Ukraine-Russia war latest: Nato ‘waiting for Trump’ over key decision as Putin’s planes ‘stole children’

A top Russian official has said there are no grounds yet for negotiations on how to bring the war in Ukraine to an end.

“There are no grounds for negotiations yet,” the Kremlin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the Izvestia newspaper, reiterating Moscow’s long-standing position on the talks.

“Many countries have declared their readiness to provide their territory... And we are grateful to all countries for such goodwill, including Qatar.”

Qatar has mediated several returns of Ukrainian children taken to Russia from the conflict zone since the start of the war. Thousands of civilians, the vast majority of them Ukrainians, have been killed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022.

Valentina Matviyenko, speaker of the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament, said on Monday that there could be attempts to begin peace talks with Ukraine in 2025.

Russian presidential aircraft and funds were used in a program that took children from occupied Ukrainian territories, stripped them of Ukrainian identity and placed them with Russian families, according to a report by Yale’s School of Public Health.

The US State Department-backed research, published yesterday, identified 314 Ukrainian children taken to Russia in the early months of the war in Ukraine as part of what it says was a systematic, Kremlin-funded program to “Russify” them.

In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Russian president Vladimir Putin and his child rights’ commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, for the alleged war crime of deportation of Ukrainian children.

The new research, reported first by Reuters, offers details of the alleged deportation programme and individuals involved, including what its lead researcher said were new links to Putin.

The researcher, Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab, said he was scheduled to present the findings to the UN security council today. The US holds the rotating presidency of the 15-member body this month.

Mr Raymond said the research offers evidence that would support additional charges by the ICC against Putin of “forcible transfer” of people from one national and ethnic group to another.

Volodymyr Zelensky called for major reinforcement of sectors in eastern Ukraine of the 1,000-km (600-mile) frontline, where Russian forces have made consistent gains in recent months.

Analysts and war bloggers say that Russian forces in the east are advancing at the fastest rate since the early days of the February 2022 invasion.

Mr Zelensky issued his appeal as Russia’s defence ministry said its troops had captured two new frontline villages – one in Donetsk region, the main focus of the 33-month-old war, the other further south in Zaporizhzhia region.

The president was speaking in his nightly video address after a discussion with Ukraine‘s top commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi. He said much depended on Ukraine‘s Western allies providing vital weaponry in a timely manner.

“The Donetsk directions require significant reinforcement. This particularly involves the supply of weapons from our partners,” Mr Zelensky said.

“It’s a direct relationship: The greater our army’s firepower and technological capabilities, the more we can destroy Russia’s offensive potential and protect the lives of our soldiers.”

James Nixey of the Chatham House think-tank has warned that any part of Ukraine being in Nato would be unacceptable to Vladimir Putin, after Volodymyr Zelensky said he could accept territory being temporarily ceded to Russia in exchange for security assurances from the alliance.

“After all, [Nato] is, for him, an abhorrence. Putin doesn’t want a pause anyway – he believes he’s on the brink of an historic and strategic victory, kindly deal-sealed by Donald Trump,” Mr Nixey told The Independent.

The Foreign Secretary has called on Nato allies to “get serious” about the need to increase defence spending.

David Lammy was in Brussels for a meeting of the alliance’s foreign ministers when he said “the time to act is now” – although the Government is yet to set out its own plans for increasing spending on defence to 2.5% of gross domestic product.

Mr Lammy said: “We’re living in very dangerous times, and as we look across the world, with war here on our continent in Europe, with the tremendous aggression that we’re seeing across the Middle East, with the hand of Iran so present in the Middle East and with this rising conflict in Sudan and now in Syria, there is one country whose hand is in so much of it, and that is Russia.

“And that is why, as we meet here discussing these important issues, it’s hugely important that we step up defence spending, across Nato allies particularly.”