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Russia sets out punitive terms at peace talks with Ukraine

Ukraine has proposed holding more talks before the end of June, but believes only a meeting between Zelenskiy and Putin can resolve the many issues of contention.

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Russia told Ukraine at peace talks on Monday that it would only agree to end the war if Kyiv gives up big new chunks of territory and accepts limits on the size of its army, according to a memorandum reported by Russian media.

The terms, formally presented at negotiations in Istanbul, highlighted Moscow’s refusal to compromise on its longstanding war goals despite calls by U.S. President Donald Trump to end the “bloodbath” in Ukraine.

Ukraine has repeatedly rejected the Russian conditions as tantamount to surrender, Reuters reported.

Delegations from the warring sides met for barely an hour, for only the second such round of negotiations since March 2022. They agreed to exchange more prisoners of war – focusing on the youngest and most severely wounded – and return the bodies of 12,000 dead soldiers.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan described it as a great meeting and said he hoped to bring together Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy for a meeting in Turkey with Trump.

But there was no breakthrough on a proposed ceasefire that Ukraine, its European allies and Washington have all urged Russia to accept.

Moscow says it seeks a long-term settlement, not a pause in the war; Kyiv says Putin is not interested in peace. Trump has said the United States is ready to walk away from its mediation efforts unless the two sides demonstrate progress towards a deal.

Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, who headed Kyiv’s delegation, said Kyiv – which has drawn up its own peace roadmap – would review the Russian document, on which he offered no immediate comment.

Ukraine has proposed holding more talks before the end of June, but believes only a meeting between Zelenskiy and Putin can resolve the many issues of contention, Umerov said.

Zelenskiy said Ukraine presented a list of 400 children it says have been abducted to Russia, but that the Russian delegation agreed to work on returning only 10 of them. Russia says the children were moved from war zones to protect them.

The Russian memorandum, which was published by the Interfax news agency, said a settlement of the war would require international recognition of Crimea – a peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014 – and four other regions of Ukraine that Moscow has claimed as its own territory. Ukraine would have to withdraw its forces from all of them.

It restated Moscow’s demands that Ukraine become a neutral country – ruling out membership of NATO – and that it protect the rights of Russian speakers, make Russian an official language and enact a legal ban on glorification of Nazism. Ukraine rejects the Nazi charge as absurd and denies discriminating against Russian speakers.

Russia also formalised its terms for any ceasefire en route to a peace settlement, presenting two options that both appeared to be non-starters for Ukraine.

Option one, according to the text, was for Ukraine to start a full military withdrawal from the Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. Of those, Russia fully controls the first but holds only about 70% of the rest.

Option two was a package that would require Ukraine to cease military redeployments and accept a halt to foreign provision of military aid, satellite communications and intelligence. Kyiv would also have to lift martial law and hold presidential and parliamentary elections within 100 days.

Russian delegation head Vladimir Medinsky said Moscow had also suggested a “specific ceasefire of two to three days in certain sections of the front” so that the bodies of dead soldiers could be collected.

According to a proposed roadmap drawn up by Ukraine, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, Kyiv wants no restrictions on its military strength after any peace deal, no international recognition of Russian sovereignty over parts of Ukraine taken by Moscow’s forces, and reparations.

The conflict has been heating up, with Russia launching its biggest drone attacks of the war and advancing on the battlefield in May at its fastest rate in six months.

On Sunday, Ukraine said it launched 117 drones in an operation codenamed “Spider’s Web” to attack Russian nuclear-capable long-range bomber planes at airfields in Siberia and the far north of the country.

Satellite imagery suggested the attacks had caused substantial damage, although the two sides gave conflicting accounts of the extent of it.

Western military analysts described the strikes, thousands of miles from the front lines, as one of the most audacious Ukrainian operations of the war.

Russia’s strategic bomber fleet forms part of the “triad” of forces – along with missiles launched from the ground or from submarines – that make up the country’s nuclear arsenal, the biggest in the world. Faced with repeated warnings from Putin of Russia’s nuclear might, the U.S. and its allies have been wary throughout the Ukraine conflict of the risk that it could spiral into World War Three.

A current U.S. administration official said Trump and the White House were not notified before the attack. A former administration official said Ukraine, for operational security reasons, regularly does not disclose to Washington its plans for such actions.

A UK government official said the British government also was not told ahead of time.

Zelenskiy said the operation, which involved drones concealed inside wooden sheds, had helped to restore partners’ confidence that Ukraine is able to continue waging the war.

“Ukraine says that we are not going to surrender and are not going to give in to any ultimatums,” he told an online news briefing.

“But we do not want to fight, we do not want to demonstrate our strength – we demonstrate it because the enemy does not want to stop.”

World

Top US, Israeli generals meet at Pentagon amid soaring Iran tensions

The officials did not offer details about the closed-door discussions between U.S. General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Eyal Zamir, the Israeli armed forces chief of staff.

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The top U.S. and Israeli generals held talks at the Pentagon on Friday amid soaring tensions with Iran, two U.S. officials told Reuters on Sunday, speaking on condition of anonymity, Reuters reported.

The officials did not offer details about the closed-door discussions between U.S. General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Eyal Zamir, the Israeli armed forces chief of staff. The meeting has not been previously reported.

The United States has ramped up its naval presence and hiked its air defences in the Middle East after President Donald Trump repeatedly threatened Iran, trying to pressure it to the negotiating table. Iran’s leadership warned on Sunday of a regional conflict if the U.S. were to attack it, read the report.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz on Sunday met with Zamir after his talks in Washington, Katz’s office said, to review the situation in the region and the Israeli military’s “operational readiness for any possible scenario.”

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Israeli attacks kill 31 Palestinians in Gaza, including children

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At least 31 Palestinians, including six children, were killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza City and Khan Younis since early Saturday, according to medical sources cited by Al Jazeera.

The strikes came a day before Israel is scheduled to reopen the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt on Sunday, marking the first reopening of the border crossing since May 2024.

Gaza’s Government Media Office said that more than 500 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since a United States-brokered ceasefire came into effect on October 10.

According to local health authorities, Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 71,769 Palestinians and wounded 171,483 others since it began in October 2023. In Israel, at least 1,139 people were killed during the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023, with approximately 250 people taken captive.

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Guterres warns of UN’s ‘imminent financial collapse’

In his letter, Guterres said “decisions not to honour assessed contributions that finance a significant share of the approved regular budget have now been formally announced.”

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The U.N. chief has told member states the organisation is at risk of “imminent financial collapse,” citing unpaid fees and a budget rule that forces the global body to return unspent money, a letter seen by Reuters on Friday showed.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has repeatedly spoken about the organisation’s worsening liquidity crisis but this is his starkest warning yet, and it comes as its main contributor the U.S. is retreating from multilateralism on numerous fronts.

“The crisis is deepening, threatening programme delivery and risking financial collapse. And the situation will deteriorate further in the near future,” Guterres wrote in a letter to ambassadors dated January 28.

The U.S. has slashed voluntary funding to U.N. agencies and refused to make mandatory payments to its regular and peacekeeping budgets.

U.S. President Donald Trump has described the U.N. as having “great potential” but said it is not fulfilling that, and he has launched a Board of Peace which some fear could undermine the older international body.

Founded in 1945, the U.N. has 193 member states and works to maintain international peace and security, promote human rights, foster social and economic development, and coordinate humanitarian aid.

In his letter, Guterres said “decisions not to honour assessed contributions that finance a significant share of the approved regular budget have now been formally announced.”

He did not say which state or states he was referring to, and a U.N. spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.

Under U.N. rules, contributions depend on the size of the economy of each member state. The U.S. accounts for 22% of the core budget followed by China with 20%.

But by the end of 2025 there was a record $1.57 billion in outstanding dues, Guterres said, without naming the nations that owed them.

“Either all Member States honour their obligations to pay in full and on time – or Member States must fundamentally overhaul our financial rules to prevent an imminent financial collapse,” he said.

U.N. officials say the U.S. currently owes $2.19 billion to the regular U.N. budget, another $1.88 billion for active peace-keeping missions and $528 million for past peace-keeping missions.

The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Guterres letter.

Guterres launched a reform task force last year, known as UN80, which seeks to cut costs and improve efficiency. To that end, states agreed to cut the 2026 budget by around 7% to $3.45 billion.

Still, Guterres warned in the letter that the organisation could run out of cash by July.

One of the problems is a rule now seen as antiquated whereby the global body has to credit back hundreds of millions of dollars in unspent dues to states each year.

“In other words, we are trapped in a Kafkaesque cycle expected to give back cash that does not exist,” said Guterres, referring to author Franz Kafka who wrote about oppressive bureaucratic processes.

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