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.
For illustrative purposes: A miner works at a coal mine in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast on June 9, 2023. (Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images)
The Russian company Donskoy Ugol Trading House is planning to start exporting coal from the occupied Donbas region through the port of Mariupol in October, the Russian state-controlled media outlet RBC reported on Sept. 30, citing Andey Chertkov, a Russian proxy leader operating in occupied Donetsk Oblast.
Russia has occupied Crimea and part of the eastern Donbas region since the start of its aggression in 2014.
The city of Mariupol in Donetsk Oblast came under siege by Russian forces between February and May 2022, leaving thousands dead and reducing Mariupol to rubble. According to authorities' rough estimates, at least 25,000 people could have been killed. The exact number remains unknown and could be much higher.
Donskoy Ugol Trading House's CEO, Oleg Knyazev, claimed that negotiations on coal supplies from the Donbas region are ongoing with potential buyers from China, India, Iran, Uzbekistan, and Malaysia.
Exports could pass through the ports of Russian-occupied Mariupol, Russian cities Taganrog and Rostov-on-Don, and by rail through Azerbaijan and Iran, RBC said, citing its undisclosed source familiar with the company's plans.
Donskoy Ugol Trading House was founded in 2020 in Rostov-on-Don, Russia. From 2020 to 2023, Vitaliy Donchenko and Aleksandr Maslyuk owned the company. They were sanctioned by Ukraine in 2021.
In 2024, Donskoy Ugol Trading House leased 10 coal mines from Russian proxies in Luhansk Oblast. Some of these mines previously belonged to the Ukrainian metallurgical company Metinvest, controlled by Ukraine's richest man, Rinat Akhmetov.
Kateryna Hodunova is a News Editor at the Kyiv Independent. She previously worked as a sports journalist in several Ukrainian outlets and was the deputy chief editor at Suspilne Sport. Kateryna covered the 2022 Olympics in Beijing and was included in the Special Mentions list at the AIPS Sport Media Awards. She holds a bachelor's degree in political journalism from Taras Shevchenko University and a master's degree in political science from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
Dominic Culverwell
