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.
President Volodymyr Zelensky would not meet any other Russian official apart from Russian President Vladimir Putin in Istanbul this week, presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak said on the Breakfast Show program on May 13.
The aftermath of Russian attacks in Kostiantynivka on June 12, 2023. (Photo: Donetsk Oblast Prosecutor's Office / Facebook)
Russian forces shelled the city of Kostiantynivka on June 12, killing one person and injuring two others, the Donetsk Oblast Prosecutor's Office reported.
According to prosecutors, a 49-year-old man was killed while mowing the lawn of a football field in a local park.
A residential area of the city was also targeted, and a 38-year-old man and an 85-year-old woman sustained shrapnel injuries as a result.
Kostiantynivka is located a little over 26 kilometers to the west of Bakhmut, the once-prosperous industrial city that has witnessed the most intense fighting between Ukrainian and Russian troops.
Donetsk Oblast Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko reported early on June 12 that 1,557 civilians have been killed and 3,678 others have been injured in the region since Russia launched its all-out war.
Cities and villages in Donetsk Oblast are targeted by Russian forces on a daily basis, and many of them, including Bakhmut, have been completely destroyed.
Kate Tsurkan is a reporter at the Kyiv Independent who writes mostly about culture-related topics in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. Her newsletter Explaining Ukraine with Kate Tsurkan, which focuses specifically on Ukrainian culture, is published weekly by the Kyiv Independent. The U.S. publisher Deep Vellum published her co-translation of Ukrainian author Oleh Sentsov’s Diary of a Hunger Striker in 2024. Some of her other writing and translations have appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Harpers, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She is the co-founder of Apofenie Magazine.
Alexander Khrebet
