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.
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.
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.
People sunbathe on June 9, 2023, among debris and garbage carried out by the floodwaters to Odesa beaches following damage sustained at the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant dam. (Photo by Oleksandr GIMANOV / AFP)
The flooding caused by the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in Kherson Oblast has led to an increased threat of dislodged mines being carried to the shores of Odesa Oblast, the State Border Guard Service reported on June 12.
Kherson and Odesa oblasts are separated by over 200 kilometers, but the State Border Guard Service previously reported on June 10 that the Black Sea was becoming a "garbage dump (of household debris) and an animal cemetery" because of the flooding.
The Kakhovka dam collapsed early on June 6, resulting in a mass-scale humanitarian and ecological disaster in Kherson Oblast and other parts of southern Ukraine. Ukrainian authorities say the dam was blown up by Russian forces to prevent a Ukrainian counter-offensive.
According to the State Border Guard Service, the mines dislodged from the soil by flood waters are "not as visible" as sea-based mines, making them a significant threat. Currently, there are "a large number" of mines drifting into the Black Sea via the current.
"Within seven days, border guards, along with other Defense Forces, have discovered six mines of different modifications that were washed up on the shores of Odessa due to the turbulent flood. Most of the explosive items were destroyed through controlled detonation," the State Border Guard Service wrote.
Mines exploding after colliding with other objects in the water have also been observed, according to the State Border Guard Service.
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.
Francis Farrell
