Ukraine-Russia battle newest: Putin U-turns on Zelensky peace talks forward of London summit

Volodymyr Zelensky will visit Italy to attend Pope Francis’ funeral, a source in Ukraine’s presidential office told Reuters on Tuesday.

US president Donald Trump will also attend the funeral.

A Russian journalist facing up to a decade in prison for criticising the army has escaped house arrest and is wanted by police, Russian state media has reported.

Ekaterina Barabash, 63, was arrested in February on suspicion of spreading false information about the Russian military on social media.

Authorities were alerted to her disappearance on 13 April by an electronic monitoring system, AFP cited Tass state news agency as saying.

“The accused has been declared wanted,” the Moscow branch of Russia’s federal penitentiary service said according to Tass.

Barabash had been critical of the army while writing for multiple news outlets, and on Facebook accused them of having “razed whole cities to the ground”.

Criticising the army and its operations in Ukraine was made illegal shortly after Moscow’s invasion began, and authorities have launched thousands of cases against those it deemed critical.

Russia launched 54 drones at Ukrainian air defences in an overnight attack on Tuesday, Kyiv’s air force said.

A total of 38 drones were shot down and another 16 did not reach their targets, likely due to electronic warfare countermeasures.

Russian forces have retaken a monastery in Russia’s Kursk region where Ukrainian troops had been holed up, state media reported on Tuesday.

Tass news agency quoted a security source as saying Russian forces had captured the St Nicholas Belogorsky monastery in the village of Gornal.

The claim has not yet been independently verified, and Ukraine is yet to comment.

A Russian military Telegram channel said Ukraine had deployed troops, artillery and drone launchers at the historic site, which it said Russia had retaken after 10 days of fierce fighting.

Russia is close to expelling the last Ukrainian troops from Kursk region, where they smashed across the border in a shock incursion last August.

Moscow responded by sending in heavy reinforcements, including soldiers from its ally North Korea.

Russian forces launched a mass overnight drone attack on residential areas of Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odesa, triggering fires and damaging many apartments, local officials said early this morning.

“The enemy targeted a residential area in a densely populated district of Odesa,” mayor Hennadiy Trukhanov wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

He posted pictures of a fire blazing out of control and apartment buildings with windows smashed and facades damaged.

Regional governor Oleh Kiper said the attack damaged dwellings, civilian infrastructure, an educational institution and vehicles.

Emergency crews had been dispatched to the affected areas and information on casualties was being clarified, Kiper said.

Odesa, with its three ports, has been a frequent target of Russian attacks in the more than three-year-old conflict with Russia.

Russian officials discussed reviving proposals for the construction of a Trump Tower in Moscow as part of their bid to entice Donald Trump to reset ties between the two countries, according to a report in the Moscow Times citing Kremlin officials.

The “big deal” involving Mr Trump would also include inviting him to attend the ground-breaking ceremony in Moscow, the report said.

It is unclear where the proposal stands now, according to the Kyiv Independent. The reports came as Mr Trump said he would reveal his peace plan to end the Russia-Ukraine war later this week.

Russia’s air defence units destroyed 10 Ukrainian drones overnight, downing half of them over the Crimean Peninsula, RIA news agency reported on Tuesday citing Russian defence ministry data.

US president Donald Trump says he will reveal his proposed peace plan to end the Russia-Ukraine war later this week.

“I will be giving you a full detail over the next three days,” Mr Trump told reporters. “But we had very good meetings on Ukraine, Russia … We’ll see how that works.”

Among the terms included are a deployment of European peacekeeping forces to Ukraine, reported the New York Post citing a senior official from the Trump administration.

“The hard part is what does a security force look like – we’re calling that a ‘resiliency force,’” the official said.

Worshippers coming out of a Catholic church service in the Ukrainian city of Lviv yesterday expressed sorrow at the death of Pope Francis, but also lingering hurt that the Roman Catholic pontiff had not taken Ukraine’s side in its war with Russia.

The pontiff was quoted as saying in a 2024 interview with a Swiss broadcaster that Ukraine should have “the courage of the white flag”, and sue for peace to end the conflict with Russia.

Those comments differed sharply from the view held by Ukraine’s government, and its Western allies, that they have a moral imperative to defeat an unjust and unprovoked invasion by Russia.

“There were certain subjective judgments from his side, unfortunately,” said Andriy Ben, a former fighter in the Ukrainian military, referring to Pope Francis.

“I am not going to comment on this,” he said outside the church in Lviv. “I hope that the next pope will be wiser, more enlightened, and better.”

Another worshipper coming out of the church, 57-year-old Oleh Yakymiak, said the late pontiff did much in his life that was good.

“We understand that the good things he did are so much bigger than the painful thing he did to us,” said Mr Yakymiak.