President Volodymyr Zelensky said he will meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, but said both leaders are ready to fly to Istanbul if Russian President Vladimir Putin chooses to attend the talks there.
U.S. President Donald Trump's special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg, will travel to Istanbul for possible peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, Reuters reported on May 13, citing three undisclosed sources.
A captive named Umit allegedly agreed to serve in the Russian army in exchange for Russian citizenship and a monetary reward of 2 million rubles ($25,000).
Russia's Buryatia Republic declared a state of emergency on May 13 over massive forest fires that have engulfed multiple regions in the Russian Far East.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko's statement came as Strong Shield 5 exercises involving military personnel from other NATO countries began in Lithuania.
"Amendments to the Budget Code are needed to implement the provisions on funding the U.S.-Ukrainian Reconstruction Investment Fund," lawmaker Roksolana Pidlasa said.
During reconnaissance in an unspecified front-line sector, Special Operations Forces' operators detected Buk-M3 and Uragan-1 on combat duty, the unit said.
The suspect quit his job at the Rivne NPP before the full-scale war began. In the spring of 2025, a GRU liaison contacted him and offered cooperation in exchange for money.
Chief Executive Officer of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X (formerly Twitter) Elon Musk gestures as he attends the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center on June 16, 2023, in Paris, France. (Chesnot/Getty Images)
Two senior Democratic senators are calling for the Pentagon and law enforcement agencies to investigate reports of Elon Musk’s communications with Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin.
Jeanne Shaheen, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Jack Reed, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, expressed national security concerns in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Pentagon's inspector general.
In the letter seen by Reuters on Nov. 15, the senators argued that Musk’s involvement in SpaceX programs should be reviewed for potential debarment and exclusion due to these alleged contacts. Debarment would bar him from certain contracts and privileges.
"These relationships between a well-known U.S. adversary and Mr. Musk, a beneficiary of billions of dollars in U.S. government funding, pose serious questions regarding Mr. Musk’s reliability as a government contractor and a clearance holder," the senators wrote.
The letter followed reports of Musk’s conversations with Russian officials as recently as October.
The Wall Street Journal’s recent report cited U.S., European, and Russian officials who claimed Musk had several conversations with Putin and Russian Deputy Chief of Staff Sergei Kiriyenko. Shaheen and Reed found it "deeply concerning" that Musk reportedly spoke with Kiriyenko, who faced charges from the U.S. Justice Department this year for leading an AI-based propaganda campaign promoting Russian interests ahead of the U.S. presidential election.
Musk’s communications with Russian figures first drew attention in 2022 when Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, said Musk had spoken to Putin about the Ukraine war and the Kremlin’s "red line" regarding nuclear weapon use. Musk denied Bremmer’s claim, saying he had only discussed space-related topics with Putin 18 months prior.
Musk oversees SpaceX, which holds billions of dollars in U.S. government contracts with the Pentagon and NASA, and has a $1.8-billion intelligence community contract to develop a spy satellite network. Musk has claimed he possesses a U.S. security clearance, allowing him access to classified information.
"Communications between Russian government officials and any individual with a security clearance have the potential to put our security at risk," Shaheen and Reed emphasized in their letter.
The U.S.-Russia space rivalry has intensified since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022. Pentagon officials have condemned suspicious maneuvers by Russian satellites and accused Russia of working on a space-based nuclear weapon capable of disabling satellite networks.
SpaceX’s dominance in the U.S. space sector, with its Starlink network of almost 7,000 satellites, plays a critical role in U.S. military communications, including those of Ukraine’s armed forces on the battlefield.
Olena Goncharova is the Head of North America desk at The Kyiv Independent, where she has previously worked as a development manager and Canadian correspondent. She first joined the Kyiv Post, Ukraine's oldest English-language newspaper, as a staff writer in January 2012 and became the newspaper’s Canadian correspondent in June 2018. She is based in Edmonton, Alberta. Olena has a master’s degree in publishing and editing from the Institute of Journalism in Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv. Olena was a 2016 Alfred Friendly Press Partners fellow who worked for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for six months. The program is administered by the University of Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia.
Oleg Sukhov
