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Here is where things stand on Friday, May 23:
Fighting
- Ukrainian drones disrupted air traffic around Moscow, grounding planes at several major airports on Thursday, as 35 drones targeting the city were downed, according to Russia’s Ministry of Defence.
- According to the ministry and Moscow mayor’s office, a total of 46 Ukrainian drones targeted Russia’s capital, while an additional 70 drones were launched against other targets across the country.
- Russia launched 128 drones at Ukraine overnight, according to Ukraine’s air force, with 112 of those drones either shot down, jammed or were lost en route to their targets.
- Russia said that 12 civilians were injured in a “massive” Ukrainian strike on the town of Lgov in Russia’s Kursk region.
- Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the former top commander of Ukraine’s military who was known for clashing with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said it was unlikely Ukraine would be able to return to the borders with Russia it held from 1991 until the Russian invasion of 2014. Even keeping Ukraine’s borders up until Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 may also not be possible, he said.
- “I hope that there are not people in this room who still hope for some kind of miracle or lucky sign that will bring peace to Ukraine, the borders of 1991 or 2022 and that there will be great happiness afterward,” Zaluzhnyi told a forum in Kyiv.
- Russia said it has received a list of names from Ukraine for a prisoner of war swap. A swap of 1,000 prisoners from each side was agreed to during a meeting last week between Russian and Ukrainian officials in Istanbul aimed at ending the war.
Regional security
- Finland said it is closely monitoring a Russian military build-up along its 1,340km (832-mile) joint border with Russia. Finland closed the border with its neighbour in December 2023 when 1,000 migrants crossed its frontier without visas.
Economy
- Following a meeting in Canada this week, the G7’s finance ministers said they would explore further sanctions on Russia if it fails to reach a ceasefire with Ukraine. They also said they will work to ensure “no countries or entities” that fuelled “Russia’s war machine” will be able to benefit from Ukraine’s reconstruction.
- Moscow is moving to block foreign companies returning to Russia from accessing “buyback” options for assets left there when they pulled out following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The bill before Russia’s legislature allows “Russian citizens and companies to refuse to return assets to foreign investors, subject to a number of conditions”.
G7 threatens further sanctions if Russia fails to agree Ukraine ceasefire
Finance officials from the Group of Seven (G7) nations have threatened they could impose further sanctions on Russia should it fail to agree a ceasefire in its war on Ukraine.
Ending their G7 meeting in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, where foreign ministers were also convening this week, the finance chiefs said on Thursday night that if efforts to end Russia’s “continued brutal war” in Ukraine failed, the group would look at how it could push Moscow to step back.
“If such a ceasefire is not agreed, we will continue to explore all possible options, including options to maximise pressure such as further ramping up sanctions,” a final communique following three days of meetings read.
The G7, comprised of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, also pledged to work together to ensure that no countries that financed the war would be eligible to benefit from Kyiv’s reconstruction.
Canadian Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said that point was a “very big statement”, calling it a key pillar.
However, the group shied away from naming countries, including China, which the West has previously accused of supplying weapons to Russia.
The communique added that Russia’s sovereign assets in G7 jurisdictions would continue to be blocked until Moscow ended the war and paid reparations to Ukraine for the damage it caused to the country.
‘Clear signal?’
“I think it sends a very clear signal to the world … that the G7 is united in purpose and in action,” Champagne told the closing news conference.
However, the statement omitted mention of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs that are disrupting global trade and supply chains and swelling economic uncertainty.
Differences were also apparent in the approach to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Trump has unnerved US allies by sidelining them to launch bilateral ceasefire talks with Moscow, in which US officials have adopted many of the Kremlin’s narratives regarding the conflict.
In the statement, the description of the war was watered down from October’s G7 statement, issued before Trump’s re-election, that called it an “illegal, unjustifiable, and unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine”.
Tariffs
According to European Commission executive vice president, Valdis Dombrovskis, the ministers discussed a proposal to lower the $60-a-barrel price cap to $50 on Russian oil exports since Russian crude was selling below that level.
However, the official G7 communique did not present the plan as the US was “not convinced” about lowering the price cap, an unnamed European official told the Reuters news agency.
Hours before the G7 meeting, the European Parliament also greenlit tariffs on Russian fertiliser imports.
According to the European Union bill, duties will be enforced from July 1 and gradually increase over three years, from 6.5 percent to about 100 percent, halting trade.
‘Yet to be agreed’
As international entities continue to place sanctions on Russia for invading Ukraine, diplomatic efforts to end the war have increased after the two sides held their first face-to-face meeting last week.
However, Moscow appears set to continue to stall, as it has been doing since the US launched its push to broker a truce.
The Kremlin said on Thursday that new talks were “yet to be agreed” after reports that the Vatican was ready to host a future meeting to discuss a ceasefire.
Still, Russia and Ukraine are trading attacks.
On Friday morning, Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its air defence systems had downed 112 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 24 over the Moscow region.
A day earlier, Russia said it had fired an Iskander-M missile at part of the city of Pokrov in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region.
Ukraine and Russia take part in biggest prisoner swap since 2022 invasion
Some of the released Ukrainians were pictured shortly after they were freed by Russia
Russia and Ukraine have each handed over 390 soldiers and civilians in the biggest prisoner exchange since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022.
They both returned 270 servicemen and 120 civilians on the Ukrainian border with Belarus, as part of the only deal agreed in direct talks in Istanbul a week ago.
Both sides had agreed to an exchange of 1,000 prisoners and confirmed there would be further swaps in the coming days.
Although there have been dozens of smaller-scale exchanges, no other handover has involved as many civilians.
The Russian defence ministry said servicemen and civilians, including those captured by Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk border region during Kyiv’s offensive in recent months, were among those handed over.
They were currently on Belarusian territory and were to be taken to Russia for medical checks and treatment, the ministry said.
“We are bringing our people home,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on social media.
“We are verifying every surname, every detail about each person.”
Ukraine’s co-ordination headquarters for prisoners of war said the 270 Ukrainian servicemen had fought in regions across the east and north, from Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy to Donetsk, Kharkiv and Kherson.
Three of the 390 released on Friday were women, officials said, and some of the soldiers had been held since 2022.
US President Donald Trump earlier posted his congratulations on his Truth Social platform, claiming that the swap was complete and that “this could lead to something big???”.
Families of Ukrainian soldiers held by Russia gathered in northern Ukraine on Friday in the hope that their sons and husbands would be among those released.
Natalia, whose son Yelizar was captured during the battle for the city of Severodonetsk three years ago, told the BBC she believed he would return, but did not know when.
Olha said that since her son Valerii had been captured with five other soldiers in the east, her life had stopped, as she did not know if they were still alive.
“They were captured two months ago in Luhansk. They went missing in a village.”
The prisoner swap was agreed in Turkey a week ago, when low-level delegations from Ukraine and Russia came face to face for the first time since March 2022, even though the meeting lasted only two hours and failed to make any progress towards a ceasefire.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that there would be a second round of talks, when Moscow would hand a “memorandum” to the Ukrainian side.
Trump said earlier this week that Russia and Ukraine would “immediately” start negotiating towards a ceasefire and an end to the war, after a two-hour phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Since then, Zelensky has accused Putin of “trying to buy time” to continue the war.
Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has backed a suggestion from Trump that the Vatican might mediate talks on negotiating a ceasefire, but Lavrov said that was “not a very realistic option”.
The Russian foreign minister repeated an unfounded claim that Zelensky was not a legitimate leader and suggested new elections should be held before a potential future peace agreement is signed.
Asked if Russia was ready to sign a deal, Lavrov said: “First we need to have a deal. And when it’s agreed, then we will decide. But, as President Putin has said many times, President Zelensky does not have legitimacy.”
He said after an agreement was ready, Russia would “see who out of those in power in Ukraine has legitimacy”.
“The key task now is to prepare a peace agreement which will be reliable and provide a long-term, stable and fair peace without creating security threats for anyone. In our case, we’re concerned with Russia.”
Zelensky accuses Russia of ‘buying time’ to stall truce talks
Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of “trying to buy time” to continue its war in Ukraine, a day after Donald Trump said progress towards a ceasefire had been made in a call with Vladimir Putin.
“If Russia continues to put forward unrealistic conditions and undermine progress, there must be tough consequences,” Ukraine’s president wrote on social media, adding that Kyiv was ready to negotiate.
Following separate calls with Zelensky and Putin on Monday, Trump said truce talks between Russia and Ukraine would start “immediately”.
Putin said he was ready to work on a “memorandum on a possible future peace agreement”, but did not address calls for a 30-day pause in fighting.
On Tuesday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said it was up to Kyiv to “make decisions” and respond to a proposed peace memorandum.
However, the Kremlin downplayed suggestions that negotiations were close, with Russian state news agencies citing spokesperson Dmitry Peskov as saying “there are no deadlines and there cannot be any”.
Meanwhile, Zelensky launched a fresh round of diplomacy, speaking to Western allies in a bid to shore up support.
Following a phone call with the Finnish president, Zelensky wrote on social media that Ukraine was working with partners to ensure pressure on Moscow “forces the Russians to change their behaviour”.
It came as the European Union and UK announced that they had adopted new rounds of sanctions against Russia.
The EU said it was blacklisting nearly 200 more oil tankers in Russia’s “shadow fleet”, and warned of a “tougher response” if Moscow did not agree to a truce in Ukraine.
The UK placed sanctions 18 more tankers, as part of its package targeting Russian military suppliers, energy exports and financial institutions.
It followed a record drone assault in Ukraine over the weekend, which Kyiv officials described as the largest since the start of the full-scale invasion.
On Monday, Trump indicated he would not join in any new sanctions on Russia, telling reporters that they could hinder recent progress.
It came as heavy fighting continued along the front line, with Ukraine reporting 177 clashes and claiming over 1,000 Russian casualties in 24 hours.
Speaking ahead of a meeting of EU ministers on Tuesday, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said Russia’s continued attacks “speak louder than the lip service we have heard for so long”.
“Putin is clearly playing for time. Unfortunately, we have to say he is not really interested in peace,” he said.
Putin has so far rebuffed a joint US-Ukrainian proposal for a 30-day ceasefire and last week rejected Zelensky’s invitation to meet for talks in Istanbul. Trump had offered to attend the talks if Putin would be there, but the Russian leader declined.
The Kremlin has previously announced temporary ceasefires, including from 8-11 Mayto coincide with Russia’s Second World War victory celebrations. Kyiv refused to join, citing mistrust and demanding an immediate, sustained cessation of hostilities.
A similar 30-hour truce over Easter saw a brief lull in fighting, though both sides accused each other of hundreds of violations.
Russia and Ukraine have been at war since Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.