught consuming or sharing foreign media and in 2023, Kim outlawed common South Korean phrases and made it illegal to speak in a South Korean accent. 'Videos smuggled out of North Korea show people being punished severely for these sorts of incidents and we've heard unverified reports about executions or other permanent punishments for watching or accessing foreign culture,' said Mr Reddy. The constant evolution of censorship and propaganda efforts have allowed Kim to retain an upper hand in the long-standing information war upon which his reign depends. Most experts agree that North Korea will continue on the same trajectory. Kim is only 41 years old and has put in place numerous mechanisms to ensure that his grip on power remains ironclad, while also posing a major threat to enemies abroad. His newly cemented partnership with Russia, forged from shared isolation, is the latest of these efforts. 'Politically, economically, militarily, it makes them stronger,' said Dr Petrov. 'Both need this alliance. It's a mutually beneficial symbiosis of dictatorial regimes, which have been at war with their neighbours for many years.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
