The Kremlin repeated ​Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assertion that the war in Ukraine was almost ‌over on Tuesday (May 12, 2026), after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ​said Moscow had no intention of ending ⁠it.

“I think that the matter is coming to an end,” Mr. Putin told reporters on Saturday (May 9, 2026) of the war, now in ‌its fifth year.

Asked to comment on Putin’s remarks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said a certain amount ‌of trilateral work with Ukraine and the United ‌States ⁠had been done towards finding a peace deal.

“This ⁠accumulated groundwork in terms of the peace process allows us to say that the completion is indeed approaching,” Mr. Peskov told reporters, though he ​added that it was ‌difficult to provide specific details at the current time.

On Monday, Mr. Zelenskyy said, “Russia has no intention of ending this war. And we are, unfortunately, preparing for new attacks.”

U.S. President ‌Donald Trump has convened multiple rounds of talks ​with the warring sides to try to end the conflict, but no peace deal has ⁠emerged. Russia, which now occupies around a fifth of Ukraine, wants Kyiv to cede additional territory. Kyiv wants Russian troops ‌to withdraw.

Mr. Peskov said Russia would welcome further “U.S. mediation efforts” and Putin was prepared to meet Mr. Zelenskyy in person once the “peace process” was finalised.

“And for that finalisation, in order to put a full stop to it, a great deal of preparatory work still needs ‌to be done,” he said, adding that the conflict could end ​as soon as Kyiv and Mr. Zelenskyy “take the necessary decision”.

The warring sides agreed to a short, U.S.-mediated ceasefire ⁠from May 9-11, coinciding with the anniversary of the Soviet ⁠victory over the Nazis in World War Two.

Although neither side reported large-scale airstrikes during the ceasefire, ‌both said fighting continued along the front line and accused each other of drone and artillery attacks.

Kyiv came under drone attack on Tuesday (May 12, 2026) after the expiration of a three-day truce with Russia, according to Ukrainian authorities.

“Enemy UAVs are currently over Kyiv. Please stay safe until the alert is cleared,” the head of the capital’s military administration, Tymur Tkachenko posted on Telegram.

The alert siren was the first confirmed in the capital since Friday (May 8), before the ceasefire came into force. Kyiv’s regional military administration told residents to remain in shelters and said its air defences could be operating in the area.

A three-day truce was announced on Friday (May 8) by U.S. President Donald Trump, just hours before Russia’s World War II victory celebrations, with Mr. Trump saying he hoped the ceasefire would mark “the beginning of the end” of the conflict.

The two countries had traded accusations of attacks on civilians that violated the truce, which Mr. Trump had said would be in place May 9-11.

Russian ​drones and ‌missiles attacked gas ​production ⁠facilities run by Ukraine’s ‌state energy ‌company Naftogaz ‌in ⁠Poltava and ⁠Kharkiv regions, killing three ​employees and ‌two rescue workers, the company’s ‌chief executive ​said on Tuesday (May 5, 2026).

The facilities ⁠were significantly damaged ‌and production was lost, CEO Serhiy Koretskyi ‌said.

Ukrainian drones are flying deep into Russia to strike oil facilities, sending up plumes of smoke that can be seen from space and bringing toxic rain to tourist destinations on the Black Sea.

The attacks are aimed at slashing Moscow’s oil exports, a key source of funding for its grinding invasion of Ukraine. But the economic impact is so far unclear, as the rise in oil prices from the Iran war, and a related easing of U.S. sanctions, have helped replenish the Kremlin’s coffers.

Russian barrages of drones and missiles pounded Ukraine’s central-eastern city of Dnipro for 20 hours straight, killing eight people and wounding dozens, local authorities said on Saturday (April 25, 2026).

The attack — the largest ever on the city — began overnight and lasted well into the afternoon, coming in waves that hit homes, businesses and energy infrastructure.

A ​Russian missile strike on ‌Tuesday (April 14, 2026) killed at least five ​civilians in ⁠Ukraine’s southeast city of Dnipro, and injured over two dozen ‌more, Ukrainian officials said.

“These were civilians who ‌were simply driving ‌down ⁠the road in their ⁠cars. People who were going about their business, heading home ​to their ‌families,” Ukraine’s Infrastructure Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said on the Telegram app.

A temporary ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine for Orthodox Easter is set to begin on Saturday (April 11, 2026) afternoon, as U.S.-led diplomatic efforts to end the war falter.

The Kremlin said it had ordered a temporary truce from Saturday at 4:00 p.m. (1300 GMT) until the end of Sunday, a 32-hour period.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Tuesday (March 3, 2026) discussed the issue of Hungarians captured while fighting for Kyiv, the Kremlin said.

Ukraine is home to a large Hungarian minority, mostly living in the western Zakarpattia region.

Mr. Orban is one of the few European leaders to maintain close ties with Russia amid the war in Ukraine and has publicly criticised Kyiv for drafting ethnic Hungarians into its army.

“Vladimir Putin held a telephone conversation with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban,” the Kremlin said in a statement.

“Issues concerning Hungarian citizens mobilised into the Ukrainian armed forces and taken prisoner by Russia were also touched on,” it added.

The Russian Defence Ministry published a video last week purporting to show a dual Hungarian-Ukrainian citizen captured as a prisoner of war, alleging he had been forced to enlist in the Ukrainian army.

Last July, Hungary summoned Ukraine’s envoy over allegations an ethnic Hungarian man died weeks after military recruiters allegedly assaulted him in Ukraine.

Kyiv says the man was legally mobilised and denied he was beaten.

Mr. Orban and Mr. Putin’s call also comes amid a standoff between Budapest and Kyiv over supplies of Russian oil to Hungary through Ukraine.

Ukraine says the Soviet-era Druzhba pipeline that delivered large amounts of Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia was damaged in Russian air strikes on January 27.

Slovakia and Hungary, Moscow’s closest partners in the European Union, have accused Kyiv of deliberately stalling the pipeline’s reopening to put pressure on them. Kyiv rejects this allegation.

The Kremlin said Mr. Orban and Mr. Putin also discussed the war in the Middle East, in particular its implications for the global energy market.

A barrage of Russian drones and missiles on Ukraine overnight killed at least four people in cities across the country, including a 10-year-old boy, regional officials said on Monday (February 9, 2026).

AFP journalists at the scene of one strike on the southern city of Odesa saw gutted buildings and fire and emergency services working by lamplight to perform CPR on one of the victims.

The Ukrainian air force said Russia had launched 11 ballistic missiles and 149 drones — including Iranian-designed Shaheds — at the country from Sunday (February 8) evening into the early hours of Monday (February 9).

Air defence units downed more than one hundred drones and several of the missiles, they added without elaborating.

Russia, which invaded Ukraine nearly four years ago, has bombarded its neighbour while joining recent rounds of U.S.-brokered talks to end Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.

Mykhailo, a 32-year-old resident of the port city of Odesa who lives on the fourth floor of a residential building damaged overnight, told AFP that his apartment windows had been blown out and his car was damaged.

“First we heard the buzzing of a Shahed, and then the hit — and then another hit,” the postal worker said.

Seventeen-year-old student, also named Mykhailo, told AFP that when he stepped out onto his balcony, he saw the doorframe had been dislodged by the blast.

Local officials in the city said that a 35-year-old man was killed and that two more were wounded, including a 19-year-old woman.

Farther north in the Kharkiv region, State emergency services said they had recovered the bodies of a woman and a 10-year-old boy after a drone attack.

And a 71-year-old man was killed by Russian drones in his bed in the settlement of Novgorod-Siversky in the northern Chernigiv region, local authorities said.

Though Washington wants to see the war end by mid-year, Kyiv and Moscow remain at odds over territorial divisions, with Russia pushing for full control of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region as part of any deal.

Russia occupies around 20% of Ukraine’s land.