Donald Trump’s Ukraine envoy hinted that both sides would have to make concessions to end the war – which could include Kyiv giving up land occupied by Russia. After recently returning from a visit to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg told Fox News that “both sides will give a little bit”. Zelenskyy “has already indicated he will soften his position on land,” the retired lieutenant general said, adding that Putin “is going to have to soften his positions as well”. But the Ukrainian president’s communications adviser dismissed Kellogg’s intervention. “We haven’t seen Mr Kellogg’s full interview … But if his plan is just a ceasefire and elections, it is a failed plan – Putin won’t be intimidated by just those two things,” Dmytro Lytvyn told journalists.
Trump’s threat of sanctions has left Vladimir Putin “rattled” and concerned about the Russian economy, British prime minister Keir Starmer has said ahead of an informal European defence cooperation meeting in Brussels on Monday. Starmer said it was necessary to “see all allies stepping up – particularly in Europe” when it comes to inflicting economic harm on Russia, and argued it would help bring about peace by ending the Ukraine war sooner. “President Trump has threatened more sanctions on Russia and it’s clear that’s got Putin rattled,” Starmer said ahead of the trip. “We know that he’s worried about the state of the Russian economy.”
In talks with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, on Sunday Starmer stressed that it was important to ensure Ukraine “was in the strongest possible position in the coming months”, so that any peace deal to end its war with Ukraine “could be achieved through strength.” Starmer will also meet Nato secretary general Mark Rutte on Monday, before travelling to meet the leaders of the 27 EU member states at the informal meeting of the European Council.
Kyiv and Moscow traded blame on Sunday for a strike on a school in a Ukrainian-occupied town in Russia’s Kursk region. The Ukrainian air force said four people were killed on Saturday in a Russian guided aerial bomb attack on a former school building sheltering civilians in the town of Sudzha. Four others were seriously wounded and 80 people rescued from the rubble, it added. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called Russia “devoid of civility”, sharing a video on social media showing a heavily damaged building, as well as a wounded man lying on the ground. But Russia blamed Ukraine for the attack, saying they had opened a criminal case against a Ukrainian commander who they said was behind it. A defence ministry statement accused Kyiv of a “war crime” with “no statute of limitations” by targeting the school.
Ukrainian prosecutors charged two men on Sunday over the killing of an army draft officer in the central Poltava region, leading a top general to call for swift punishment as he warned of growing disrespect towards members of the military. One of the suspects, who was being driven to a military training centre on Friday with other conscripts, called an acquaintance who then arrived at the scene and shot dead one of the accompanying officers, the Prosecutor General’s office alleged. Two suspects were arrested a few hours later, the office said in a statement, adding that police had seized a hunting rifle, ammunition and two cases of hand grenades from the alleged shooter.
Separately, an explosion near a recruitment centre for the Ukrainian military on Sunday wounded one person, police said. Taking place outside an army office in the central town of Pavlograd, Sunday’s blast was the latest in a series of similar incidents, just a day after another blast Rivne, a town in north-west Ukraine, killed one person. Without giving a possible cause, the Dnipropetrovsk regional police said an investigation was ongoing into Sunday’s blast which happened towards at 6.40pm. “According to preliminary information, a man was wounded by the explosion of a unidentified object,” the force said in a statement.
A Ukrainian drone attack killed one civilian in the Russian region of Belgorod bordering Ukraine, the regional governor said on Sunday. “A man was killed,” governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said of the overnight strike in a post on the Telegram messaging app. “He died from his injuries before the ambulance crew arrived.” Gladkov said the attack took place in the village of Malinovka about 8km (5 miles) east of the border.
