U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy should not target Moscow and that Russian President Vladimir Putin should agree to a ceasefire deal by a 50-day deadline or sanctions will kick in, Reuters reported.

His comments came after The Financial Times, citing people briefed on discussions, reported on Tuesday that Trump had privately encouraged Ukraine to step up deep strikes on Russia.

The newspaper said that Trump asked Zelenskiy whether he could strike Moscow if the U.S. provided long-range weapons.

“No, he shouldn’t target Moscow,” Trump told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House when asked if Zelenskiy should attack the Russian capital.

Trump on Monday announced a toughened stance against Russia for its three-year-old war in Ukraine, promising a fresh wave of missiles and other weaponry for Ukraine. He gave Moscow 50 days to reach a ceasefire or face sanctions.

The announcement set off a scramble among European officials to figure out how to make Trump’s plan work and ensure Ukraine gets the weapons it needs, read the report.

Later on Tuesday, Trump told reporters that some of the Patriot missiles are already on their way to Ukraine.

“They’re coming in from Germany,” he said.

Trump said he had not yet spoken to Putin in the wake of his announcement, but said it might not take 50 days to make a deal.

Asked earlier if he was now on the side of Ukraine, Trump said, “I am on nobody’s side,” and then declared he was on “humanity’s side” because “I want to stop the killing.”

Trump defended the deadline he set for Russia to agree to a deal and head off tariffs and sanctions on countries that buy oil from Russia, Reuters reported.

He did not say whether any talks were planned to try to work out a deal with Russia.

“At the end of the 50 days if we don’t have a deal, it’s going to be too bad,” he said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked First Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko on Monday to lead a new government, setting the stage for a political reshuffle as Ukraine’s war with Russia raged on, Reuters reported.

Zelenskiy also proposed that Ukraine’s current prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, take over as defence minister, describing him as holding the right qualifications for a very important job.

The nominations, which require parliamentary approval, came as diplomatic efforts to end the war, now in its fourth year, have stalled and as Ukraine seeks to revive its cash-strapped economy and build up a domestic arms industry.

“We … discussed concrete measures to boost Ukraine’s economic potential, expand support programs for Ukrainians, and scale up our domestic weapons production,” Zelenskiy wrote on X.

“In pursuit of this goal, we are initiating a transformation of the executive branch in Ukraine,” he said, adding that he had proposed that Svyrydenko lead the government and “significantly renew its work”.

Svyrydenko, 39, is an economist and has served as first deputy prime minister since 2021. She played a key role in recent negotiations for a minerals deal with the United States, read the report.

In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy praised Shmyhal’s “vast experience” as very “valuable in the position of minister of defence of Ukraine.”

“This is precisely the area where the country’s maximum resources, maximum tasks and a great deal of responsibility are currently concentrated,” he said.

Shmyhal has served as prime minister since March 2020, making him the longest-serving head of government since the country gained its independence from Moscow in 1991 amid the collapse of the Soviet Union.

He would replace Rustem Umerov, who Zelenskiy suggested last week could be named Ukraine’s ambassador to Washington.

Ukraine relies on financial aid from its Western allies to finance social and humanitarian spending as the bulk of state revenues go to fund the army and domestic weapons production, Reuters reported.

Ukrainian officials have also urged Kyiv’s partners to help finance the country’s arms industry, including through joint defence projects.

In his address, Zelenskiy said Ukraine would continue to “boost production of its own weapons and develop its own defence projects — our own Ukrainian and jointly with our partners”.

Writing on X, Svyrydenko said she would pursue deregulation, cut back bureaucracy, protect business and reduce non-critical expenditure to achieve the “full concentration of state resources” for defence and post-war recovery.

“The state apparatus has no right to waste the resources and potential of our country,” she said. “Ukraine deserves to be among the strongest economies in Europe.”

At least eight Palestinians, most of them children, were killed and more than a dozen were wounded in central Gaza when they went to collect water on Sunday, local officials said, in an Israeli strike which the military said missed its target, Reuters reported.

The Israeli military said the missile had intended to hit an Islamic Jihad militant in the area but that a malfunction had caused it to fall “dozens of metres from the target”.

“The IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved civilians,” it said in a statement, adding that the incident was under review.

The strike hit a water distribution point in Nuseirat refugee camp, killing six children and injuring 17 others, said Ahmed Abu Saifan, an emergency physician at Al-Awda Hospital.

Water shortages in Gaza have worsened sharply in recent weeks, with fuel shortages causing desalination and sanitation facilities to close, making people dependent on collection centres where they can fill up their plastic containers.

Hours later, 12 people were killed by an Israeli strike on a market in Gaza City, including a prominent hospital consultant, Ahmad Qandil, Palestinian media reported. The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the attack.

Gaza’s health ministry said on Sunday that more than 58,000 people had been killed since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in October 2023, with 139 people added to the death toll over the past 24 hours, read the report.

The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and fighters in its tally, but says over half of those killed are women and children.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff said on Sunday that he was “hopeful” on Gaza ceasefire negotiations underway in Qatar.

He told reporters in Teterboro, New Jersey, that he planned to meet senior Qatari officials on the sidelines of the FIFA Club World Cup final.

However, negotiations aimed at securing a ceasefire have been stalling, with the two sides divided over the extent of an eventual Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian enclave, Palestinian and Israeli sources said at the weekend.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set to convene ministers late on Sunday to discuss the latest developments in the talks, an Israeli official said.

The indirect talks over a U.S. proposal for a 60-day ceasefire are being held in Doha, but optimism that surfaced last week of a looming deal has largely faded, with both sides accusing each other of intransigence, Reuters reported.

Netanyahu in a video he posted on Telegram on Sunday said Israel would not back down from its core demands – releasing all the hostages still in Gaza, destroying Hamas and ensuring Gaza will never again be a threat to Israel.

The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages into Gaza. At least 20 of the remaining 50 hostages there are believed to still be alive.

Families of hostages gathered outside Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem to call for a deal.

“The overwhelming majority of the people of Israel have spoken loudly and clearly. We want to do a deal, even at the cost of ending this war, and we want to do it now,” said Jon Polin, whose son Hersh Goldberg-Polin was held hostage by Hamas in a Gaza tunnel and slain by his captors in August 2024.

Netanyahu and his ministers were also set to discuss a plan on Sunday to move hundreds of thousands of Gazans to the southern area of Rafah, in what Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has described as a new “humanitarian city” but which would be likely to draw international criticism for forced displacement.

An Israeli source briefed on discussions in Israel said that the plan was to establish the complex in Rafah during the ceasefire, if it is reached.

On Saturday, a Palestinian source familiar with the truce talks said that Hamas rejected withdrawal maps which Israel proposed, because they would leave around 40% of the territory under Israeli control, including all of Rafah.

Israel’s campaign against Hamas has displaced almost the entire population of more than 2 million people, but Gazans say nowhere is safe in the coastal enclave, read the report.

Early on Sunday morning, a missile hit a house in Gaza City where a family had moved after receiving an evacuation order from their home in the southern outskirts.

“My aunt, her husband and the children, are gone. What is the fault of the children who died in an ugly bloody massacre at dawn?” said Anas Matar, standing in the rubble of the building.