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The Guardian
4 days ago
- General
- The Guardian
Ukraine war live: deadly Russian attacks continue after Turkey peace talks end with no significant breakthrough
Update: Date: 2025-06-03T07:50:26.000Z Title: Deadly Russian attacks continue after Turkey peace talks end with no significant breakthrough Content: Welcome back to our live coverage of Russia's war on Ukraine. Russian shelling killed at least five people on Monday in different frontline areas of eastern Ukraine, officials said. One death was in the city of Kramatorsk, where two others were injured; and two deaths were further south in the town of Illinivka where another three were injured. In the Kharkiv region, further to the north, prosecutors said two women were killed in a village south of Kupiansk, which has come under heavy Russian attack for months. The attacks came as a second round of peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv ended yesterday in Istanbul without a significant breakthrough – only a deal to swap more prisoners of war. An agreement had been made to return the remains of killed service personnel, but this would take careful preparation, said Ukrainian negotiators. Russia proposed a ceasefire of two or three days in some areas of the frontline to allow the Russian army to collect the many bodies it has left lying on the battlefield. Ukrainian officials said the Russians rejected Kyiv's call for an unconditional ceasefire of at least a month, instead handing over a proposal that would need to be studied by Kyiv. The Ukrainians suggested the talks should reconvene towards the end of June.
Telegraph
29-05-2025
- General
- Telegraph
Ukraine struggles to solve unprecedented PoW problem
When Maksym Kolesnikov returned from almost a year in a Russian prison camp, 32kg lighter than he was before, the first things he wanted were warm socks and fried chicken. Captured in March 2022 while defending Kyiv, Mr Kolesnikov endured relentless horrors at the hands of Russian soldiers. The Ukrainian was tortured with electric shocks and beaten, his knee shattered. He was starved and became emaciated. In the biting cold, Mr Kolesnikov wore the same clothes he was captured in, the same thin socks on his frozen feet. But none of this compared with the psychological horror. 'In Russian captivity, you are never safe,' Mr Kolesnikov said. 'At any moment, they can beat or torture you. You eat badly, you sleep badly, you know that they can do what they want because they don't see you as a human being.' At home, when he was finally reunited with his family, Mr Kolesnikov said: 'People saw the human in me again.' But gallstone disease, muscle atrophy, chronic fatigue, contusions and a shattered knee were just some of the scars that followed him and his fellow captives home from months of hell. The 1,000 Ukrainian prisoners of war exchanged last week for the same number of Russians will confront the same challenges. 'It's a situation of such long-term stress,' Mr Kolesnikov said of being a prisoner. 'When you come back, you're a different person.' The largest exchange in the war to date saw a staggered release of hundreds of flag-donning Ukrainian captives from Friday through to Sunday. Some of the prisoners have spent as long as three years in Russian jails. But once the cameras stopped filming the tearful reunions, the former captives were left to return to normal life. The initial gruelling stages of physical and psychological rehabilitation will take place at military hospitals and sanatoriums across the country. But reintegrating into civilian society will be even more complex. Ivona Kostyna, the chairman and co-founder of the NGO Veteran Hub, said an overarching national strategy for veterans and prisoners of war is not there. She said that veteran reintegration in Ukraine is posing an unprecedented public health challenge. Many veterans, especially former prisoners of war, will return with complex health needs and may struggle to adapt to the workplace or rediscover their place in the community. Veteran Hub provides free legal, psychological, educational and employment support to veterans and their families, which would be impossible without the help of NGOs. The charity began in 2016, when it was becoming clear that veterans returning from the war in eastern Ukraine were struggling. 'When we started, we didn't even have a vocabulary for veteran reintegration,' Ms Kostyna explained. At the start of the full-scale invasion, Veteran Hub was forced to dramatically upscale. With funding rescinded from the US this year, it is under huge strain and fears that the Ukrainian authorities will not pick up the mantle of its work. 'We are just a patch on a broken system. The only reason we exist is because the system doesn't work,' Ms Kostyna said. Ukraine's veteran reintegration effort has never been done on such a large scale. Today, Ukraine has 1.2 million registered veterans, but official projections say the figure will rise to between five and six million in Ukraine's 40-million population after the war is over. This means that veterans could account for 15 per cent of Ukraine's population. Many will struggle to find stable employment or opportunities for retraining. Some will have sustained permanently disabling injuries and carry a heavy psychological burden, which threatens to destabilise themselves and their families. 'Most of the data we have [on veteran reintegration] is from Western societies, where a smaller number of people have been sent overseas to fight and then they have come back to a peaceful society,' Ms Kostyna explained. 'In our case, you go to war, you come back home, and you're still at war. For some people, you're from the occupied territories, and you also no longer have a home.' 'Foundation of national security' Ukraine draws heavily from its reserve of veterans because they are skilled and require less training than newcomers. Ms Kostyna estimated that up to 70 per cent of Ukrainian veterans could stay in the reserve. 'Veterans are the foundation of national security,' she said. 'But we understand that this means veterans are never fully going back to civilian life.' 'So you have this disparity between a civilian who has never served, and a veteran who has served two or three times, maybe over 20 years. And that veteran has never had time to commit to civilian life, so they will have a much lower well-being,' Kostyna said. 'The challenge here in Ukraine is that we are becoming a country of veterans. We have already been fighting for 11 years. We could be fighting forever, for whoever knows how many more years, how many more iterations of war.' To tackle the lack of employment opportunities, the government established a fund for entrepreneurship among returning veterans and their spouses. Veteran-run businesses can be found dotted around cities in Ukraine, such as Veterano, a lucrative franchise of war-themed pizzerias and cafes founded and run by veteran pizza chefs, and TYTANOVI coffee, a cafe which hires veterans with prosthetics as baristas. Oleksandr Manchenko, 40, built the Ola Dance Studio with the help of his wife, a fellow dancer who he met via TikTok while he was serving on the front line. Alongside their usual operations, the studio in central Kyiv runs dance classes for other veterans to help them rehabilitate when they return from combat. 'We had one guy who was here, and for a time, when he came back, he just wanted to kill everyone,' says Mr Manchenko. 'After about a month and a half with us, it was clear that his thinking had changed and that period of his life was over.' For Mr Manchenko, this is proof that the best form of recovery is community. 'It was difficult for me, coming home. I had PTSD, and it took some time to become used to normal things. From time to time, things I didn't understand happened, and I became full of anger and hatred. But things got better when I made the decision to start dancing and talking again.' With funding granted for fewer than 600 veteran-owned businesses as of last year, entrepreneurship may be little more than a cosmetic fix for the scale of economic and social disadvantage felt by soldiers. Without a structure to help them cope in the long term with persistent health complaints from traumatic brain injury or other common disabilities, as well as repeated psychological trauma, the effects of unsuccessful reintegration could be felt for decades. Mr Kolesnikov, now back to a healthy weight, works for a defence tech company to feel 'closer to the military community'. Though there are still difficulties – while holidaying abroad, he was paralysed with fear at the sound of a plane because of its similarity to an FPV drone – being close to his former combatants helps. 'The other day, four guys from my battalion went to get a coffee in Kyiv, and we all had the same thought at the same time,' he said. 'Kyiv is still free, and this is our impact... it was our fight.'
Al Arabiya
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Al Arabiya
Russia says it has swapped 307 prisoners of war with Ukraine
Russia and Ukraine have swapped 307 prisoners of war with each other, the Russian defense ministry said on Saturday. The exchange will continue, the ministry said.
NHK
23-05-2025
- Politics
- NHK
Russia, Ukraine acknowledge receipt of POW lists for major prisoner swap
Russia and Ukraine say they have received lists of prisoners of war for a major exchange agreed between the two countries earlier this month. The two sides agreed during high-level direct talks in Istanbul, Turkey, on May 16 to exchange 1,000 POWs each in the near future. The receipt of the lists by both countries was revealed on Thursday by Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Zelenskyy said the prisoner swap "was perhaps the only tangible result of the meeting in Turkey." He added, "We are working to ensure that this result is achieved." He stressed that the return of all Ukrainian troops from Russian captivity is one of Ukraine's key objectives. Zelenskyy also said officials are working to ensure the next meeting with Russia takes place as soon as possible, and reiterated his call for global pressure on the country to agree to a ceasefire. The Wall Street Journal reported that Russia and Ukraine are expected to start their next round of talks in mid-June in the Vatican.
Reuters
17-05-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
Russia demanded Kyiv pull back troops before ceasefire, Ukrainian source says
ISTANBUL, May 17 (Reuters) - Russian negotiators at peace talks in Istanbul demanded Ukraine pull its troops out of all the Ukrainian regions claimed by Moscow before they would agree to a ceasefire, a senior Ukrainian official familiar with the talks told Reuters. The Kremlin declined to comment on the terms that Russia had put forward at Friday's meeting in Turkey - the first time the warring sides had held face-to-face talks since March 2022, weeks after Russia's full-scale invasion. The talks lasted only one hour and 40 minutes, and yielded an agreement to trade 1,000 prisoners of war on each side. The two countries have not specified when that will happen. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called on Saturday for stronger sanctions on Moscow after a Russian drone killed nine bus passengers in the Sumy region of northeastern Ukraine. "This was a deliberate killing of civilians," he said. "Pressure must be exerted on Russia to stop the killings. Without tougher sanctions, without stronger pressure, Russia will not seek real diplomacy." Russia, which denies targeting civilians, said it struck a military target in Sumy. Its defence ministry said Russian troops had captured another settlement in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine and Western governments, including the U.S., have demanded that Russia agree to an immediate, unconditional ceasefire lasting at least 30 days. But the Ukrainian source said Moscow's negotiators had demanded the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, with a ceasefire to take place only after that. The source said that and other demands went beyond the terms of a draft peace deal that the United States proposed last month after consultations with Moscow. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on the Ukrainian account, saying talks should be conducted "absolutely behind closed doors". He said the next steps would be to carry out the prisoner exchange and conduct further work between the two sides. Peskov said it was possible that President Vladimir Putin could meet Zelenskiy, but only if "certain agreements" were reached, which he did not specify. Zelenskiy had challenged Putin earlier in the week to meet him in person, an offer the Russian leader ignored. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said his country, after hosting the talks, was determined to continue its mediation role. Both Ukraine and Russia are under pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to end what he calls "this stupid war". He has threatened to abandon U.S. efforts to broker an agreement unless they demonstrate clear progress. After Friday's meeting, Ukraine began rallying support from its allies to take tougher action against Moscow. British Foreign Secretary David Lammy told Reuters: "Yet again we are seeing obfuscation on the Russian side and unwillingness to get serious about the enduring peace that is now required in Ukraine." "Once again Russia is not serious," he said during a visit to Pakistan. "At what point do we say to Putin enough is enough?" French President Emmanuel Macron also said the talks in Istanbul had been fruitless. "Today, what do we have? Nothing. And so I tell you, faced with President Putin's cynicism, I am sure that President Trump, mindful of the credibility of the United States, will react." European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU was working on a new package of sanctions against Moscow, which France said this week should aim to "suffocate" the Russian economy. But after ratcheting up sanctions for more than three years already, it is unclear how much more they can achieve. In their efforts to forge a united front and make Putin accept a ceasefire, Ukrainian and its European leaders have been repeatedly thrown off balance by interventions from Trump. Having publicly told Zelenskiy to accept Russia's offer of direct talks in Turkey, Trump declared on the eve of the meeting that there could be no movement on peace until he had met with Putin. The Kremlin says Putin is ready to meet Trump, but such a summit must be carefully prepared in order to get results. It said there been no contact between Russia and the U.S. since Friday's talks.
