Kyiv:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday that Russia should be represented at a second summit aiming to secure lasting peace with the Kremlin, after more than two years of war.

Dozens of world leaders voiced support for a just peace in Ukraine after a high-level summit convened by Zelensky last month in Switzerland, to which Russia was not invited.

“I believe that Russian representatives should be at the second summit,” Zelensky told a press conference in Kyiv, where he laid out preparatory work for a follow-up summit.

Zelensky announced separate meetings on key issues, including energy security, to be held in Qatar and on food security in Turkey ahead of a second summit.

Leaders and top officials from more than 90 states gathered at a Swiss mountainside resort on June 15 for the two-day summit dedicated to resolving the largest European conflict since World War II.

The Kremlin said that any discussions around ending the conflict that did not include Russia were “absurd.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin visit the Atom pavilion at the Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy (VDNKh) in Moscow, Russia on July 9, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The White House on July 9 said that India’s ties with Russia give it the ability to urge Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the conflict in Ukraine. The statement came after PM Modi emphasised to President Putin that the solution to the Ukraine conflict lay in dialogue and not on the battlefield.

While addressing a press briefing, Karine Jean-Pierre, White House Press Secretary, called India the U.S.’ “strategic partner” with whom they hold “full and frank dialogue”, including their ties with Russia. She called it critical that all nations, including India support efforts to realise an enduring peace when it comes to Ukraine.

Asked about PM Modi’s meeting with Mr. Putin, Jean-Pierre said, “India is a strategic partner with whom we engage in full and frank dialogue, including their relationship with Russia and we’ve talked about this before. So we think it’s critical that all countries, including India, support efforts to realize an enduring and just peace when it comes to Ukraine. It is important for all our allies to realise this.”

“We also believe India’s long-standing relationship with Russia gives it the ability to urge President Putin, to end his brutal war, an unprovoked war in Ukraine. It is for President Putin to end. President Putin started the war, and he can end the war.”

Jean-Pierre made the statement after Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his bilateral talks with Russian President Putin raised the issue of killings of children during conflicts and said it is “heart-wrenching” when innocent children die. The Prime Minister said that everyone who believes in humanity is hurt when there is a loss of lives.

This comes in the wake of the recent missile strike on a children’s hospital in Kyiv, which killed 37 children.

“Be it war, conflicts, terror attacks – everyone who believes in humanity is pained when there is loss of lives. But when innocent children are murdered, when we see innocent children dying, it is heart-wrenching. That pain is immense. I also held a detailed discussion with you over this,” PM Modi said during the meeting.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that there is no solution on the battlefield and added that peace talks do not succeed amid bombs, guns and bullets.

PM Modi said, “As a friend, I have always said that for the bright future of our coming generations, peace is of utmost importance. But I also know that solutions are not possible on battlegrounds. Amid bombs, guns and bullets, solutions and peace talks do not succeed. We will have to follow the path to peace only through talks.”

It was PM Modi’s first visit to Russia since the war started between Moscow and Kyiv in 2022. India has always advocated “peace and diplomacy” for resolving the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

Earlier on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed disappointment over Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Russia, which he termed a “devastating blow to peace efforts.”

Mr. Zelenskyy took to social media platform X to post that on the same day 37 people, including three children, were killed and 170 others were injured due to Russia’s missile strike at the largest children’s hospital in Ukraine’s capital city Kyiv.

“In Ukraine today, 37 people were killed, three of whom were children, and 170 were injured, including 13 children, as a result of Russia’s brutal missile strike. A Russian missile struck the largest children’s hospital in Ukraine, targeting young cancer patients. Many were buried under the rubble. It is a huge disappointment and a devastating blow to peace efforts to see the leader of the world’s largest democracy hug the world’s most bloody criminal in Moscow on such a day” the Ukrainian leader said.

PM Modi was on a two-day official visit to Russia from July 8-9. During his visit, he held a bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday. PM Modi also addressed the Indian community in Moscow.

A serviceman walks down a street, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, near the frontline town of Chasiv Yar in Donetsk region, Ukraine. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Russia said on Wednesday its forces had captured a district in the key hilltop town of Chasiv Yar near Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, where Moscow has been pressing for months.

The town, in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, has strategic importance and its capture could allow Russia to mount further offensives across the region.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said in a daily briefing that its troops had “liberated the ‘Novy’ district of Chasiv Yar”, a neighbourhood on the eastern edge of the town.

Russia’s capture of the area was also reported by Ukraine’s DeepState Telegram channel, which has links to Kyiv’s Army.

It said the district had been flattened by Russian bombardments, and that withdrawing was “a logical, albeit difficult decision.”

It was unclear if Russia was claiming that its forces had crossed a canal that runs through the eastern part of the town, a natural barrier that has aided Ukraine’s defence.

Chasiv Yar lies around 10 km west of Bakhmut, which Russian forces captured last year after months of artillery strikes and urban combat destroyed the city.

A Ukrainian serviceman of the Ochi reconnaissance unit collects a parachute of a Furia drone after a flight over Russian positions at the frontline in Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Sunday, June 30, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Russia said on July 1 it had captured two more east Ukrainian villages, as Moscow’s forces have continued to put pressure on the struggling Ukrainian Army in several directions for weeks.

The gains came after Russia claimed two other villages over the weekend.

Following the weekend’s advances, Russia’s Defence Ministry said it took the village of Novopokrovske in the eastern Donetsk region and the village of Stepova Novoselivka in the north-east Kharkiv region.

Novopokrovske lies north of a village that Moscow took on June 30, in an area of the front where Moscow has been steadily pushing westwards since it took the industrial hub of Avdiivka in February.

Moscow has announced the capture of a fresh village in Ukraine’s east almost every week this summer.

Stepova Novoselivka lies south-east of the city of Kupyansk, where Russia has also been on the advance for months.

Russian forces took Kupyansk at the start of their 2022 offensive but Ukrainian forces retook the city several months later.

In May, Russia launched a renewed local offensive in the Kharkiv region.

Missile fragments fell on a northern suburb of Kyiv on Sunday, damaging balconies on a multi-storey apartment building, officials said.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said two female residents were being treated for severe stress at the site in the city’s Obolon district.

The head of Kyiv’s military administration, Serhiy Popko, said missile fragments had struck the building and sparked a fire.

A picture posted on the administration’s Telegram channel showed a balcony ablaze at least six floors from the ground. At least two other balconies were blackened.

Klitschko said the fire had been brought under control. Balconies were damaged on two floors and another could still sustain damage. Emergency crews were at the site and conducting checks to all apartments.

India on Thursday said it has been pressing Russia for early release and repatriation of its nationals employed by the Russian Army, underlining that it has sought a stop to recruitment of Indians in the war zone.

The statement comes days after two more Indians serving with the Russian military were killed in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, taking the death count of Indians to four in the war zone.

Two years since Russia’s invasion began, tens of thousands of its soldiers have been killed in Ukraine and Moscow has been on a global quest for more troops.

“We have taken up the matter with the Russian side for early release and repatriation of Indians recruited by the Russian army. We have also sought a verified stop to the recruitment,” said the External Affairs Ministry spokesperson at a press conference.  

Several Indians have been working as security helpers in the Russian military, and they were forced to fight with Russian soldiers in certain areas along Russia’s border with Ukraine, according to reports.

“As a result of our efforts, so far 10 Indian nationals have been released and repatriated. We continue to be in touch with the Russian side, both in New Delhi and Moscow, on this issue. This remains a matter of utmost concern for us and we expect action,” the spokesperson added.

In March, 30-year-old Hyderabad resident Mohammed Asfan succumbed to injuries sustained while serving with Russian troops on the frontlines with Ukraine.

In February, Hemal Ashwinbhai Mangua, a 23-year-old resident of Surat in Gujarat, died in a Ukrainian air strike while serving as a “security helper” in the Donetsk region.

“Four Indian nationals have been killed in the ongoing conflict so far. We are working with the Russian side for early transportation of the mortal remains of the two Indians who died recently. We are in touch with their family members as well,” said the spokesperson.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in March busted a major human trafficking network running across the country targeting Indian nationals on the promise of offering lucrative jobs abroad but allegedly sending them to the Russia-Ukraine war zone.

The CBI stated that these traffickers have been operating as an organised network and were luring Indian nationals through social media channels like YouTube, etc., and also through their local contacts/agents for highly paid jobs in Russia.

India is a longstanding ally of Russia and has shied away from explicit condemnation of the invasion of Ukraine.

London:

A Russian-American woman arrested earlier this year while visiting family in Russia went on trial for alleged treason on Thursday after authorities accused her of raising money to send to the Ukrainian army.

Ksenia Karelina, who was born in Russia but had built a new life as an aesthetician at a Los Angeles spa after immigrating to the United States over a decade ago, faces a sentence of 12 years to life in prison if found guilty.

Her trial will be held behind closed doors, as is customary in such cases in Russia. Treason acquittals are rare there.

The court in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg published a short video of Karelina sitting in a glass cage, wearing jeans and a green plaid shirt. She smiled faintly as reporters snapped photographs.

At least a dozen Americans are currently jailed in Russia, part of a growing list of foreign nationals who have found themselves caught up in the crisis of relations between Moscow and Washington during the Ukraine war.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) detained Karelina in January while she was visiting her parents and young sister in Yekaterinburg.

Her former mother-in-law, Eleonora Srebroski, told Reuters in February that Karelina had travelled home around the New Year after her boyfriend surprised her with a plane ticket.

She had assured her boyfriend that Russia was “safe” and that he had no reason to fear her traveling there, according to Srebroski.

Initially arrested under a minor “petty hooliganism” statute, Karelina was later charged with treason.

Srebroski said Karelina had made a small donation to Razom for Ukraine, a New York-based nonprofit that sends non-military assistance to the country, invaded by Russian forces in 2022.

Karelina, who is in her early thirties, arrived in the U.S. in 2012 via a work-study program and was briefly married to Srebroski’s son. Her ex-husband has described her as a fun-loving woman who didn’t care much for politics.

Karelina’s social media profiles feature photos of herself and friends on the beach and on trips but without political messaging.

One photo from November 2021 shows her in a long dress, smiling and waving a small American flag, with the caption, “Citizenship”.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Ukrainian servicemen sit in a bus after returning from captivity during a POWs exchange in Sumy region, Ukraine, on May 31, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Russia and Ukraine announced on Friday they had exchanged dozens of prisoners of war, in one of the only areas of dialogue between the warring countries.

Despite full-scale hostilities, the two sides have carried out more than 50 prisoner exchanges since Russia launched its offensive on Ukraine more than two years ago.

Recent swaps have been hampered by claims of unfair demands from both sides and after Moscow and Kyiv accused each other of shooting down a plane in Russia in January delivering Ukrainian prisoners to an exchange point.

“Today we have an important result — 75 more of our people have returned to Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on social media.

He posted images showing the returned servicemen draped in Ukrainian flags and being greeted by family members holding blue and yellow flowers.

The Russian Defence Ministry said it had secured the release of 75 of its military personnel, whom it claimed were “in mortal danger” in detention in Ukraine.

Moscow also confirmed it had returned 75 Ukrainian servicemen to Kyiv and said that the United Arab Emirates mediated the exchange, as had been the case with previous swaps.

Moscow:

Russia on Thursday jailed a barman for 25 years for joining a unit of Russians fighting for Ukraine and carrying out sabotage of railway equipment.

Russia has reported numerous incidents of sabotage since the start of its “special military operation” in Ukraine in 2022, many of them targeting railways, and courts have handed harsh sentences to those linked to pro-Ukrainian armed groups.

A Moscow military court found 36-year-old Vladimir Malina, who worked at a restaurant in the Moscow region, guilty of treason and various terror and sabotage charges including taking part in a terror organisation.

Malina set fire to a railway relay box last year after joining the Freedom of Russia Legion, a group of fighters who claim to have participated in daring cross-border raids into Ukraine, prosecutors said in a statement.

They said a handler from the Legion gave orders to Malina and in April last year he set fire to equipment that controlled a railway level crossing in the Moscow region.

He later tried to set fire to several other relay cabinets and a police station before being detained later that year, prosecutors said.

At an earlier court hearing, Malina partially admitted guilt but denied treason, TASS news agency reported.

Earlier Thursday, Russian media reported that a student who agreed to post leaflets about the Legion had been sentenced to 13 years in jail.

Last month, Russia jailed a man for 10 years for planning to fight on the side of Ukraine.

Russia has reported almost 200 acts of sabotage on its rail network since it sent troops into Ukraine two years ago, blaming most of them on Kyiv and its supporters.

Ukraine denies responsibility for carrying out sabotage or supporting partisan groups inside Russia.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Kharkiv:

Russian strikes killed at least 10 people, including a pregnant woman, and injured 25 others in two separate attacks in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region on Sunday, local officials said.

It was the latest in what have been constant attacks in recent weeks on Kharkiv city and the region of the same name by Russian missiles and guided bombs as Russian troops have launched an offensive in the northeast of the region.

The first strike on Sunday killed five and wounded 16 in a recreation area just outside Kharkiv, while another five people were killed and 9 injured later in the day in two villages in Kupiansk district.

Local governor Oleh Syniehubov said Russian forces shelled two villages of the district with a self-propelled multiple rocket launcher.

In the city of Kharkiv, Mayor Ihor Terekhov gave the death count of dead and wounded.

“The explosions heard in Kharkiv around noon occurred in a nearby suburb. Two Russian missiles hit a recreation centre where people were relaxing, killing five people and injuring sixteen others,” he said on the Telegram messaging app.

Reuters correspondents saw a recreation area destroyed after what rescuers at the scene said was a powerful blast, followed by a second, “double tap” strike about 15-20 minutes later.

A man’s corpse lay under the rubble of what just over an hour previously was a busy lakeside restaurant area on a sunny day. A woman stumbled around in shock looking for her handbag in the wreckage.

Valentyna, a 69-year-old woman who lived opposite the resort, was at home when the explosion hit. Blood ran down the side of her face as she cried, saying husband had been killed in the blast.

He had been by the water, she said, gesturing to the area where there was now a crater by the shore, rubble, and corpses.

“To lose my husband, to lose my house, to lose everything in the world, it hurts, it hurts me,” she shouted through tears.

“They (the Russians) are animals, why do they need to kill people,” she yelled.

ZELENSKIY APPEAL

After Sunday’s attack President Volodymyr Zelenskiy again called on Western allies to supply Kyiv with additional air defence systems to protect Kharkiv and other cities.

“The world can stop Russian terror – and to do so, the lack of political will among leaders must be overcome,” Zelenskiy said on Telegram.

“Two Patriots for Kharkiv will make a fundamental difference,” he said, referring to Patriot missile defence systems. Air defence systems for other cities and sufficient support for soldiers on the front line would ensure Russia’s defeat, the president added.

Yaroslav Trofimko, a police inspector with the Kharkiv police department, said of Sunday’s strike:

“There were never any soldiers here… it was a Sunday, people were supposed to be here to rest, children were supposed to he here, pregnant women, resting, enjoying a normal way of life.”

He arrived on the scene after the first blast, and was there when the second strike hit the same scene around 20 minutes later.

Ukraine has frequently accused Russia of using “double tap” strikes to kill or injure emergency workers at the scene of strike impacts.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)