Summary of the day
It’s nearly midnight in Kyiv, 1pm in Moscow and 5pm in Washington. Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned world leaders “against trusting [Vladimir] Putin’s claims of readiness to end the war”. He called for the US to agree a “plan to stop Putin” before any negotiations, a day after Trump said he and the Russian leader had agreed to begin negotiations to broker a ceasefire in Ukraine.
US president Donald Trump insisted he believed Putin “wants peace”. “I think he would tell me if he didn’t,” Trump said on Thursday, adding that Ukraine will be “part of” negotiations. Trump also said he would “love” to see Russia return to the G7.
Trump’s defense secretary Pete Hegseth said “everything is on the table” to bring peace to Ukraine, and insisted the US had not already given too much away when he had said on Wednesday that Ukraine could not restore its pre-2014 borders.
The Kremlin said plans were under way for Putin and Trump to meet, possibly in Saudi Arabia. Ukraine would be in “one way or another” involved in talks, it said, but there would also be a “bilateral Russian-American track”.
Trump’s announcement on Wednesday stunned Ukraine and European allies. Zelenskyy, who also spoke to Trump on Wednesday, said it was “not very pleasant” that Trump called Putin before calling him.
Nato secretary general Mark Rutte said any peace deal in Ukraine must be enduring and that any discussions must include Kyiv. “It is crucial that whatever comes out of those talks, it is durable, it is enduring,” Rutte told reporters in Brussels ahead of talks with the alliance’s defence ministers.
German chancellor Olaf Scholz rejected any “dictated peace”, arguing that “a Russian victory or a Ukrainian collapse will not lead to peace - on the contrary”. “This would put peace and stability in Europe at risk, far beyond Ukraine,” he said.
The EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas accused Washington of “appeasement” towards Russia, insisting that no deal “behind our backs” could work. “You need the Europeans, you need the Ukrainians, she said. “Any quick fix is a dirty deal.”
At least 30 people were injured after a24-year-old Afghan asylum seeker drove a car into a trade union demonstration in Munich, German police have said, in a suspected attack that is expected to inflame tensions before this month’s election.
Away from the Ukraine war, the US has just announced it has released a Russian cybercriminal as part of an exchange that saw an American schoolteacher freed from Russian prison earlier this week.
The Trump administration has released Alexander Vinnik, a cybercriminal who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money-laundering, to Russia, after Moscow released Marc Fogel on Tuesday.
Vinnik, who arrived in Moscow on a flight from Turkey on Tuesday after having been released from custody in California, is accused of owning and operating one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, BTC-e, which prosecutors allege facilitated the transfer of billions of dollars in transactions for criminals worldwide.
