Flight MH17 departed from Amsterdam Schiphol Airport en-route to Kuala Lumpur International Airport on July 17, 2014. Three hours into the flight, the Boeing-777 was shot down by Russian proxy forces using a Buk surface-to-air missile above Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast.
"I am grateful for the support and the readiness at the highest level to promote diplomacy," President Volodymyr Zelensky said of the phone conservation with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "We share the same view on the need for a ceasefire."
The convictions mark a significant development in Britain's efforts to counter Russian intelligence operations amid heightened tensions stemming from Moscow's war against Ukraine and repeated Kremlin threats toward Kyiv's allies.
According to the Verkhovna Rada's website, Ukraine completed the ratification of the U.S.-Ukraine minerals agreement on May 12. President Volodymyr Zelensky signed the deal.
"I myself have heard relatives talking: our village is being attacked, let's roll the car out of the garage, maybe they will shell it — at least we will get money. The car is old, we can't sell it," Belgorod Oblast Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
The new tranche brings total recent EU defense support for Ukraine to 3.3 billion euros ($3.6 billion), marking a significant expansion of European efforts to boost Kyiv's defense industry.
"Russia is ready for negotiations without any preconditions," Putin claimed in an address marking the end of the three-day Victory Day ceasefire. He invited Ukraine to begin talks in Istanbul on May 15.
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during his press conference after Russian-Vietnamese talks, June 20, 2024, in Moscow, Russia. (Contributor/Getty Images)
Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed on July 4 that the alleged peace plan proposal drafted during negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow in 2022 in Istanbul, could be the basis for a "settlement" of a Russia's full-scale war, the Kremlin-controlled TASS news agency wrote.
Russia and Ukraine held unsuccessful talks in Belarus and Turkey in the early months of the full-scale war, and no subsequent direct negotiations have been led since then.
"These agreements remain on the table and can be used as a basis for continuing negotiations," Putin said at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting in Kazakhstan.
The Wall Street Journal reported on the content of the unpublished 2022 peace terms already back in March, but the New York Times published in mid-June the 17-page draft in full, which it verified with participants in the talks.
According to it, both sides agreed to exclude Crimea from the treaty, leaving it under Russian occupation without Ukraine recognizing Russian sovereignty over it while the status of Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine was to be decided in later talks between presidents Volodymyr Zelensky and Putin.
Ukraine offered to abandon aspirations to join NATO or any other military alliance, but the treaty allowed Kyiv to enter the EU. Russia also demanded the lifting of all sanctions, repealing Kyiv's laws related to language and national identity, and limiting Ukraine's Armed Forces.
A day before the purported draft was published, Putin claimed that, as a condition for peace negotiations, Ukrainian troops must leave Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, which was rejected by Kyiv and its partners.
Ukraine repeatedly said the peace talks should be held on the basis of its 10-step peace formula, which includes a full withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine. Moscow has rejected this proposal.
Kyiv is preparing for the second peace summit and aims to create a detailed action plan which will include steps related to "all the crises" caused by Russia's all-out war, Zelensky said.
Kateryna Denisova
