Ukraine-Russia war latest: Putin’s forces hit apartments in Kyiv with overnight drone attack, officials say

As Donald Trump’s envoy to the Center East, Steve Witkoff has additionally emerged on the forefront of negotiations with Russia over its conflict in Ukraine – from a perch that didn’t require Senate affirmation.

Witkoff, who runs an actual property growth and funding agency, is a longtime good friend and golf associate of Trump. He performed a much less seen position throughout Trump’s first time period, serving on the board of trustees for the John F Kennedy Heart for the Performing Arts.

Witkoff first met Trump within the Eighties, when he labored for an actual property legislation agency that dealt with a deal for Trump, himself an actual property developer, in response to testimony Witkoff gave within the president’s civil fraud trial in 2023.

Witkoff testified that a number of years later, he bumped into Trump at a deli. Trump didn’t have cash with him and requested Witkoff to order him a ham and Swiss cheese sandwich. Years later once they met once more, Trump remembered the sandwich and the 2 grew to become pals, Witkoff stated.

He’s been greater than a good friend. Witkoff has donated tens of millions to Trump’s political causes over time. He additionally partnered with Trump on the president’s household cryptocurrency enterprise, World Liberty Monetary.

Michelle L Value and Aamer Madhani have extra on this report:

Russia has launched an in a single day drone assault on Kyiv, hitting residence buildings and sparking a number of fires all through Ukraine’s capital, officers have stated.

Emergency providers had been dispatched to Kyiv’s historic Podil district after drones hit two high-rise residence buildings there and began fires, stated Timur Tkachenko, the top of the capital’s army administration.

Mayor Vitali Klitschko urged folks to remain in shelters, however stated there have been no fast studies of accidents from the assaults that additionally sparked fires in at the very least two different districts of the capital. Kyiv, its surrounding area and the jap half of Ukraine had been underneath air raid alerts on Saturday evening.

Reuters workers reported listening to a number of blasts in what gave the impression of air defence items in operation.

Moldovan authorities have issued a world needed discover for a lacking pro-Russian member of parliament, who disappeared the day he was handed a 12-year jail sentence on corruption fees.

A second pro-Russian parliamentarian, as a result of be sentenced subsequent week, has additionally disappeared, officers stated.

Each are associates of Ilan Shor, a fugitive enterprise magnate additionally jailed for his half in a mass fraud scheme who now leads a political celebration from exile in Moscow. Moldova’s pro-European authorities accuses him of making an attempt to destabilise Chisinau.

The warrant for politician Alexandr Nesterovschi was issued late on Friday and inside minister Daniela Misail-Nichitin stated makes an attempt to find him had failed. Authorities in neighbouring Ukraine and Romania had discovered no hint of him. Ms Misail-Nichitin stated police had thought-about whether or not Nesterovschi, who was granted Russian citizenship as his sentence was being introduced, was hiding within the Russian embassy, however that had proved to be unfaithful.

Mr Nesterovschi was accused of accepting cash from a legal group to finance the actions of Shor’s “Victory” bloc. Politician Irina Lozovan, awaiting sentencing on related fees, has additionally disappeared.

Shor was sentenced to fifteen years in jail two years in the past in reference to the disappearance of $1bn from the banking system in Moldova’s “theft of the century” in 2014-15. He fled initially to Israel then to Moscow, now has Russian citizenship and has evaded all makes an attempt to extradite him.

Moldovan courts have banned political events linked to Shor, who has organised noisy anti-government protests within the capital.

With Donald Trump floating the concept of taking management of Ukraine’s nuclear energy crops, my colleague Tom Watling has this report on the situation and particulars of the amenities within the US president’s sights:

Ukraine’s army have reported 70 fight clashes alongside the frontline to date on Saturday as of 4pm native time.

The heaviest preventing was as soon as once more reported within the course of Pokrovsk, the important thing Donetsk metropolis which has for months been central in Vladimir Putin’s sights – an axis of preventing by which the casualty fee is believed to be significantly excessive since preventing intensified there final 12 months.

The final workers of Ukraine’s armed forces stated of their replace on Saturday afternoon that Russia’s forces had additionally launched artillery assaults in Sumy, Chernihiv and Karkhiv, with preventing ongoing within the latter area, close to the settlement of Vovchansk.

Police have stated they don’t seem to be treating the loss of life of Oleg Gordievsky – an 86-year-old Soviet KGB officer who helped change the course of the Chilly Warfare by covertly passing secrets and techniques to Britain – as suspicious.

Historians think about Gordievsky one of many period’s most essential spies. Within the Eighties, his intelligence helped keep away from a harmful escalation of nuclear tensions between the USSR and the West.

Born in Moscow in 1938, Gordievsky joined the KGB within the early Nineteen Sixties, serving in Moscow, Copenhagen and London, the place he grew to become KGB station chief. He was one in all a number of Soviet brokers who grew disillusioned with the USSR after Moscow’s tanks crushed the Prague Spring freedom motion in 1968, and was recruited by Britain’s MI6 within the early Nineteen Seventies. He has lived in England since defecting in 1985.

Surrey Police stated on Saturday that officers had been referred to as to an deal with in Godalming on 4 March, the place “an 86-year-old man was discovered useless on the property”. It stated counterterrorism officers are main the investigation, however “the loss of life just isn’t presently being handled as suspicious” and “there’s nothing to recommend any elevated danger to members of the general public”.

For Donald Trump, talks with the Kremlin are a path to ending the Ukraine battle as quick as doable. And if there’s a Nobel Peace Prize in it for him, all effectively and good. Securing some nice offers for US enterprise could be even higher. For Vladimir Putin, then again, talks are a path to victory and to the victor, the spoils. To get there, the KGB veteran has learn Trump like a e-book.

Trump is obsessed by his picture because the king of the artwork of the deal. Putin has clocked that and is simply too pleased to supply Trump the prospect of each form of deal he can to con the White Home into handing over one thing far more worthwhile. Renewed affect over Ukraine, a lifting of sanctions and a future the place Russia is handled as an important energy once more.

Learn the complete evaluation from Owen Matthews under:

With Ukraine’s troops having retreated from swathes of territory seized throughout their incursion into Russia’s Kursk area final August, the Reuters information company has spoken to some Ukrainians who’ve solid doubt over the operation’s efficacy.

Mariia Pankova, whose good friend Pavlo Humeniuk has been lacking for almost 4 months after being deployed to Kursk, stated tearfully: “I’m simply unsure it was price it, including: “We’re not invaders. We simply want our territories again, we don’t want the Russian one.”

Soldier Oleksii Deshevyi, a 32-year-old former grocery store safety guard who misplaced his hand whereas preventing in Kursk in September, stated he noticed no logic within the operation.

“We should always not have began this operation in any respect,” he stated, talking in a rehabilitation centre in Kyiv, the place he has spent the previous six months adjusting to life after harm.

But regardless of her doubts over the operation in Kursk, with Donald Trump now negotiating with Vladimir Putin in a bid to finish Russia’s conflict, Ms Pankova solid doubt over the potential for a peace deal which prevents Russia from returning to grab extra Ukrainian land – and is herself contemplating becoming a member of Kyiv’s armed forces.

“Each time that somebody tries to, as an instance, promote some piece of Ukraine, they simply have to not neglect what we already gave,” she stated. “What number of lives our folks gave for that.”