Russia masses more than 50,000 troops for offensive on north-eastern Ukraine, Zelenskyy says
Russia has massed more than 50,000 troops, including some of its best forces, near Ukraine’s north-eastern Sumy region, but Kyiv has taken steps to prevent them from conducting a large-scale offensive, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, according to Reuters.
The buildup comes as Russia appears to be gearing up for a summer offensive in Ukraine while Kyiv waits for Moscow to present a memorandum laying out its conditions to proceed with ceasefire talks.
Sumy lies across the border from Russia’s Kursk region where Ukraine previously seized and held a pocket of land for months, before being almost fully pushed out last month, although it says it still holds some small areas there.
“Their largest, strongest forces are currently on the Kursk front,” Zelenskyy told reporters on Tuesday. “To push our troops out of the Kursk region and to prepare offensive actions against the Sumy region.”
Vladimir Putin has said he wants a “buffer zone” along Russia’s border with Ukraine. Zelenskyy said he believed Russia wants to carve out an area of Ukrainian territory about 10km (6 miles) deep.
Russia has captured at least four border villages in the region recently, and has been creeping slowly forwards over the past several weeks on parts of the frontline in eastern Ukraine near the city of Kostiantynivka. However, the Ukrainian leader said that the Russians had been pushed back in that area by 4km (2.5 miles) over two days, reports Reuters.
Zelenskyy told reporters in a briefing that his government was ready for further peace talks in any format. He said he expected the next round to be at a technical level, but said he would be ready for a three-way meeting with US president Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin.
He said he did not want the United States to leave the Ukraine peace process, as Washington has threatened to do if progress is not made.
Key events
Turkey’s foreign minister will travel to Kyiv on Thursday for a two-day visit after discussing peace efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine in Moscow earlier this week, a Turkish foreign ministry source told Reuters on Wednesday.
Foreign minister Hakan Fidan held talks in Moscow on Monday and Tuesday, meeting Russian president Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials, including Moscow’s top negotiator at talks in Istanbul earlier this month aimed at ending the three-year war.
In Kyiv, Fidan is expected to meet Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, prime minister Denys Shmyhal, his Ukrainian counterpart Andrii Sybiha, and defence minister Rustem Umerov, who is also Kyiv’s top negotiator with Russia, the source said.
During the talks, Fidan will repeat an offer to host further peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, the source added.
He will “point to the increasingly heavier negative effects of the Russia-Ukraine war, emphasising the need for the war to end through diplomacy, and for a fair and lasting peace to be achieved,” the source told Reuters.
Fidan will also discuss bilateral ties, in relation to trade, energy, defence and security, while conveying Turkey’s readiness to take part in Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction.
Russia is under increasing pressure to agree a ceasefire, and Ankara has repeatedly said the sides need to continue talks after the first direct contact between the sides since March 2022 – also in Istanbul – took place earlier this month.
Delegates from Moscow and Kyiv did not agree on a ceasefire in Istanbul this month, but agreed to trade 1,000 prisoners of war and deliver, in writing, their conditions for a possible ceasefire.
Russian sources have said that Nato member Turkey, which has maintained good ties with both sides since the start of the war, could be a venue for future talks.
A meeting between Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US president Donald Trump would be possible only after Kyiv and Moscow reach “concrete agreements”, the Kremlin said on Wednesday in response to Zelenskyy’s call for a three-way summit (see 8.43am BST).
“Such a meeting should be the result of concrete agreements between the [Ukrainian and Russian] delegations,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.
Russian troops took control of the settlement of Kostyantynivka in Ukraine’s Sumy region and Zelene Pole in the Donetsk region, the Russian defence ministry said on Wednesday.
Reuters could not independently confirm the battlefield report.
After a joint press conference with chancellor Friedrich Merz and talks with German business leaders, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is due to meet German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier at Bellevue Palace.
Putin, for Ukraine peace, wants a pledge to halt Nato enlargement, sources tell Reuters
President Vladimir Putin’s conditions for ending the war in Ukraine include a demand that western leaders pledge in writing to stop enlarging Nato eastwards and lift a chunk of sanctions on Russia, reports Reuters citing three Russian sources with knowledge of the negotiations.
“Putin is ready to make peace but not at any price,” said one senior Russian source with knowledge of top-level Kremlin thinking, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.
The three Russian sources told Reuters that Putin wants a “written” pledge by major western powers not to enlarge the US-led Nato alliance eastwards – shorthand for formally ruling out membership to Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova and other former Soviet republics.
Kyiv has repeatedly said that Russia should not be granted veto power over its aspirations to join the Nato alliance. Ukraine says it needs the west to give it a strong security guarantee with teeth to deter any future Russian attack.
Nato has also in the past said that it will not change its “open door” policy just because Moscow demands it. A spokesperson for the 32-member alliance did not respond to Reuters’ questions.
Russia also wants Ukraine to be neutral, some western sanctions lifted, a resolution of the issue of frozen Russian sovereign assets in the west, and protection for Russian speakers in Ukraine, the three sources said.
The first source told Reuters that, if Putin realises he is unable to reach a peace deal on his own terms, he will seek to show the Ukrainians and the Europeans by military victories that “peace tomorrow will be even more painful”.
The Kremlin did not respond to a request for comment on Reuters’ reporting.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s administration also did not respond to a request by Reuters for comment.
Reuters reported in January that Putin was growing concerned by the economic distortions in Russia’s wartime economy, amid labour shortages and high interest rates imposed to curb inflation.
The first source told Reuters that if Putin saw a tactical opportunity on the battlefield, he would push further into Ukraine – and that the Kremlin believed Russia could fight on for years no matter what sanctions and economic pain were imposed by the west. A second source said that Putin was now less inclined to compromise on territory and was sticking to his public stance that he wanted the entirety of four regions in eastern Ukraine claimed by Russia.
“Putin has toughened his position,” the second source told Reuters of the question of territory.
Zelenskyy arrives in Berlin for talks with Germany’s Merz
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has arrived in Berlin for talks with the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, a Ukraine delegation member told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Russian air defences destroyed or intercepted more than 100 Ukrainian drones over various Russian regions, including a swarm of drones heading for Moscow, officials said early on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
Russia in the past week also sent waves of drones to attack Ukrainian cities, including what Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy described as the launch of more than 900 drones over a three-day period ending early on Monday morning.
Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin, writing in a series of posts on the Telegram messaging app, said defence ministry units had repelled 27 drones while they were travelling towards the Russian capital.
Reuters reports that Sobyanin made no mention of casualties or damage, saying only that recovery teams were examining drone fragments at the sites where they hit the ground.
Russia’s defence ministry had earlier said its units had downed 112 drones between 9pm and midnight Moscow time. Fifty-nine of those drones were intercepted over the Bryansk region on the Ukrainian border, with other incidents occurring in five different regions, it said. The governor of Bryansk region reported no casualties, but said a house and six cars had been damaged in the attack.
In Smolensk region, near the Polish border, the regional governor said 11 drones had been downed, with no casualties, reports Reuters.
The three-night Russian drone barrage against Ukraine struck a series of cities and represented one of the biggest such assaults since Moscow launched the full-scale war in early 2022. The strikes on Saturday night killed at least 12 people, Ukrainian officials said, including three children in the region of Zhytomyr, west of Kyiv.
Hours after Zelenskyy spoke, Ukraine unleashed one of its largest ever drone barrages on Russia, firing almost 300 drones at the country, according to the defence ministry in Moscow.
Russian officials reported only minimal damage from the attacks.
On the battlefield, Zelenskyy said that Russia was “amassing” more than 50,000 troops on the frontline around the north-eastern Sumy border region, where Moscow’s army has captured a number of settlements as it seeks to establish what Putin has called a “buffer zone” inside Ukrainian territory.
Russia to announce next talks with Ukraine soon, as Zelenskyy calls for three-way meeting with Trump and Putin
Russia will announce the next round of direct talks between Russia and Ukraine soon Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday.
The neutral status of Ukraine remains one of Russia’s key demands in the peace negotiations, Lavrov added, according to Reuters.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called for a three-way summit with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
Russian president Putin rejected calls to meet Zelenskyy in Turkey earlier this month and the Kremlin has said a meeting between the two leaders would only happen after some kind of “agreement” is reached.
The US president, meanwhile, has expressed frustration at both Putin and Zelenskyy for not yet striking a deal to end the war.
“If Putin is not comfortable with a bilateral meeting, or if everyone wants it to be a trilateral meeting, I don’t mind. I am ready for any format,” Zelenskyy said in comments to journalists on Tuesday that were published on Wednesday, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The Ukrainian leader said he was “ready” for a “Trump-Putin-me” meeting, and also urged Washington to hit Moscow with a package of hard-hitting sanctions on its banking and energy sector.
“We are waiting for sanctions from the United States of America,” Zelenskyy said, adding:
Trump confirmed that if Russia does not stop, sanctions will be imposed. We discussed two main aspects with him – energy and the banking system. Will the US be able to impose sanctions on these two sectors? I would very much like that.
The Ukrainian leader had previously appeared to express frustration at Washington for not having announced fresh sanctions on Moscow after Russia rejected a coordinated western appeal for an immediate ceasefire.
Zelenskyy also said that Ukraine is yet to receive a promised “memorandum” from Russia on its demands for a peace deal.
Opening summary
Today Volodymyr Zelenskyy will travel to Berlin to meet Friedrich Merz with speculation that the German chancellor could give the go-ahead to send long-awaited Taurus missiles to Ukraine.
However, Merz is facing criticism over such a move from his centre-left coalition partners, the Social Democrats. You can read our report here:
It also comes amid an escalating US-Russian war of words amid no progress towards any meaningful ceasefire.
Last night, top Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev, responding to Donald Trump’s warning that Vladimir Putin is “playing with fire”, said that the only truly bad thing to worry about was “WWIII”. Medvedev wrote on X:
Regarding Trump’s words about Putin “playing with fire” and “really bad things” happening to Russia. I only know of one REALLY BAD thing – WWIII. I hope Trump understands this!
On Wednesday, Zelenskyy said that Ukraine is yet to receive a promised “memorandum” from Russia on its demands for a peace deal. In comments to reporters released on Wednesday, Zelenskyy said Russia had pledged to “convey what they see as the next steps and whether Russia is capable of supporting a ceasefire”, adding that Ukraine would “read their proposals and definitely respond” once it receives them.
More on this story in a moment, but first, here are some other key updates:
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called for a three-way summit with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. “If Putin is not comfortable with a bilateral meeting, or if everyone wants it to be a trilateral meeting, I don’t mind. I am ready for any format,” Zelenskyy said in comments published on Wednesday.
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Russian defence minister Andrei Belousov said on Wednesday that the US-led Nato military alliance was using the Ukrainian crisis to build up its presence across eastern Europe and the Baltic, Russian news agencies reported.
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Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, called Medvedev’s third world war comment “reckless” and called on Russia to “cease fire immediately” and provide a promised but undelivered peace process memorandum.
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Zelenskyy said Russia is amassing “more than 50,000” troops on the frontline around the north-eastern Sumy border region, where Moscow’s army has captured a number of settlements as it seeks to establish a “buffer zone” inside Ukrainian territory. “Now they are also amassing troops in the Sumy direction. More than 50,000,” Zelensky told reporters on Tuesday, in remarks published on Wednesday.
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A major Ukrainian drone attack late over Tuesday night into Wednesday led to at least two Moscow airports, Vnukovo and Zhukovsky, suspending flights, Russian authorities said. The defence ministry said 112 Ukrainian drones targeted six different regions in the three hours up to midnight.
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Russian drones hit the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, injuring eight people including a child, the regional military governor said on Wednesday morning. Ukraine’s air force issued an air raid alert due to drones across regions including Kharkiv, Sumy, Odesa, Kyiv and others.