Vladimir Putin has said Russia agrees to an end to fighting in Ukraine, but “lots of questions” remain over proposals for a 30-day ceasefire.

Casting doubt over whether a deal can be agreed, the Russian president said a ceasefire must lead to “long-term peace” which “would remove the initial reasons for the crisis”.

Russia has previously said it would not accept Ukraine joining NATO and European peacekeepers in Ukraine.

Moscow has reportedly also presented a “list of demands” to the US to end the war, which would include international recognition of Russia’s claim to Crimea and four Ukrainian provinces.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Mr Putin’s remarks were “very predictable” and “very manipulative”, adding that the Russian president was preparing to reject the ceasefire proposal he agreed with the US.

Mr Putin’s comments came as Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in Moscow ahead of talks over Ukraine with the Russian president.

Ukraine war latest updates

Speaking on Thursday afternoon, Mr Putin described the situation in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops have pushed into Moscow’s territory, as “completely under our control”.

It appeared the US had persuaded Ukraine to accept the ceasefire, he said, but Ukraine is also interested because of the battlefield situation, with its forces in Kursk fully blocked in the coming days.

“In these conditions, I believe it would be good for the Ukrainian side to secure a ceasefire for at least 30 days,” he said.

He also said there would need to be a mechanism to control possible breaches of the truce.

Another issue he raised was whether Ukraine could use the 30-day ceasefire to continue to mobilise and rearm.

He said he would need to speak to Mr Trump over the terms of any ceasefire.

Mr Putin was speaking alongside Belarus’s President Alexander Lukashenko and the pair said in a joint statement that NATO’s actions regarding the war in Ukraine were fraught with the risk of nuclear conflict.

The two countries also criticised the European Union’s policy towards Russia, labelling it aggressive and confrontational.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 has left thousands of people dead and injured, millions displaced and towns and cities reduced to rubble.

Moscow’s forces have been advancing since the middle of last year and now control nearly a fifth of Ukraine’s territory.

In his speech Mr Putin said Russian forces were pushing forwards along the entire frontline.

Responding to the comments, Mr Zelenskyy said: “Putin, of course, is afraid to say directly to President Trump that he wants to continue this war, he wants to kill Ukrainians.”

He said Mr Putin’s words were “just another Russian manipulation”.

Mr Trump also responded to the remarks, saying Mr Putin’s statement was not complete and reiterated his willingness to talk to the Russian president, adding: “Hopefully Russia will do the right thing.”

In a news conference with NATO secretary general Mark Rutte, the US president shifted his tone on the alliance, saying it was “stepping up” and praising Mr Rutte for doing “some really good work”.

Mr Rutte said NATO members needed to produce more weapons, stating the alliance was not doing enough and was lagging behind Russia and China.

It comes after Mr Putin donned a camouflage uniform to visit a command post in the Kursk region on Wednesday.

Israel has been accused of carrying out “genocidal acts” against Palestinians during the Gaza conflict in a United Nations report.

It alleges a broad range of violations perpetrated against Palestinian women, men, girls and boys since 7 October 2023 – which Israel has denied and rejected.

“Israeli authorities have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group,” said the report by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.

It alleges this was done by systematically destroying women’s healthcare facilities during the war in Gaza, and by “imposing measures intended to prevent births” – one of the categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention.

In addition, a surge in maternity deaths due to restricted access to medical supplies amounted to the crime against humanity of extermination, it said.

The report said: “Hundreds of Palestinian men and boys have been photographed and filmed in humiliating and degrading circumstances while subjected to acts of a sexual nature, including forced public nudity and stripping, full or partial.”

“Male detainees were subjected to attacks targeting their sexual and reproductive organs, including violence to their genitals…,” it added.

The commission alleged these and other forms of “sexualised torture” are “committed with either explicit orders or an implicit encouragement by the top civilian and military leadership”.

“The evidence collected by the commission reveals a deplorable increase in sexual and gender-based violence,” said its chair Navi Pillay.

“There is no escape from the conclusion that Israel has employed sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians to terrorise them and perpetuate a system of oppression that undermines their right to self-determination.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the report’s findings, saying they were biased and antisemitic.

“Instead of focusing on the crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by the Hamas terrorist organisation… the United Nations once again chooses to attack the state of Israel with false accusations,” he said in a statement.

Israel’s permanent mission to the UN in Geneva also refuted the allegations as unfounded, biased, and lacking credibility.

“The IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) has concrete directives… and policies which unequivocally prohibit such misconduct,” it said in a statement, adding its review processes are in line with international standards.

Read more:
Palestinian officials accuse Israel of killings during ceasefire
Trump envoy: Hamas has not been forthright in US talks
The competing plans for rebuilding Gaza after the war

A previous report by the commission in June last year accused Hamas and other Palestinian armed militant groups of serious rights violations in its 7 October 2023 multi-pronged surprise attack on southern Israel, including torture and degrading treatment.

Israel is party to the Genocide Convention and was ordered in January 2024 by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to take action to prevent acts of genocide during its war against Hamas.

South Africa has brought a genocide case against Israel’s actions in Gaza at the ICJ.

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Israel is not party to the Rome Statute, which gives the International Criminal Court (ICC) jurisdiction to rule on individual criminal cases involving genocide and crimes against humanity.

Arrest warrants for Mr Netanyahu, former defence secretary Yoav Gallant – and senior Hamas commander Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al Masri – were issued by the ICC in November over alleged war crimes.

Technically, the hundred-mile-long, 20 mile-wide British overseas territory of South Georgia is uninhabited.

Only a few visiting scientists and government fisheries inspectors occupy the island all year round.

But from a wildlife perspective, it’s anything but.

Its shores are home to the largest number of marine birds and mammals on the planet.

The impact of the world’s biggest iceberg

Lying 800 miles east off the Falkland Islands and a thousand miles north of Antarctica, it’s one of the few fragments of land between that vast frozen continent and the rest of the world.

The part of the South Atlantic in which it sits is one of the most food-rich oceans in the world, fed by powerful circulating currents, and it’s full of shrimp-like Antarctic krill.

“Krill feeds the blue whales, humpback whales, fin whales. It also feeds the gentoo penguins, macaroni penguins, chinstrap penguins and the fur seals,” says Martin Collins, a scientist with the British Antarctic Survey, and former head of the South Georgia government, speaking to me from his office at King Edward Point on the island.

The island also has some of the largest and most significant populations of elephant seals, king penguins and several species of albatross and petrel – the hardiest of ocean-going seabirds.

The island has been in the headlines after the world’s largest iceberg, A23a, ran aground off its south-west coast.

Concern over impact of iceberg on island’s wildlife

There’s a concern it could impact wildlife on the island – but the timing is fortuitous, says Mr Collins.

“It’s the end of the breeding season now, which means the impacts on penguins at that part of the island will be lessened.

“There may be a little bit of impact, particularly on gentoo penguins, which still forage around the island during the winter.”

From a wider conservation point of view, South Georgia is one of the world’s stand-out success stories.

Until the 1960s, it was a major hub for whaling. Thousands of whales were caught off its coasts and processed at a number of whaling stations – the scale of the slaughter such that the bays around the island were red with whale blood.

The whalers introduced reindeer for food that nibbled and trampled unique plant life that sustained many of the island’s endemic wildlife.

Stowaway rats plundered the eggs and chicks of penguins and other ground nesting birds (there are no trees).

Whales returning in large numbers

The South Georgia pipit, the world’s most southerly songbird, was driven to the brink of extinction.

But before the abandoned whaling stations have even rusted away, whales have begun returning to South Georgia in large numbers.

A campaign of air-dropping poisoned bait across the inaccessible island has eradicated the rats and the pipits are booming.

The seas around South Georgia were once heavily fished. The worst for wildlife were long-line vessels trying to hook high-value Chilean seabass.

Call for outright ban on fishing

Albatross and petrels would dive for the bait and be caught and drowned.

Since 2012, the government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands have policed a 500,000 square-mile marine-protected area around the islands where most fishing is now banned.

A few vessels are licensed to catch shrimp-like krill and seabass but only in winter when most predators are absent and under strict controls.

Some conservationists are calling for fishing to be banned outright.

However, the South Georgia government argues it’s the income from limited fishing licences that allows them to protect and monitor the exclusion zone.

Crucial at a time when funding from central government is scarce and unlikely to increase.

The key threat now is the rapidly changing climate around South Georgia.

“There’s evidence that the distribution of krill is moving a little further south gradually over time,” says Mr Collins.

“We need to be really mindful of that changing climate.”

But he’s optimistic too. Despite warmer oceans, numbers of some species are booming. Especially whales and fur seals.

“I’ve just had two king penguins walking past the windows as we were talking,” he says.

“When I first came here in the late 1990s, there were no fur seals in this area at all. And now they’re everywhere around us”.