Ukraine remains the most mined country in the world. Nearly one-third of Ukraine's territory, approximately 174,000 square kilometers, had been mined since Russia began its full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022.
The phone call comes as Moscow once again rejected a 30-day ceasefire, with Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova claiming that a ceasefire would give "Kyiv a break to restore its military potential and continue its confrontation with Russia."
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.
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine's president, at a meeting on the Ukraine Compact during the NATO Summit in Washington, DC, US, on July 11, 2024. (Chris Kleponis/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a July 20 interview that no one can force Ukraine to give up territory in order to achieve peace.
Zelensky was responding to former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's comments that he could end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours.
As Trump's victory in the Nov. 5 presidential election becomes more likely, his proposal for a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia is coming under close scrutiny.
"If one person in the world, and this person is Donald Trump, can stop the war in 24 hours, the question is at what price, and who will pay?" Zelensky said in an interview with BBC.
A simple way to achieve a 24-hour peace would be to force Ukraine to make territorial concessions and drop its sanctions on Russia, but "no one in the world" could force Ukraine to do this, Zelensky said.
Zelensky added that the war is not about one president or ten people, but a whole nation, and noted that after so many Ukrainians had been killed by Russians, "we can't forget it, and we can't forgive it."
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Alexander Khrebet
