In February, the US defence secretary Pete Hegseth said that Nato membership for Ukraine was unrealistic and suggested Kyiv should abandon hopes of winning all its territory back from Russia and instead prepare for a negotiated peace settlement to be backed up by international troops. Hours later, US President Donald Trump said he and Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to begin negotiations on ending the Ukraine war. Trump has since threatened to abandon peace-making efforts in Ukraine as he has become frustrated with the lack of progress in negotiations, which are seen by many observers to be favouring Moscow over Kyiv. The Kremlin has said the Trump administration ruling out Nato membership for Ukraine gave Moscow a sense of “satisfaction”. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov made the comments in his regular media briefing with journalists. “We have heard from Washington at various levels that Ukraine’s membership in NATO is excluded,” he said. “Of course, this is something that causes our satisfaction and coincides with our position.” Peskov said that Ukrainian membership of the US-led alliance would “pose a threat to the national interests of the Russian Federation. And, in fact, this is one of the root causes of this conflict.” Ukraine has made membership of Nato a key strategic aim that it says would help protect the country in the event of future Russian aggression. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has long questioned Ukraine’s right to exist as a sovereign country, has repeatedly opposed the idea of Ukraine joining the western alliance, which he sees as a security threat, expanding ever closer to its borders. As a reminder of developments over the weekend: Ukraine and Russia conducted a swap of more than 500 prisoners of war on Saturday. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said on Telegram 277 Ukrainian service personnel had returned home from Russian captivity. Russia’s defence ministry said 246 servicemen had been handed over by Kyiv. It said a further 31 injured prisoners of war had been handed over to Ukraine and 15 of its own injured servicemen had also been returned by Kyiv. Zelenskyy thanked the UAE for its mediation, saying a total of 4,552 Ukrainians – service personnel and civilians – had been returned since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. The Russian defence ministry said yesterday that Ukraine had lost more than 75,000 soldiers and more than 400 tanks in total in Russia’s Kursk region. Military officials say they are continuing to repel Ukrainian soldiers in the region. We have not been able to independently verify either claim. Russia’s defence ministry said on Saturday that its forces had pushed Ukrainian troops from the village of Oleshnya, one of their last remaining footholds in the Kursk region. Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on X that Ukrainian forces “continued their activity on the territory of the Kursk region and are holding their positions”. The airborne assault forces of the armed forces of Ukraine said in a Facebook post that its soldiers have helped capture nine Russian servicemen in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces staged a surprise incursion last year. “Nine servicemen of the Russian army were taken by paratroopers and allied units in Kursk. The prisoners were provided with timely medical and psychological assistance,” the airborne assault forces wrote in the social media post, adding that the Russian soldiers had “surrendered to Ukrainian soldiers”. Luke Harding, a Guardian foreign correspondent, writes that the Easter ceasefire declaration came amid reports that the White House was ready to recognise Russian control of Crimea as part of a broad US proposal to end the war in Ukraine. Here is an extract from his piece: According to sources cited by Bloomberg, the US may be willing to give Putin a strategic victory and to accept Russian control over the peninsula. In 2014, Russian special forces seized Crimea, which Putin annexed after a sham referendum. US diplomatic recognition would violate the UN charter and the post-1945 consensus that countries cannot seize territory by force. Most states, including the UK, have refused to recognise Russia’s illegal takeover. The possible concession to Moscow from the White House is likely to provoke criticism from the US’s one-time European allies and a furious backlash in Ukraine. It comes as Donald Trump said on Friday the US may “move on” if no peace deal can be agreed… Talks over a settlement are due to continue this week in London. Leaks suggest the US is pushing for a Kremlin-friendly agreement that would see Russia keep occupied areas in the south and east of Ukraine, as well as Crimea. It is also considering lifting sanctions on Moscow and other “carrots”, the New York Post reported. By contrast, Trump has heaped pressure on Ukraine, in effect cutting off military assistance and demanding a share of the country’s lucrative mineral wealth. In a freshly issued statement, the Russian military has confirmed that its forces have resumed strikes on Ukraine after the surprise “Easter truce”. “With the end of the ceasefire, the armed forces of the Russian Federation continued to conduct the special military operation,” the Russian military said. The “special military operation” is what Russian officials call Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which was launched by the Kremlin in February 2022. The Russian defence ministry claimed the country’s military “strictly observed the ceasefire and remained at the previously occupied lines and positions”. This stands in contrast from the ceasefire violations Ukraine has reported since the Easter truce was announced by Vladimir Putin on Saturday. Ukrainian forces reported nearly 3,000 violations of Russia’s ceasefire with the heaviest attacks and shelling seen along the Pokrovsk part of the frontline, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday. In the Kherson region, three people were killed and three injured in Russian attacks over the past day, its governor Oleksandr Prokudin reported in a post on Telegram. He said that Russian forces targeted residential areas and a store in the attacks. Among those killed in the Kherson region was a woman who was hit by a drone while walking down the street, according to Gyunduz Mamedov, a former deputy prosecutor general of Ukraine. We have not yet been able to independently verify these claims and reports. Welcome back to our live coverage of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Ukraine’s military has reported Russian drone attacks on several regions overnight, hours after the 30 hour “Easter ceasefire” declared by Vladimir Putin came to an end. In a televised meeting with his commander-in-chief on Saturday, the Russian president said the temporary ceasefire would last from 6pm Moscow time (4pm BST) on Saturday until midnight (10pm BST) on Sunday. Putin claimed he had ordered his forces to “stop all military activity” along the frontline during this window for “humanitarian reasons”. But both Kyiv and Moscow accused each other of violating the ceasefire, with drone strikes and shelling. Ukraine’s air force said today that Russia launched 96 drones and three missiles in overnight attacks targeting Ukraine, causing damage in the Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Cherkasy regions. Air defence units shot down 42 Russian drones, and another 47 drones were redirected by electronic warfare, the air force wrote in a post on Telegram. Air raid alerts have reportedly been activated in Kyiv, Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, Cherkasy, Mykolaiv and Zaporizhzhia. There were no immediate reports of injuries or major damages from the attacks, regional Ukrainian officials said on social media. In some other developments: Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed Vladimir Putin’s Easter ceasefire declaration as a fake “PR” exercise and said Russian troops had continued their drone and artillery attacks across many parts of the frontline on Sunday. He claimed Moscow had violated its own ceasefire thousands of times. Washington said it would welcome an extension of the truce, and Zelenskyy said Ukraine would pause strikes for 30 days. Putin, however, did not give orders to extend the 30 hour truce beyond Sunday. Donald Trump used the situation to claim that a breakthrough was within a few days’ reach. “Hopefully Russia and Ukraine will make a deal this week,” he posted on Sunday. “Both will then start to do big business with the United States of America, which is thriving, and make a fortune.” On Friday, Trump said he would end US peace efforts unless the two sides showed movement. Russia’s Voronezh region that borders Ukraine was under air raid alerts for two hours overnight, the region’s governor said on Telegram. Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday that Ukrainian forces had shot at Russian positions 444 times and said it had counted more than 900 Ukrainian drone attacks, saying also that there were deaths and injuries among the civilian population.
Author: Yohannes Lowe