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Here’s where things stand on Saturday, May 31:
Fighting
- Eight people, including two teenagers, were injured in a Russian attack on the village of Vasyliv Khutir in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv, regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said.
- The Ukrainian Air Force said that Russia launched 90 drones and two ballistic missiles against Ukraine that targeted the country’s Kharkiv, Odesa and Donetsk regions.
- The Kharkiv region’s main city came under Russian drone attack, which targeted a trolleybus depot and injured two people, the city’s Mayor Ihor Terekhov said. He said more than 30 nearby apartment buildings were damaged, while one trolleybus was completely destroyed, and 18 others sustained varying degrees of damage.
Ceasefire
- Ukraine has resisted US and Russian pressure to commit to attending another round of peace talks in Istanbul on Monday, saying it first needs to see Russian proposals for a ceasefire. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia “is doing everything it can to ensure that the next potential meeting brings no results”.
- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the planned second round of talks between Ukraine and Russia will pave the way for peace in a phone call with Zelenskyy, according to a readout issued by the Turkish presidency. Erdogan said it is important that both parties join the talks with strong delegations.
- Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha also said Kyiv needed to see the Russian ceasefire proposals in advance for the talks to be “substantive and meaningful”, without spelling out what Kyiv would do if it did not receive the Russian document or a deadline for receiving it.
- Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky will again head Russia’s delegation in Istanbul for the second round of Russia-Ukraine talks and will bring a memorandum and other ceasefire proposals to the meeting.
- Russia’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, told the UN Security Council that Moscow was ready to consider a ceasefire, provided Western states stopped arming Ukraine and Kyiv stopped mobilising troops.
- Influential US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said on a visit to Kyiv that the Republican-led US Senate is expected to move ahead with a bill on sanctions against Russia next week. Graham, who met Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Friday, said he had talked with Donald Trump before his trip and the US president expects concrete actions now from Moscow.
- Trump told reporters that both Putin and Zelenskyy were stubborn and that he had been surprised and disappointed by the Russian bombing of Ukraine while he was trying to arrange a ceasefire.
- Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, said Russia’s concern over the eastward enlargement of NATO was fair and Washington did not want to see Ukraine in the US-led military alliance.
- Commenting on Kellogg’s statement, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Moscow was pleased, adding that a Russian delegation would be travelling to Istanbul and ready for talks with Ukraine on Monday morning.
- Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told reporters in Kyiv that the next step after talks in Istanbul would be to try to host a meeting between Trump, Putin, and Zelenskyy.
Economy
- Ukraine’s finance ministry has announced that it would not be paying more than half a billion dollars due to holders of its GDP warrants – fixed income securities indexed to economic growth – marking the first payment default since it created the financial instruments in 2015. Ukraine owes $665m on June 2 to holders of the $3.2bn worth of warrants, based on 2023 economic performance.
Two killed in Russian attacks on Ukraine before possible talks in Turkiye
Russian drone and missile attacks on Ukraine have killed at least two people, according to officials, as Ukraine ordered the evacuation of 11 more villages in its Sumy region bordering Russia.
Russian troops launched an estimated 109 drones and five missiles across Ukraine on Friday and overnight, the Ukrainian air force said on Saturday, adding that three of the missiles and 42 drones were destroyed and another 30 drones failed to reach their targets without causing damage.
The attacks came amid uncertainty over whether Kyiv will take part in a new round of peace talks early next week in Istanbul.
In the Russian attacks on Saturday, a child was killed in a strike on the front-line village of Dolynka in the Zaporizhia region, and another was injured, Zaporizhia’s Governor Ivan Fedorov said.
“One house was destroyed. The shockwave from the blast also damaged several other houses, cars, and outbuildings,” Fedorov wrote on Telegram.
A man was also killed by Russian shelling in Ukraine’s Kherson region, Governor Oleksandr Prokudin wrote on Telegram.
Moscow did not comment on either attack.
Ukraine’s Sumy region evacuating 11 villages
Meanwhile, authorities in Ukraine’s Sumy region said they were evacuating 11 villages within a roughly 30-kilometre (19-mile) range from the Russian border.
“The decision was made in view of the constant threat to civilian life as a result of shelling of border communities,” the regional administration said on social media.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said some 50,000 Russian troops have amassed in the area with the intention of launching an offensive to carve out a buffer zone inside Ukrainian territory.
Ukraine’s top army chief, Oleksandr Syrskii, said on Saturday that Russian forces were focusing their main offensive efforts on Pokrovsk, Torets and Lyman in the Donetsk region, as well as the Sumy border area.
Syrskii added that Ukrainian forces are still holding territory in Russia’s Kursk region – a statement Moscow has repeatedly denied.
The evacuations and attacks came just two days before a possible meeting between Kyiv and Moscow in Istanbul, as Washington called on both countries to end the three-year war.
Russia confirms it will send a delegation to Turkey for peace talks
Russia has confirmed it will send a delegation, but Kyiv has not yet accepted the proposal, warning the talks would not yield results unless the Kremlin provided its peace terms in advance.
Zelenskyy said Saturday it was still not clear what Moscow was planning to achieve at the meeting and that so far, it did not “look very serious”.
Ukraine accuses Russia of undermining next round of peace talks
Ukraine accuses Russia of undermining next round of peace talks
Ukraine’s president has questioned Russia’s commitment to progressing peace talks after Moscow confirmed it was sending a team to talks in Istanbul on Monday.
Russia is yet to send its negotiating proposals to Ukraine – a key demand by Kyiv. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow’s conditions for a ceasefire would be discussed in Turkey.
But Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow of “doing everything it can to ensure the next possible meeting is fruitless”.
“For a meeting to be meaningful, its agenda must be clear, and the negotiations must be properly prepared,” he said. Ukraine had sent its proposals to Russia, reaffirming “readiness for a full and unconditional ceasefire”.
The first round of talks two weeks ago in Istanbul brought no breakthrough, but achieved a prisoner of war swap.
Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Russia currently controls about 20% of Ukraine’s territory, including the southern Crimea peninsula Moscow annexed in 2014.
As the talks approached, both Russia and Ukraine reported explosions on Friday night and in the early hours of Saturday morning.
Three people were killed and 10 more were injured in Ukraine’s Kherson region
In Ukraine’s Kherson region, three people were killed and 10 more were injured, according to Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the region’s military administration.
On social media, he said that the “Russian military hit critical and social infrastructure” as well as “residential areas of settlements in the region”.
One person was also killed in the Sumy region, the administration there said.
Residents of 11 settlements in the region were ordered to evacuate, bringing the total number of evacuated settlements to 213.
Officials said at least one person had also been injured in explosions in the cities of Kharkiv and Izyum.
14 people were injured in an explosion in Russia’s Kursk region
Meanwhile, at least 14 people were injured in an explosion in Russia’s Kursk region, according to the acting local governor Alexander Khinshtein and Russia’s state-owned news agency, TASS.
On Friday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha reiterated that Kyiv had already sent its own “vision of future steps” to Russia, adding Moscow “must accept an unconditional ceasefire” to pave the way for broader negotiations.
“We are interested in seeing these meetings continue because we want the war to end this year,” Sybiha said during a joint press conference with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan.
Putin and Zelensky are not expected to attend the talks on Monday.
But Fidan said Turkey was hoping to eventually host a high-level summit.
“We sincerely think it is time to bring President Trump, President Putin and President Zelensky to the table,” he said.
Peskov said Russia’s ceasefire proposals would not be made public, and Moscow would only entertain the idea of a high-level summit if meaningful progress was achieved in preliminary discussions between the two countries.
He welcomed comments made by Trump’s envoy to Ukraine, retired Gen Keith Kellogg, who described Russian concerns over Nato enlargement as “fair”.
Gen Kellogg said Ukraine joining the military alliance, long hoped for by Kyiv, was not on the table.
Trump “frustrated” by Russia’s intransigence,
He added President Trump was “frustrated” by what he described as Russia’s intransigence, but emphasised the need to keep negotiations alive.
On 19 May, Trump and Putin had a two-hour phone call to discuss a US-proposed ceasefire deal to halt the fighting.
The US president said he believed the call had gone “very well”, adding that Russia and Ukraine would “immediately start” negotiations towards a ceasefire and “an end to the war”.
Ukraine has publicly agreed to a 30-day ceasefire but Putin has only said Russia will work with Ukraine to craft a “memorandum” on a “possible future peace” – a move described by Kyiv and its European allies as delaying tactics so Russian troops could seize more Ukrainian territory.
In a rare rebuke to Putin just days later, Trump called the Kremlin leader “absolutely crazy” and threatened US sanctions. His comments followed Moscow’s largest drone and missile attacks on Ukraine.
Germany to help Kyiv produce long-range missiles to defend itself from future Russian attacks.
On Wednesday, Germany’s new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, told Zelensky that Berlin would help Kyiv produce long-range missiles to defend itself from future Russian attacks.
The Kremlin said any decision to end range restrictions on the missiles Ukraine could use would represent a dangerous change in policy that would harm efforts to bring an end to the war.