The publications' latest report covers the period of February 24, 2022 to May 8, 2025. Since it was last updated at the end of April, 2,857 additional Russian military personnel have been confirmed killed.
Hungary cancelled a meeting planned for May 12 with a Ukrainian delegation on the rights of national minorities, Hungary's Deputy Foreign Minister said on May 11, amid a deepening spying scandal between the two countries.
Three were injured in Russia's Kursk Oblast when the town of Rylsk was allegedly struck by a missile attack on May 11, local governor Alexander Khinshtein claimed.
This week, the world watched in anticipation for Russia’s Victory Day parade after President Volodymyr Zelensky commented that he could not guarantee the safety of those attending. Meanwhile, the European Union moves one step forward to banning Russian gas from the European continent. It is also revealed this week that U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has fallen out of step with the White House.
"(Russian) President (Vladimir) Putin... doesn't want to have a ceasefire agreement with Ukraine, but rather wants to meet on Thursday, in Turkey, to negotiate a possible end to the bloodbath. Ukraine should agree to this, immediately," U.S. President Donald Trump said.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will travel to to Antalya, Turkey, for a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting from May 14–16, where he is expected to address the war in Ukraine and push for stronger Allied defense commitments.
The Kremlin said the leaders held a detailed discussion about the Russian initiative and Erdogan expressed full support, reiterating Turkey’s readiness to provide a venue and assist in organizing the negotiations.
Erdogan told Macron that international cooperation is critical for initiating peace negotiations and the "sensitive implementation" of Ukraine’s recovery and reconstruction processes, the Turkish Presidency reported.
Ukrainian military intelligence (HUR) chief Kyrylo Budanov during a meeting with the relatives of Ukrainian prisoners of war who Russia claims were on the Il-76 transport plane that crashed over Russia's Belgorod Oblast, on Jan. 26, 2024. (Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War/Facebook)
There is no point in peace talks because the only option is to reclaim occupied territory, Ukraine's Military Intelligence Chief Kyrylo Budanov said in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer published June 23.
"We have no option but to get back what was occupied. Otherwise, the state of war will go on forever," Budanov told the paper.
Ukraine held a peace summit in Switzerland earlier this month to rally support for its peace formula, which includes restoring its national borders. Russia was not invited to the event in Switzerland.
During the interview, the military intelligence chief also expressed a belief that Russian President Vladimir Putin would not use tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield.
"What use would it have? We don’t have big concentrations of troops for which such nuclear weapons would be appropriate," Budanov said, adding that breaking through Ukrainian defense lines could be done with conventional weapons, avoiding large political risks.
Budanov also spoke of the need to use long-range weapons to attack Russian soil, which Ukraine has increasingly done in recent months. Additionally, Budanov said he believes that long-range ATACMS missiles could be used to destroy the Kerch Bridge.
The bridge connects the Russian mainland with the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula and has long been a crucial supply route for the Russian military in Ukraine.
Construction on the 19-kilometer-long bridge began after the illegal 2014 annexation of Crimea and was completed in 2018.
In the interview, Budanov also discussed a possible win by Donald Trump in the upcoming U.S. presidential elections, describing his attitude toward such an event as "calm": "Your elections are very unpredictable. If you analyze his public speeches, he has changed his position several times. And the power of your system is that it doesn’t allow one individual to make decisions unilaterally."
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Daria Shulzhenko
