Here’s where things stand on Thursday, May 29:
Fighting
- Ukraine’s military has said it struck several Russian weapons production sites in or around Moscow during a major overnight drone attack, including the Angstrem microchip factory, the Kronstadt plant and the Raduga plant.
- Russia said its air defence units downed three Ukrainian drones targeting Moscow in the early hours of Thursday morning. One of the drones reportedly hit a dwelling south of the city, but caused no casualties or serious damage.
- Russian troops have taken control of the town of Kostiantynivka in Ukraine’s Sumy region as well as the village of Zelene Pole in the Donetsk region, the Defence Ministry in Moscow said.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia has massed more than 50,000 troops near the northeastern Sumy region, but Kyiv has taken steps to prevent them from conducting a large-scale summer offensive as anticipated.
- Nearly 175,000 servicemen have signed Russian army contracts since the beginning of this year, Russia’s TASS state news agency reported.
Diplomacy
- United States President Donald Trump again expressed frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the intensifying Ukraine conflict, a day after warning Putin that he was “playing with fire” by resisting ceasefire talks while escalating drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian cities.
- Trump said Putin may be intentionally delaying negotiations on a ceasefire and told reporters in the Oval Office, “We’re going to find out whether or not he’s tapping us along or not, and if he is, we’ll respond a little differently”.
- Trump also told reporters that he is not yet prepared to impose new sanctions on Russia because he did not want the penalties to scuttle a potential peace deal.
- The Kremlin, responding to Trump’s remarks, said national interests were paramount to the Russian leader.
- US Secretary of State Marco Rubio doubled down on Trump’s calls for a “good faith dialogue” between Ukraine and Russia as the only path to ending the war when he spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
- Russia has proposed holding the next round of direct talks with Ukraine on June 2 in Istanbul, Lavrov said.
- Ukraine’s defence minister, Rustem Umerov, recently held a call with the head of the Russian delegation in previous Istanbul talks to discuss the memorandum Moscow is currently working on, laying out its conditions for a peace accord.
- Ukraine has already handed over its version of the peace memorandum to Russia and urged Moscow to share its version before peace talks can take place.
- Turkiye’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, will travel to Kyiv for a two-day visit after discussing peace efforts in Moscow earlier this week.
- Ukraine has protested to the International Atomic Energy Agency about reports that Moscow is connecting the Ukrainian Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which Russia occupies, to its own power grid.
Regional security
- NATO will ask Germany to provide seven more brigades, some 40,000 troops, for the alliance’s defence, the Reuters news agency reports, as it dramatically increases its military capability in light of Russia’s growing threat.
- German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, speaking during a visit of President Zelenskyy to Berlin, said his government will “intensify cooperation” with Kyiv and will not impose range limits on missiles jointly produced by the two countries.
- Germany also announced it would provide additional military support for Ukraine amounting to about 5 billion euros ($5.65bn).
- Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said Germany’s plans to jointly develop long-range missiles with Ukraine, as well as supplies of German tanks to Kyiv, showed it was already a participant in the Russia-Ukraine war.
- German prosecutors have charged three people – a Ukrainian, a Russian and an Armenian – with foreign agent activity, on suspicion of spying on a Ukrainian man in Germany with the possible aim of killing him.
