Ukraine-Russia battle newest: Ceasefire talks resume in Saudi Arabia as Trump envoy Witkoff praises Putin

Officials from Ukraine and Russia are holding ceasefire talks in Saudi Arabia, as US president Donald Trump reportedly pushes to secure a truce in time for Easter.

Kyiv’s delegation sat down with Washington’s team in Riyadh on Sunday night, with Moscow set to separately follow suit on Monday – in what are believed to be the first such parallel peace talks since the early days of Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion.

Here, The Independent takes a look at what to expect from the US-led talks in Saudi Arabia, which came just hours after Russia killed seven people – including a five-year-old child – in overnight drone strikes on Kyiv, and four people in Donetsk:

Russian president Vladimir Putin‘s top security adviser Sergei Shoigu has landed in North Korea and plans to meet its leader Kim Jong Un, the TASS news agency reported on Friday, his latest visit amid dramatic advances in security relations between the two countries.

The TASS report did not provide further details and North Korea’s state media did not report on Mr Shoigu’s arrival.

Mr Shoigu, Russia’s defence minister until last May and secretary of the Security Council since then, had earlier made visits to Pyongyang as North Korea allegedly geared up to deploy soldiers to fight for Russia in its war against Ukraine.

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In remarks that will do little to assuage European fears that the White House is increasingly parroting Kremlin propaganda, Donald Trump’s special envoy has claimed that the “elephant in the room” in peace talks is whether Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky can acknowledge Moscow’s claimed right to Crimea and four “Russian-speaking” regions in eastern Ukraine.

Despite being unable to name two of the four mainland regions – which Mr Putin partly occupies, and attempted to illegally annex following sham referenda in September 2022 – and using the Russian name for a third, Steve Witkoff said he believed the “central issue” in the conflict was whether Ukraine would relent control of them to Moscow.

Claiming an “overwhelming majority” of residents in the contested regions had indicated a preference for Russian rule, despite reports of ballots being cast at gunpoint, Mr Witkoff went on to claim that “the Russians are de facto in control of these territories”.

Many thousands of Ukrainians have given their lives to defend territory in Donetsk and Luhansk since 2014, and in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson since Russia’s full-scale invasion three years ago. While Moscow currently controls most of Donetsk and Luhansk, they hold minimal territory in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, with fierce fighting still ongoing in all four regions.

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Ukraine’s defence minister Rustem Umerov said talks with the US delegation in Saudi Arabia on Sunday were “constructive and meaningful”.

“We discussed key issues, particularly the energy sector,” Mr Umerov said in a post on social media.

Mr Umerov led the Ukrainian delegation for the talks on Sunday, which will be followed by a meeting between Russian and US officials on Monday – marking the first such parallel peace talks since the early days of Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion.

At the this moment of peril for our continent, it has never been more important for politicians to say what we really think.

So when I give my speech to Liberal Democrat conference, it won’t surprise you that I’ll be talking a lot about Donald Trump and Nigel Farage. But it might surprise you that I’m also going to talk about church roofs. (Stay with me on this please… I know it sounds weird, but I am a Liberal Democrat.)

I know what you’re thinking and you’re right. It’s easy for me to criticise Trump, since I’m not the prime minister and I don’t have to sit across from him in the Oval Office. But let me tell you something: week after week I look at the Labour benches as I tell Keir Starmer that Donald Trump is an unreliable ally, and I see most of the cabinet trying desperately not to nod in agreement.

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The Ukrainian delegation at Sunday’s meeting with the U.S. will be led by defence minister Rustem Umerov. President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier said this fact would allow Kyiv to act in a “very quick and very substantive” way.

However, Ukrainian officials have said they still see Sunday’s meeting in Riyadh as purely technical.

Heorhii Tykhyi, foreign ministry spokesperson, said on Friday the Ukrainian and American sides were due “to clarify the modalities, the nuances of possible different ceasefire regimes, how to monitor them, how to control them, in general, what is included in their scope”.

Last Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to Trump’s proposal for Russia and Ukraine to stop attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure for 30 days and ordered the Russian military to cease them.

The agreement fell short, however, of a wider agreement that the U.S. had sought, and which Kyiv backed, for a blanket 30-day truce in the war.

Russia’s Security Council secretary Sergei Shoigu thanked Kim Jong Un for North Korea’s ongoing support in its war against Ukraine during a visit today, Russian state-owned news agency Tass reported.

In late February, South Korea’s spy agency said North Korea appeared to have sent additional troops to Russia. South Korean media put the number of newly sent North Korean soldiers at about 1,000 to 3,000.

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Ukrainians at the scene of the attacks in Kyiv surveyed the damage done to their homes and neighborhoods on Sunday morning.

Many were disparaging of the upcoming ceasefire talks, pointing to the burned out homes destroyed in the drone attack, saying these were more indicative of Russia’s true intentions.

In an old multistory building on Kyiv’s left bank that was damaged in the overnight attack, Dmytro Zapadnya, 37, said he had no faith in Russia upholding any ceasefire agreement.

“There is no point in signing anything (with Russians), because it will not be worth the cost of paper where you put this signature. Well, the only thing that is not very pleasant is that now the United States seems to have little understanding of our situation,” he said.

A trio of U.S. and European officials familiar with intelligence details of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine told Reuters that the situation on the ground does not reflect the comments made by Trump and Putin.

One of the U.S. officials also said that the White House was briefed on the actual situation in Ukraine, so it’s unclear why Trump has and continues to claim that Ukrainian troops in Russia’s Kursk region are surrounded.

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The conversation on Wednesday was described as positive by both sides and was mainly aimed at securing a truce between Ukraine and Russia on aerial attacks against one another’s energy infrastructure.

Mr Zelensky suggested the call had focused on the US takeover of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which is under Russian control.

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