Ukraine war latest: Trump told to 'put up or shut up' in Ukraine; Russia 'retakes village' in Kursk (2025)

Ukraine's defence ministry has denied reports that Kyiv is "90% on board" with Donald Trump's framework for peace presented in Paris this week.

A New York Post report, citing a senior Trump administration official as its source, said Ukraine's defence minister had told US officials that Kyiv was on board with the plan presented by US secretary of state Marco Rubio in France.

But, in a statement to Sky News, Ukraine's defence ministry said it "does not make political decisions" and therefore could not have made any "assessments of percentage".

"We have several principled positions: we supported the US proposal for a full ceasefire back on March 11, while Russia did not support the US ceasefire proposal and continues daily strikes on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.

"Under these conditions, it is unclear how anyone could discuss or measure in "percentages" the progress of any dialogue.

"Our key question is how to ensure the ceasefire proposal can work and be reliably monitored. We remain in constructive dialogue with our American partners and are fully committed to ending this war."

The Trump administration's attempts to end the war in Ukraine have failed in the last three months and might even have made things worse, an expert on Russia has told Sky News.

Nigel Gould-Davies, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies thinktank, says it was always optimistic to believe Donald Trump could solve the conflict immediately after his return to the White House in January.

"The way to think about this is that the White House has just finished a three-month remedial education course in the fundamentals of the Russia-Ukraine war," he says.

"They've been turning upside down all the previous positions of the United States on this war, hoping that that would somehow produce a breakthrough. It has not, and in some respects, I would say it's actually made things worse.

"The dawning realisation of that is descending on them - their strategy has failed."

Russia's defence ministry says Ukraine attacked Russian energy facilities 10 times over the past 24 hours.

The US brokered a 30-day moratorium in March between Kyiv and Moscow against strikes on each other's energyinfrastructure. Both sides have repeatedly accused the other ofviolating it since.

When asked yesterday ifthe energy moratorium was over, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it had already been a monthbut that no orders from Vladimir Putin had been received tochange Russia's position.

Speaking on Thursday, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that while Russia had reduced the number of strikes against energy targets, it is attacking civilian infrastructure instead.

A US congressman signed an artillery shell with a message to Vladimir Putin during a visit to the frontline in Ukraine this week.

Brian Fitzpatrick, a pro-Ukraine Republican representing Pennsylvania, visited Ukrainian troops yesterday following a meeting with Volodymyr Zelebskyy.

Fitzpatrick said that during the visit, the group was shelled near the Russian border, tracked by Russian drones, and forced to carry out an emergency evacuation from the area.

"They're fighting for their democracy, they're fighting for the freedom – all of us in America need to stand behind them," Fitzpatrick said in a video addresspublished on his Facebook account.

"I always have and always will have their back. I encourage all my colleagues in Congress to come here."

In a separate video, Fitzpatrick is filmed signing an artillery shell with a "very personal" message to Putin.

The message reads: "To: Putin, From: PA-1. #PeaceThroughStrength". PA-1 refers to the Pennsylvania community Fitzpatrick has represented since 2017.

He said the "message was delivered on target".

The families of Ukrainian soldiers severely wounded during a prison massacre in 2022 say they're going on an indefinite hunger strike to demand the return of their loved ones.

Nearly 60 soldiers are believed to have been killed and between 75-130 wounded when a building housing Ukrainian prisoners of war was destroyed near Olenivka in the eastern Donetsk region in July 2022.

Russia denied culpability for the explosion but has been widely blamed for it by the international community, with the EU labelling the attack as a "horrific atrocity".

Ukrainian authorities said it was a deliberate Russian war crime, claiming soldiers of the Azov Regiment were purposefully moved to a separate part of the prison that was later destroyed in the explosion.

The Olenvika Community says it will go on hunger strike from 24 April and has issued three demands to end it. They include:

• The return of all remaining seriously wounded POWs;
• To organise a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy;
• To establish a commemoration day for the POWs killed at Olenivka.

Donald Trump has said he wanted to see "enthusiasm" from both sides to end the war in Ukraine, but American hopes for a quick peace deal are fading.

That's despite US officials meeting with Ukrainian and European counterparts in Paris on Thursday for talks focused on ending the war.

Here'sEurope correspondent Adam Parsonsreporting on how US confidence seems to have ebbed away of late.

Vladimir Putinwill hold talks on Tuesday in Moscow with the Sultan of Oman, the Kremlin has said.

The pair will discuss trade and economics ties between theircountries and "current issues on the international and regionalagendas", it added.

Oman - sometimes referred to as the "Switzerland of the Middle East" - has refused to pick a side in the war in Ukraine and has not singled out Russia as the aggressor.

Donald Trump has put his prestige on the line over Ukraine and is now coming under increasing pressure to solve the conflict he promised he would end within 24 hours of taking office.

That's according to Jim Townsend, the former US deputy secretary of defence for European and NATO policy during the Obama administration.

He's been speaking to Sky News presenter Leah Boleto about recent comments from Trump and Marco Rubio, US secretary of state, that the US could "pass" on peace talks if either side "makes it difficult" for Washington.

That's raised concern that the White House no longer sees peace, which Trump promised to deliver immediately after his second inauguration, as being high on its list of priorities.

"The problem is that it puts his prestige on the line because the media is holding him to this [24-hour] deadline," Townsend says. "And so he's got to show something for it. He's under pressure to put up or shut up in a lot of ways."

The art of the deal?

Townsend says we might be seeing some high-level negotiating tactics being deployed by the Trump administration, given JD Vance's comments about being "optimistic" for peace (see 9.05 post) seemingly contradicting the feeling coming from the Oval Office.

"There's some good cop bad cop going on here with Rubio sounding like things are going to head south if there's not some movement soon on the Russian side and Trump saying that as well," he adds.

"But on the other side, JD Vance in Rome has said some positive things about the future. So there is definitely some posturing in negotiating going on."

Russian troops have recaptured the village ofOleshnyain its Kursk region, the RIA state news agency cited the Russian defence ministry as saying this morning.

Sky News has not independently verified this report.

Russia has been fighting to remove Ukrainian forces from Kursk since Kyiv sent its forces into the territory last August. Many of the territorial gains it made there have since been wiped out.

Australia's prime minister says his country has not abandoned one of its citizens who faces a 15-year jail sentence in Russia for fighting with Ukrainian troops.

Anthony Albanese said Australia will use "whatever avenues" to can to help Melbourne man Oscar Jenkins, a 33-year-old former biology teacher who fought with Ukraine's armed forces against Russia's invasion.

"[Australia will] continue to make representations to the reprehensible regime of Vladimir Putin on behalf of Mr Jenkins," he said.

"We will stand up and use whatever avenues we have at our disposal to continue to make those representations."

Reports emerged in January suggesting Jenkins had been killed by Russian forces, until Moscow confirmed he was alive and later released a video of the Australian in which he appeared weak.

After the video, Albanese said Australia had made it clear to Russia that Jenkins was a prisoner of war and that there were obligations that needed to be met in accordance with international humanitarian law.

Russia typically considers foreigners travelling to fight in Ukraine as "mercenaries", enabling them to prosecute fighters under its criminal code, rather than treating them as prisoners of war with protections and rights under the Geneva Convention.

More recently, British man James Scott Rhys Anderson was jailed for 19 years after a Russian court found him guilty of fighting for Ukraine in the country's Kursk region.