Russia-Ukraine war updates: Trump tells Ukraine to talk with Putin ‘now’

Before you leave, you can read more on Ukraine’s response to Russia’s offer for talks here.

Go here to read on European leaders’ talks with President Zelenskyy in an attempt to put pressure on Russia for a truce.

Some experts believe Russia wants to fight on for months in the war in Ukraine. Read our article here.

This live page will soon be closed. Here were today’s top events:

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pressed for a 30-day truce in the war before taking Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer for direct talks in Turkiye on Thursday.
• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country is ready to host peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul again in a phone call with Putin.
• US President Donald Trump called on Ukraine to accept Putin’s offer for talks “immediately”, but added he is starting to doubt that Ukraine will make a deal with Russia.
• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Russia’s offer to negotiate directly was a “good sign” but “far from sufficient”, pressuring Moscow to agree to a truce first.
• Ukraine reported 161 combat clashes with the Russian army over the past day, along with 63 Russian air strikes, 96 guided bombs, dozens of rockets, and thousands of drone attacks.

A Ukrainian soldier on the front line says the government should not talk to Moscow until Russian troops fully withdraw from the country.

Using the call sign “Chepa”, the commander of a drone unit in the National Guard of Ukraine said any negotiations should only start with a withdrawal from Ukraine’s borders established after it won independence in 1991.

“That’s it. Full withdrawal of all troops from the territory of Ukraine. Then we can talk. Whatever he [Putin] is thinking of – take certain regions or divide territories – nobody has given him the right to do it,” said Chepa.

President Putin earlier proposed direct talks with Ukraine, something President Zelenskyy said is possible but only after Moscow agrees to an unconditional 30-day ceasefire from Monday.

Yehor Chernev, deputy chairman of the Committee on National Security, Defence and Intelligence, recently told The New York Times that Ukraine is “running low” on long-range missiles, artillery, and ballistic missile defence systems.

An unidentified official told the newspaper the United States recently approved Germany’s transfer of 125 long-range artillery rockets and 100 Patriot air defence missiles to Ukraine.

Patriot systems are essential to maintaining Ukraine’s air defence capabilities, as Soviet-era and other Western-provided technologies are unable to intercept Russian ballistic missiles.

We can now bring you more comments from the Kremlin.

Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said President Vladimir Putin is doing all he can to bring about a “peaceful solution” to the conflict, but will have to press on with war if there are no diplomatic options.

In comments cited by Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency, Peskov accused Ukraine of trying to avoid peace talks, which he said would have to cover many “small details” that are “vital” for the two states’ futures.

Moscow is opposed to potential European “peacekeepers” stationed in Ukraine, the Russian spokesman added, an idea floated by Kyiv’s Western allies.

Peskov called Putin’s proposal for direct talks “very serious”, aimed at eliminating “the root causes of the conflict”, and said it “confirms a real intention for finding a peaceful solution”.

President Vladimir Putin, whose forces control one-fifth of Ukraine and are advancing, has stood firm in his conditions for ending the war, despite public and private pressure from US President Donald Trump and repeated warnings from European powers.

Trump has publicly shown irritation with both sides. But more recently, since signing a deal to share the proceeds of Ukrainian mineral mining, he has appeared more frustrated with Moscow.

In response to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s demand for a 30-day ceasefire ahead of negotiations in Turkiye, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova underscored: “Putin clearly said: ‘First negotiations on the root causes [of the conflict], and then we can talk about a truce.'”

Turkiye has played an active role in efforts to reach a settlement in the Russia-Ukraine war, which began in February 2022, including hosting a series of talks in Istanbul in March 2022 that were aimed at finding common ground to end the conflict, now in its fourth year.

Latvia’s president is the latest leader to condemn Russia for failing to accept a Ukraine-proposed 30-day ceasefire.

“Ukraine is ready for peace, Russia is not,” President Edgars Rinkevics wrote in a post. Russia “is solely responsible for continuous bloodshed”, he said.

Russia and Ukraine are continuing to exchange attacks despite Kyiv’s push for the monthlong ceasefire to start on Monday. Russia, without answering Ukraine’s ceasefire proposal, has offered to start direct talks this week with Ukraine in Istanbul.

Russia has shelled the Korabelny district of Kherson in southern Ukraine, according to Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of the regional military administration.

He said on Telegram that Russian forces attacked a high-rise residential building, damaging balconies and breaking windows.

Prokudin added that a 76-year-old woman was hospitalised with shrapnel wounds and a 57-year-old woman with a fractured arm also sought medical help.

Alexander Khinshtein, acting governor of Russia’s Kursk region, says a Ukrainian drone has dropped an explosive device on a car in the village of Khomutovka in the Khomutovsky district of his region, injuring a child.

“As a result of the strike, a 5-year-old child was injured. Relatives independently took the girl to the nearest medical facility – the Sevskaya Central Regional Hospital in the Bryansk Region,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.

Khinshtein specified that the child had shrapnel wounds to her back and leg and the girl’s life and health are not in danger. Her parents, who were also in the car, were not injured, he added.

In remarks to the media overnight, Putin in effect has rejected a 30-day ceasefire. He has instead suggested resuming the Istanbul talks scuppered in 2022.

“We propose to the Kyiv authorities to resume the talks they broke off in 2022 and, I emphasise, without any preconditions,” Putin said.

“We propose to start [negotiations] without delay on Thursday, May 15, in Istanbul. We do not exclude that during these talks we will be able to agree on some new ceasefire.”

But he also accused Ukraine’s Western backers of wanting to “continue war with Russia” and – without mentioning the specific proposal for a 30-day ceasefire – slammed European “ultimatums” and “anti-Russian rhetoric”.

Putin said Russia has proposed several ceasefires – including a moratorium on striking energy facilities, an Easter truce and most recently a 72-hour truce during celebrations marking 80 years since the Soviet victory in World War II.

None of these was agreed and each side accused the other of continuing attacks.

“Our proposal, as they say, is on the table,” Putin said. “The decision is now up to the Ukrainian authorities and their ‘curators’, who are guided, it seems, by their personal political ambitions and not by the interests of their peoples.”

• The Russian Ministry of Defence accuses Ukraine of violating a three-day truce concluded on Saturday more than 14,000 times and Kyiv’s troops of making five attempts to breach Russia’s southern border, the TASS state news agency reports.
• In a post on Telegram, the Ukrainian military’s general staff accuses Russia of carrying out dozens of air raids and thousands of rocket and drone attacks in the past day.
• Ukrainian forces have carried out more than 100 attacks on the western Russian region of Belgorod in the past day, according to Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.
• Ukraine’s air defence units have tried to repel a Russian air attack on Kyiv, the city’s mayor says after Ukraine’s air force warned of a drone attack on the capital.
• Russian forces have carried out a drone attack in southern Ukraine’s Vasylivka area, located in the region of Zaporizhia, according to the local military administration.

Read more here.

The military says it has engaged in 67 clashes with Russian forces on Ukrainian territory since dawn, adding that it has been taking “all the necessary measures” to prevent the occupying army from advancing.

In its daily update, the Ukrainian army added that various areas in northern Ukraine’s Chernihiv region and Sumy in northeastern Ukraine have seen Russian mortar and artillery attacks.

“The enemy carried out four air attacks, dropping anti-aircraft missiles, and carried out 134 artillery attacks, including seven from multiple launch rocket systems,” the statement also said.

In 2022, Turkiye mediated the Black Sea Grain Initiative and held direct talks between Kyiv and Moscow in Istanbul, which were relatively successful.

However, as Russian President Vladimir Putin put it last night during his speech, that draft went into the trash because the West didn’t support this draft plan.

This time, we are expecting Kyiv and Moscow, along with Ankara, to be more careful and commit themselves to a more sustainable peace process and talks.

Because of its geopolitical position and because it controls the way into the Black Sea, Turkiye has a very important position, but also a very fragile one.

On the one hand, Turkiye has strong relations with Moscow, but on the other hand, it has to preserve the Black Sea as a safe haven because it is a NATO country.

Marco Rubio will be in Antalya, Turkiye from May 14 to 16 for an informal meeting with NATO top diplomats to discuss the Russia-Ukraine war.

In a statement, the US Department of State said Rubio will “advance President Trump’s agenda of ensuring that our Allies contribute their fair share to making NATO stronger and more effective”.

Rubio’s visit overlaps with the date Putin has proposed – May 15 – for launching direct peace talks with Ukraine in Turkiye’s Istanbul.

However, the US and Ukraine have first called for a 30-day ceasefire to begin tomorrow – a proposal Russia has yet to address – before any direct talks.

A Ukrainian drone attack hit the village of Guevo, with shrapnel from the attack wounding two elderly women, according to Kursk Governor Alexander Khinshtein.

The women, whose wounds are not life-threatening, are being treated at hospital.

Last month, Russia claimed to have fully recaptured Kursk from Ukrainian forces that had held part of the territory since August 2024.

Trump’s special envoy on Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, has reacted to Putin’s proposal for direct talks with Kyiv.

In a post on X, Kellogg said the two sides must first agree to an “unconditional 30-day ceasefire” before launching peace negotiations – “not the other way around”.

As we’ve been reporting, Putin has yet to directly address Ukraine’s and the West’s push for a 30-day truce, even as he calls for talks to begin this week.

Here are the latest developments:

• Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has called Putin’s offer for direct talks with Kyiv a “serious proposal” that is a step towards “lasting peace”.
• Former diplomat and Putin’s aide, Yuri Ushakov, says proposed peace talks between Russia and Ukraine will take into account the situation on the ground as well as the negotiations of 2022, Interfax reports.
• President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkiye is ready to host negotiations, after Putin suggested the country as a venue for the talks, adding that “the opportunity must be seized”.
• Russia and Ukraine blamed each other for a blitz of overnight aerial assaults. Kyiv is accused of targeting villages in Russia’s Belgorod region, while Moscow is accused of waging dozens of air raids on Ukrainian units and towns.
• Newly-elected Pope Leo XIV addressed the war in his first Sunday blessing, saying his heart “carries the sufferings of the beloved Ukrainian people” and urging a “just and lasting peace”.