Donald Trump has said he will speak to Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy separately on Monday in a bid to secure a ceasefire deal between Russia and Ukraine.

The US president made the announcement on Truth Social – shortly after the Ukrainian president condemned Russia for the “deliberate killing of civilians” after a drone hit a bus in north-eastern Ukraine.

Mr Trump said he will speak to Mr Putin over the phone. He will then talk with Mr Zelenskyy and “various members of NATO”, he wrote.

In an all-caps post, he said: “HOPEFULLY IT WILL BE A PRODUCTIVE DAY, A CEASEFIRE WILL TAKE PLACE, AND THIS VERY VIOLENT WAR, A WAR THAT SHOULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED, WILL END. GOD BLESS US ALL!!!”

The Ukrainian town of Bilopillia today declared a period of mourning lasting until Monday after nine people were killed in a Russian drone attack – which occurred just hours after Kyiv and Moscow held peace talks.

Seven others were injured, Ukrainian authorities said. The bus was evacuating civilians from a frontline area when the drone hit, the country’s national police said.

A “father, mother and daughter” were among the dead, Mr Zelenskyy said, writing on Telegram: “All the deceased were civilians. And the Russians could not have failed to understand what kind of vehicle they were targeting.”

The attack has also been condemned by British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who said he was “appalled”.

“If Putin is serious about peace, Russia must agree to a full and immediate ceasefire, as Ukraine has done,” he wrote on X.

Representatives for Kyiv and Moscow met for direct peace talks in Istanbul, Turkey, just hours before the drone attack.

While the discussions – which were not attended by the Mr Putin or Mr Zelenskyy – did not result in a truce, both countries agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners in their biggest swap yet.

Ukraine’s intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, said on national television the exchange could happen as early as next week.

Russia ‘threatened eternal war’ at peace talks

After a Ukrainian official yesterday said Russia made “unacceptable” demands during the discussions, a source from the Kyiv delegation has now told Sky News that Moscow threatened “eternal war”.

Separately, a senior Kyiv official said Russia’s proposed ceasefire terms included the full withdrawal of troops from four regions of Ukraine: Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Luhansk.

Moscow also called for international recognition that those regions and Crimea – annexed in 2014 – are Russian and for Ukraine to become a neutral state, with no allied troops stationed there, they said.

The Kremlin declined to comment on the matter.

Read more:
What happened last time Putin and Zelenskyy met?
Ukrainians tortured and killed in Russian jails
Analysis: the chilling moment in Russia-Ukraine talks

Follow The World

Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday

Tap to follow

Ukraine has rallied support from its allies following the talks, and a number have spoken out.

French President Emmanuel Macron said: “Today, what do we have? Nothing. And so I tell you, faced with President Putin’s cynicism, I am sure that President Trump, mindful of the credibility of the United States, will react.”

The EU is working on a new package of sanctions against Moscow, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.

Vladimir Putin made a mockery this week of Donald Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

Far from punishing him for it, the US president went out of his way to dodge calls to get tough with the Russian leader.

Follow latest updates on Ukraine war

On Sunday, President Trump called on leaders of both Russia and Ukraine to meet.

He posted: “President Putin of Russia wants to meet on Thursday, in Turkey, to negotiate a possible end to the BLOODBATH. Ukraine should agree to this, IMMEDIATELY.”

That post let the Russian leader off the hook. Only the day before, Putin had been ordered by Ukraine’s allies, including America, to agree to a 30-day unconditional ceasefire.

The Russian president had swerved that demand, suggesting talks instead.

“If the ceasefire is not respected, the US and its partners will impose further sanctions,” Trump posted before swivelling and backing Putin’s proposals for talks instead.

Undeterred, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accepted the call.

Putin though refused to go, sending officials instead.

And yet there was no reprimand from the US president. Instead, he chose to undermine the talks he had himself called for.

“Look, nothing is going to happen until Putin and I get together,” he told reporters on Air Force One. So much for that then.

It is what happened in those talks though that should give the US president the greatest pause for thought about Putin’s intentions – as it does in Kyiv.

The message they brought was blunt and belligerent, threatening eternal war.

“We don’t want war, but we’re ready to fight for a year, two, three – however long it takes,” lead Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky is reported to have said. “We fought Sweden for 21 years. How long are you ready to fight?”

Far from offering a compromise, they are reported to have demanded the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the four regions they have partially seized by force and the capitulation of another two, just for good measure.

And there was a chilling moment when the Russians are reported to have threatened their interlocutors like gangsters.

“Maybe some of those sitting here at this table will lose more of their loved ones,” Mednisky said. Russia is prepared to fight forever.

For Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister, that was personal.

Max, his 23-year-old nephew, lost his life fighting the Russians in 2022 not long after their illegal and unprovoked invasion began.

Read more from Sky News:
Nine killed in attack on Ukrainian bus
First direct Russia-Ukraine talks since 2022
Analysis: Talks reveal a stark reality about war

At the end of this week, Putin appears scornful of Western efforts to end this war through a ceasefire and negotiations and Trump seems happy to let him get away with it.

Even Fox News, normally slavishly subservient to Trump, is wondering what gives.

Its anchor Bret Baier is no Jeremy Paxman, but in an interview last night asked Donald Trump 10 times if he might finally now put pressure on Putin.

The US president ducked and dived, talking about the money he had made in his Gulf tour, Zelenskyy’s shortcomings, Biden, and Iran instead. But he did not give a straight answer to the question.

With performances like that, Putin has nothing to worry about. Trump’s position though seems increasingly untenable.

Ukraine’s European allies though should be alarmed. They threatened Russia with sanctions and retaliation last weekend if he rejected a ceasefire. He now has.

With or without America, will they be good to their word?

A wave of deadly strikes in northern Gaza has marked a significant escalation in Israel’s offensive.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said on Friday evening it was “conducting extensive strikes and mobilising troops to achieve operational control in the areas of Gaza”.

Earlier, it said it had struck “over 150 terror targets” across the Gaza Strip in the previous 24 hours – an average of one airstrike every 10 minutes.

Israeli strikes on Gaza have killed more than 250 people since Thursday morning, the Hamas-run health ministry in the region said on Friday.

Nurse and his family killed in strike

The impact of this new bombardment is cataclysmic, as this video of an Israeli airstrike in Jabalia, northern Gaza, verified by Sky News, shows.

Other videos show huge smoke clouds rising from airstrikes on residential neighbourhoods surrounding the city’s Indonesian Hospital.

The hospital’s director, Dr Marwan al Sultan, told Sky News: “There is a shortage of everything except death.”

Among those killed in Jabalia on Friday was 42-year old Yahya Shehab, a nurse for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF).

He was killed alongside his wife Tamara, 37, and their five children: Sarah, 18, Anas, 16, Maryam, 14, Aya, 12 and Abdul, 11.

He is survived by his niece Huda, 27, a civil engineer, who lives nearby with her husband Ahmad Ngat, 31, and their two young sons, Mohammed, seven, and Yusuf, four.

Ahmad remembers Yahya as kind and generous, and that he would use his skills as a nurse to treat Mohammed and Yusuf whenever they were sick.

“His kids were great too,” Ahmad says. “May God have mercy on them.”

Operation Gideon Chariot

An Israeli official said Friday’s strikes were preparatory actions in the lead-up to a larger operation.

Earlier this month, Israel’s security cabinet approved “Operation Gideon Chariot” – a plan to “capture” all of Gaza and force its entire population to move to a small enclave in the southern Gaza Strip.

At the time, a defence official said the operation would go ahead if no hostage deal was reached by the end of US President Donald Trump’s visit to the Middle East. That visit ended on Friday 16 May.

👉 Follow Trump100 on your podcast app 👈

Hamas had proposed releasing all hostages in exchange for a permanent end to the war. Last month, Hamas turned down Israel’s offer of a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the militant group laying down its weapons and releasing half the living hostages.

Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who sits in the security cabinet, said of Operation Gideon Chariot that Gaza would be “entirely destroyed”, and that its population will “leave in great numbers to third countries”.

Ahmad says he is ready to leave Gaza with his family at the earliest opportunity.

“We want to live our lives,” he says.

His wife Huda grieving the loss of her uncle Yahya, is seven months pregnant. The family are constantly struggling to find enough food for her and the children, he says.

“Unfortunately, she suffers greatly,” Ahmad says. “She developed gestational diabetes during this pregnancy.”

Israel has prevented the entry of all food, fuel and water since 2 March. On Monday, a UN-backed report warned that one in five people in Gaza were facing starvation.

Satellite imagery may show new aid hubs

Under new proposals backed by the US, Israel now intends to control the distribution of aid via private military contractors.

The proposals, set to start operating by the end of May, would see aid distributed from militarised compounds in four locations around the Gaza Strip.

Satellite imagery from recent weeks shows Israel has constructed four compounds which could be used for aid distribution.

Construction began in April and was completed by early May.

Three of these are clustered together in the southwest corner of the Gaza Strip, with one in the central Netzarim corridor.

None are located in northern Gaza, where Ahmad and Huda’s family live.

The UN has called this a “deliberate attempt to weaponise” aid distribution and has refused to participate.

The planned aid distribution system is being coordinated by a new non-profit, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which was set up in February in Switzerland.

Its board includes a former head of World Central Kitchen, as well as people with close ties to the US military and private military contractors.

Proposals drawn up by the GHF say the four planned aid distribution sites could feed around 1.2 million people, approximately 60% of Gaza’s population.

The GHF later requested that Israel establish additional distribution points.

Speaking to the UN Security Council on Tuesday, UN Relief chief Tom Fletcher said the plan “makes starvation a bargaining chip”.

“It is cynical sideshow. A deliberate distraction. A fig leaf for further violence and displacement,” he said.

Read more:
Up to a million Palestinians could be ‘permanently relocated’
Trump risks becoming losing interest in Gaza – analysis

Large areas of Gaza have already been razed in recent weeks, including vast tracts of the southern city of Rafah, where many had fled during the war’s early stages.

Sky News analysis of satellite imagery shows approximately two-thirds of Rafah’s built-up area (66%) has been reduced entirely to rubble, with buildings across much of the rest of the city showing signs of severe damage.

On Thursday, Human Rights Watch executive director Federico Borello said the UK and US have a duty, under the Genocide Convention, to “stop Israeli authorities from starving civilians in Gaza”.

He said: “Hearing Israeli officials flaunt plans to squeeze Gaza’s two million people into an even tinier area while making the rest of the land uninhabitable should be treated like a five-alarm fire in London, Brussels, Paris, and Washington.”

Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said on Friday that Israel’s new offensive is intended to secure the release of its hostages. “Our objective is to get them home and get Hamas to relinquish power,” he said.

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.