Ukraine’s top negotiator involved in a humanitarian mission led by U.S. first lady Melania Trump told The Associated Press that a local ceasefire with Russia will start Tuesday (October 27, 2026) — two days before the mission begins — and last several days.

Ukrainian, Russian and U.S. negotiators reached a deal on Friday (October 23, 2026) to provide humanitarian assistance in the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky, in the war-divided region of Kherson in southern Ukraine.

Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian ombudsman and his country’s chief negotiator in the talks, said the ceasefire would take effect across the Kherson region and neighbouring areas essential to the operation. He added that the initiative could act as a model for future humanitarian missions.

The White House said Melania Trump had initiated discussions after learning about the situation during an event she hosted during last month’s UN General Assembly session. It said she and a representative worked directly with Russian and Ukrainian leadership to define the terms of the ceasefire. Russian officials also confirmed the arrangement.

Mr. Lubinets earlier on Friday (October 23, 2026) thanked Melania Trump for her involvement and said the deal would be tough to accomplish. He said the agreement calls for a ceasefire, followed by the delivery of much-needed humanitarian aid. Lastly, civilians will be allowed to leave Oleshky, he said in a video message posted online.

“The operation will be carried out gradually and is extremely challenging to implement,” Mr. Lubinets said.

The removal of mines comes first

Mr. Lubinets said the operation would involve removing mines on the way to Oleshky before the physical delivery of humanitarian aid and the arranging of evacuations.

He gave no further details on how the ceasefire or the aid mission would be monitored or implemented, citing the sensitivity of the negotiations. He declined to comment when asked if Melania Trump would travel to Ukraine but described her involvement as invaluable.

“When Melania Trump learned about the situation in Oleshky, the negotiation process began under her coordination,” he said. “For several weeks, we discussed many questions, initiatives and ideas. We established new approaches, mechanisms and tools to do everything possible to help civilians in Oleshky survive.”

Russia’s chief of the general staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, said Russian forces “will cease fire on the Kherson axis” starting at 4 am on Tuesday in Moscow “in connection with the humanitarian operation near Oleshky”. Russian forces will also carry out “engineering reconnaissance” and ensure “safe movement of the humanitarian convoy” into the city, Mr. Gerasimov said.

Russia’s human rights ombudswoman, Yana Lantratova, confirmed on Friday (October 23, 2026) that Melania Trump had brokered an agreement on “organising a humanitarian mission” in Oleshky. Lantratova, who said she participated in negotiations, said providing such assistance is Russia’s priority.

The first step will be to clarify what people need and organise the delivery of food, medicine, hygiene products and other essentials, Lantratova said in an online statement. Safe passage will be guaranteed for anyone who wants to leave the combat zone, she said, adding that it will require abiding by the ceasefire and creating safe conditions for humanitarian vehicles.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow was grateful to the First Lady. He said Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump had recently discussed the effort.

Mr. Peskov said “those who want to leave it would be able to do so”. He would not say whether they would be taken to Russia- or Ukraine-held territory. He also demurred when asked how long the evacuation will last, saying only it would most likely take several days.

Saving children is the First Lady’s focus, says President

Ms. Melania Trump has made helping children in conflict zones one of her signature issues in her husband’s second term. She hosted a UN Security Council meeting on the issue earlier this year, and last year wrote Putin about efforts to reunite families with children who have been displaced by the war. She has helped reunite nearly three dozen children, according to her senior adviser, Marc Beckman.

“What she wants to do is save children, and that is her focus,” the President said about his wife during a question-and-answer exchange with journalists at the White House.

Mr. Beckman portrayed the First Lady’s work on the ceasefire as an extension of her efforts to help reunite Russian and Ukrainian children with their families after they were separated by Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Tensions between Washington and Kyiv are rising

The development comes as tensions have increased to new highs between the Trump administration and Ukraine’s government. Kyiv has faced restrictions on the satellite internet system it relies on to knock down Russian attacks, with Mr. Trump and other top U.S. officials sending mixed messages about who was responsible for throttling the Elon Musk-made Starshield system.

Mr. Trump also recently waived new Russia sanctions, reached an agreement with Russia to import diesel fuel and pushed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to make a deal to end the war that Russia began in February 2022. In renewed efforts to revive the peace process, Mr. Trump Envoy Steve Witkoff travelled to Norway this week for talks with Mr. Zelenskyy before meeting Mr. Putin in St Petersburg, Russia.

Mr. Zelenskyy did not mention the ceasefire in Oleshky during a remote appearance at the Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank. He did note that American Patriot missile interceptors were still on hold and Starshield and Starlink speed limits were still in place.

He also spoke of the importance of the United States to renewed diplomatic efforts to end the war, including a possible joint meeting with Trump and Putin.

The situation in Oleshky is dire

Food and medical supplies have been scarce for months in Oleshky, which sits on the Dnipro river that separates Ukrainian forces from the city’s Russian occupiers. There is no electricity, heat or running water. Roads leading from town are mined and dotted with burned-out cars. Drones buzz overhead.

Once a city of about 24,000 residents, Oleshky was captured by Moscow’s forces on the first day of their full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Its buildings were shelled and burned, and its infrastructure damaged. In June 2023, floodwaters inundated the city after the Kakhovka dam collapsed from an explosion that an Associated Press investigation found was likely caused by the Russian military. Hundreds of residents were killed.

Those left in the city along Ukraine’s southeastern front face death from hunger or disease as another harsh winter looms. Ukraine has appealed repeatedly for a local ceasefire to organise evacuations. Russia, as the occupying power, is obligated by international law to ensure civilians under its control have what they need to survive.

Published – October 24, 2026 07:21 am IST

Romanian rescue ships near the capsized Comoros-flagged oil cargo carrier Khoryv in the black sea, the Romanian Naval Authority said on Friday, October 23, it was conducting a search and rescue mission to save the crew of a cargo ship on the Black Sea, close to its territorial waters in this screengrab obtained from a handout video.
| Photo Credit: Romanian Interior Ministry via Reuters

On October 12, NATO’s top military commander issued a stark warning to Russia. General Alexus Grynkewich, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, said that if Moscow were “foolish enough” to attack an alliance territory, NATO would destroy “anything and everything” involved in the attack.

His remarks came at a time of rising tensions between Russia and European nations. And one country that finds itself under pressure on the hot Russia-NATO border is the tiny Estonia.

When the U.S., Canada, and 10 other European nations came together in 1949, in the early phase of the Cold War, to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), they had a clear goal. As Lord Hastings Lionel Ismay, the alliance’s first Secretary General, famously put it, the purpose was to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”

Throughout the Cold War, NATO had been the primary military bulwark against Soviet power in Europe. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia fell into a phase of strategic retreat, while NATO expanded towards Eastern Europe. This set the stage for renewed tensions once Russia started reasserting itself in the region.

The situation became even more complicated after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Ukraine was offered NATO membership in 2018, but it never became a member. So it’s not covered by NATO’s Article 5 collective defence, but in its war with Russia, Kyiv is getting military support from NATO members.

The war has also prompted European states lately to raise concerns over Russia’s grey-zone activities. These include cyberattacks, sabotage, disinformation, and electronic interference.

A sensitive border city

Grey-zone activities are designed to put pressure on a country without necessarily triggering an open military conflict. Moscow has denied these allegations.

These concerns have become particularly important in the Baltic region, where fears are growing that Russia could attempt to spread instability beyond Ukraine without launching a full-scale invasion of another European country. This leaves Estoinia in a vulnerable position. Located in northeastern Europe, Estonia, formerly part of the Soviet Union, shares border with Russia and sits along NATO’s eastern flank. The country became independent after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

It joined NATO in 2004, upsetting Moscow.

A small country bordering the Baltic Sea to its west and Russia to its east, Estonia sits in an unenviable location. Its proximity to Russian territory means that any military movements, border incidents, and developments in the surrounding region can have immediate consequences for its national security. Estonia is not alone in facing these challenges. Latvia and Lithuania also sit on NATO’s eastern flank, while Finland, a recent NATO member, shares a long land border with Russia.

For a country of around 1.3 million people, covering approximately 45,000 sq. km, Estonia risks getting caught between Russia and NATO is the crisis escales into conflict.

According to a report in the Financial Times, Russian state media has always portrayed Estonia as a hostile, “Russophobic” country seeking confrontation with Moscow. Russian officials have issued warnings about NATO’s military presence in the Baltic region.

One location attracting particular attention is Narva, an Estonian city on the Russian border, separated from the Russian city of Ivangorod by the Narva River. Its geographical position makes it important to Estonia’s border security. The city also has a predominantly Russian-speaking population.

Estonian officials fear that Moscow could attempt to exploit local tensions or use disinformation to create pressure on the country. The question for Estonia now is how to prepare for the possibility of the worst.

‘Active’ defence strategy

The Estonian government introduced the concept of “active defence” into its national security planning in 2026.

Since then, the country’s small military has begun a major reorganisation, shifting away from a strategy that could allow Russian forces to advance into Estonian territory before a counter-attack.

From Tapa, one of Estonia’s main military bases, troops are being redeployed further east, closer to the Russian border.

A new military facility is being developed in Jõhvi, while another base is being built in Narva itself.

According to the Financial Times, the planned Narva facility is designed to house around 200 soldiers, with space for up to 1,000 during a crisis.

Estonia has also begun shifting towards a strategy designed to prevent an adversary from gaining territory in the first place.

Rather than relying on a later counter-attack, its forces would attempt to engage Russian troops from the beginning of an invasion while using longer-range weapons to strike military targets behind the front line.

Col. Tarmo Kundla, commander of the Estonian First Brigade, has explained the thinking behind this approach. In simple terms, he said, Estonia wants to stop an invading force from gaining ground rather than allowing it to advance and then attempting to take back the territory later (a lesson learnt from the war in Ukraine).

Adding to this is Estonia’s military spending and weapons purchases. Estonia’s defence spending is set to rise by 42% in 2026, reaching €2.4 billion, or around 5.4% of its GDP.

The country has also signed contracts to acquire nine U.S.-made HIMARS rocket launcher systems and nine South Korean Chunmoo systems. This includes M57 ballistic missiles with a reported range of up to 300 km. This is significant because St. Petersburg, one of Russia’s largest cities, lies approximately 260 km from Estonia.

Depending on the weapon used and the target involved, these systems could put military targets deep inside Russian territory within striking distance. Coming to Estonia’s manpower, the country has a trained reserve force of up to 2,30,000 people, while its permanent standing forces comprise around 4,200 personnel.

Estonia cannot defend itself entirely alone. The country does not have its own conventional combat air force and relies on NATO allies for air policing and the wider protection of its skies. Hence, it cannot be separated from the role of NATO in its military preparations.

The U.K. has maintained a military presence in Estonia as part of NATO’s forward defence. The Financial Times reports that Britain has committed to increasing its deployment from around 800 to 1,200 troops by April 2027. These deployments are intended to strengthen deterrence by making clear that an attack on Estonia could involve forces from other NATO members from the beginning of the conflict.

Estonian officials have expressed concerns about the possibility of a future conflict, but they are also preparing for the risk of a smaller attack designed to test the alliance’s response.

“I’m not sure if we can deter the mad person. What we have to do is to prepare,” said Gen. Martin Herem, former Commander of Estonian Defence Forces and current Defence Minister, earlier this month. “And that’s the only thing. We have to prepare very seriously [for an attack], and in doing so, we may prevent it.”

(Smriti Sudesh is a postgraduate student at SOAS University of London)

The story so far: In late August, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned allies of a roughly €27-billion hole in his country’s defence budget for the year. On October 1, after weeks of technical talks with Kyiv, the European Commission declared that Ukraine’s financial and military needs for 2026 were now “fully covered.” Yet the manner of that reassurance has exposed a widening gap between Europe’s commitment to Ukraine and its comfort with how Ukrainian money is spent.

The €27-billion figure referred specifically to the 2026 defence gap, not to Ukraine’s total needs, which the International Monetary Fund has estimated at around €137 billion across 2026 and 2027.

Kyiv wanted the gap filled quickly, and asked the European Union (EU) to accelerate disbursements already promised under existing €90-billion instruments. Brussels declined to front-load those payouts. In a letter in early October, European Commissioners Valdis Dombrovskis and Marta Kos informed the Speaker of Ukraine’s Parliament that early disbursement had been refused, and the 2026 gap was instead closed through re-allocation and coordinated contributions, with fresh conditions attached.

To release the roughly €34 billion still outstanding for 2026, the Commission required Ukraine to abolish a value-added-tax exemption on small parcels, to introduce taxation of income earned through digital platforms such as OLX, Airbnb and Bolt, and to strengthen oversight of ‘politically exposed persons’, the last an explicit anti-corruption safeguard.

Conditionality and risk

The practical effect is that this year has been patched rather than resolved, and the Commission itself has acknowledged that 2027, when Ukraine’s needs are larger and American support more uncertain, will be the far harder test.

There is near-unanimous agreement among member states that Ukraine cannot be allowed to collapse financially, a position backed firmly by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron and the front line EU members of the north and east.

After a brief Hungarian veto of the bloc’s €90-billion loan package, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen insisted in Kyiv in February that “we will deliver on the loan one way or the other.”

Public opinion has mirrored that resolve: a Standard Eurobarometer survey in spring 2026 (March, April, and May) found 75% of EU citizens in favour of providing financial and humanitarian support to Ukraine, and 76% in favour of sustaining that support until a just and lasting peace is achieved.

There is no equivalent agreement on how the money should be raised or on what terms it should flow. Taxpayer fatigue in several capitals, a parallel and contentious negotiation over the EU’s 2028-2034 budget, and persistent doubts about Ukrainian governance all pull against open-handedness.

The headline consensus on funding Ukraine therefore conceals a sharper disagreement about conditionality and risk.

The principal financial instrument to support the war effort is the Ukraine Facility, in force since March 2024, which provides over €50 billion in grants and loans for the 2024-2027 period.

Crucially, every disbursement is tied to the Ukraine Plan, a roadmap of reforms weighted heavily toward the rule of law and anti-corruption. In practice the conditionality has proved elastic. In May, the European Council released close to €2.8 billion on the Facility’s seventh tranche after Kyiv had completed only 11 of 20 required reform steps, with roughly 15 overdue indicators according to the Kyiv Post.

In July, the European Council amended the Plan to add €8.3 billion and new anti-corruption benchmarks, and the IMF released a $690-million tranche the same month while expressly noting missed targets.

In July 2025, Mr. Zelenskyy signed a law subordinating the two independent anti-corruption bodies, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), to the prosecutor general, provoking the first mass protests of the war and an explicit warning from the European Commission that EU accession was at risk.

Growing scrutiny

Mr. Zelensky reversed course within days as subsequent reporting linked the move to investigations closing in on figures near the presidency.

Those fears were then borne out: in November 2025, NABU exposed an alleged $110-million scheme at the state nuclear company Energoatom, the largest corruption case of Mr. Zelensky’s presidency, which cost him his chief of staff.

A further investigation in August, this year, saw a deputy head of the presidential office dismissed.

Polling in September reported by the Kyiv Independent found that more than 70% of Ukrainians hold Mr. Zelensky responsible for corruption within his circle, and earlier surveys recorded a majority naming graft a greater threat than the war itself.

The uncomfortable point for Europe is that these exposures are themselves evidence that NABU and SAPO work, which is precisely why their independence sits at the centre of EU conditionality.

The European Council meeting in Brussels is the moment these strands converge. Ukraine funding, the contested plan to mobilise some €210 billion in frozen Russian assets for a “reparations loan,” and European defence readiness all sit at the top of the agenda. Most of the roughly €210 billion in immobilised Russian assets is held by Euroclear, a central securities depository in Belgium, which leaves Belgium, rather than the EU as a whole, exposed to Russian retaliation and litigation.

The Russian central bank has filed a claim of around €196 billion against the depository.

A reparations loan could in principle be adopted by qualified majority, requiring 15 of the 27 member states representing 65% of the EU’s population, and so could not be blocked by Belgium alone. Yet Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever has demanded open-ended guarantees covering any damages beyond the frozen sum should Russia prevail in court, and no member state can legally commit to unlimited liability; other capitals have been reluctant to force a vote that would leave Belgium bearing a risk it alone considers unmanageable.

Whatever leaders decide in Brussels, the structural tension between the scale of Ukraine’s needs and Europe’s appetite to underwrite them will outlast the summit.

(Writer is a graduate student specialising in EU external affairs at Sciences Po university, Paris)

Published – October 09, 2026 06:03 am IST

A firefighter works at the site of a business centre hit by a Russian drone strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine in Kyiv, Ukraine, September 23, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Plumes of smoke rise from fires (right) at an oil refinery following what the authorities say is a Ukrainian drone strike in the course of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, in Moscow, Russia on September, 20, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

A voter casts her ballot at a polling station on the first day of Russia’s parliamentary election in Vladivostok, Russia, September 18, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Russian President Vladimir Putin. File.
| Photo Credit: AP

Russian forces on Friday (August 28, 2026) resumed their drone barrage of Ukraine’s Kyiv region, hitting more than a dozen apartment buildings and storage depots in a second straight day of aerial attacks, officials said.

Prolonged air raids in Kyiv on Thursday (August 27) essentially locked down the Ukrainian capital for 15 hours, the Foreign Ministry said, choking the economy and severely disrupting civilian life more than 4½ years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour. Even longer alerts are a daily reality in regions closer to the front line, the Ministry said.

Russian drone and missile attacks are also aiming at the power grid in what Ukrainian officials say is an annual campaign to “weaponise winter.” In Ukraine’s southern Kherson region on the Black Sea, where glide bombs a day earlier forced a combined heat and power plant to shut down, officials predicted a winter of extended outages and told people to move elsewhere if they could.

Russian strikes in the Kyiv region damaged 14 warehouses, 16 private houses, three apartment buildings and 16 vehicles, Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv regional military administration, said Friday (August 28).

A second drone hit one location after emergency crews were deployed, the State Emergency Service said, in what is termed by the military as a “double tap” that targets first responders.

The attacks killed one person and wounded two others, according to officials.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that its forces overnight struck a warehouse in the Kyiv region that stores Ukraine’s Flamingo cruise missiles and fuel for rocket boosters.

Ukrainian officials didn’t immediately confirm the Russian claim, and The Associated Press couldn’t verify it. Recent strikes have damaged numerous warehouses across Kyiv and the wider region, including facilities storing books, food and other consumer goods.

The attacks stretched into daylight hours, and Tkachenko urged residents to stay in safe locations and heed air raid alerts.

Russia is launching small numbers of fast-moving jet-powered drones in waves in an attempt to paralyze the capital, according to Andrii Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council.

“The goal is to exhaust air defenses and the population,” he said on social media on Friday (August 28).

Kyiv region authorities said that air quality worsened because of the attacks and warned people in some areas to keep their windows closed and limit their time outdoors.

Four Russian glide bombs destroyed a sorting centre belonging to the postal service Nova Poshta in the northern Sumy region, and a drone smashed one of its depots in the Kyiv region, the company said.

In the southern Kherson region, which is about 70% under Russian control, officials urged tens of thousands of residents to move to safer regions because of the possibility of prolonged power and heating outages this winter.

“Kherson may be without electricity and heat not for hours or days, but for a long time. And we need to prepare for this now,” said Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the Kherson regional military administration, in a social media post late on Thursday (August 27).

Russia has intensified attacks on critical infrastructure in the region, with 170 glide bombs dropped on the Kherson region since July 1 — more than in the first six months of the year, Prokudin said.

Russia has also launched more than 1,700 attack drones over the past two months, increasingly using jet-powered Shahed and Gerbera drones against critical infrastructure, he said, and attacks by smaller drones rose to 6,500 in the past week alone.

Authorities will offer help with evacuation, transportation, resettlement and social support for those who decide to leave, he said.

Russia fired 164 drones at Ukraine overnight, Ukraine’s air force said. It didn’t mention missiles, which are usually part of Russia’s aerial attacks.

A 61-year-old man was killed, and seven other people were wounded Friday (August 28) in a Russian glide bomb attack on the northern Sumy region, said Oleh Hryhorov, head of the Sumy regional military administration.

The Russian Defence Ministry said that its air defences overnight shot down 512 Ukrainian drones over 18 Russian regions, as well as over the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula and the waters of the Black Sea.

Ukrainian forces struck the Slavneft-YANOS refinery in Russia’s Yaroslavl region overnight, causing a fire, Ukraine’s General Staff said, as Ukraine continued its campaign against the Russian oil sector.

A fire broke out at the site, which is around 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) from the border with Ukraine, the General Staff said. The plant produces gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel, fuel oil, lubricants and other petroleum products, it added.

A Ukrainian drone attack on Friday (August 28) morning in the Yaroslavl region killed one person and wounded 27 other people, Gov. Mikhail Yevrayev said. Ten of those were wounded when drone debris fell on a bus, he said.

He said that unspecified “industrial infrastructure,” residential areas and unidentified retail facilities were hit.

In the Moscow region that surrounds but doesn’t include the Russian capital, a drone hit a supermarket, damaging it and shattering windows in a nearby outpatient clinic, Gov. Andrei Vorobyov said on Telegram.

In the port city of Sevastopol in Crimea, a five-story residential building suffered significant damage from a drone, according to the Russian-installed Governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev. Four people were wounded, he said. He posted images of a charred building with windows and balconies knocked out.

Firefighters gather at the side of a food warehouse hit by a Russian missile strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv region, Ukraine on August 20, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Reuters