Zelenskyy and European leaders hold phone talk with Trump during Kyiv meeting
Shaun Walker
The leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Poland have travelled to Kyiv, and together with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a joint phone call to Donald Trump to discuss plans for a peace settlement.
Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz arrived in Kyiv on the same train on Saturday morning, while Donald Tusk travelled on a separate train. The leaders met with Zelenskyy for talks in central Kyiv.
“All five leaders had a fruitful call with @POTUS focused on peace efforts,” Ukraine’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on X, adding a picture of the five men gathered around a mobile phone on speaker mode.
Sybiha added:
Ukraine and all allies are ready for a full unconditional ceasefire on land, air, and at sea for at least 30 days starting already on Monday. If Russia agrees and effective monitoring is ensured, a durable ceasefire and confidence-building measures can pave the way to peace negotiations.
The symbolic visit to Kyiv came just one day after Vladimir Putin hosted a set-piece military parade on Red Square, and just as the US warned of intelligence about a big impending air attack on Ukraine.
“We, the leaders of France, Germany, Poland [and] the United Kingdom will stand in Kyiv in solidarity with Ukraine against Russia’s barbaric and illegal full-scale invasion,” the four leaders said in a joint statement as the visit commenced.
At a later press conference in Kyiv, the four European leaders are expected to reiterate calls for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire, something that Donald Trump and the US administration have said could be the first step on the way to a sustainable peace deal. Ukraine has said it is ready to implement but Russia has so far refused.
Key events
The symbolic show of European unity came a day after Russian president Vladimir Putin struck a defiant tone at a Moscow parade marking 80 years since victory in the second world war, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
In an interview with the US news channel ABC on Saturday, the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said arms deliveries from Ukraine’s allies would have to stop before Russia would agree to a ceasefire.
A truce would otherwise be an “advantage for Ukraine“ at a time when “Russian troops are advancing … in quite a confident way” on the front, Peskov said, adding that Ukraine was “not ready for immediate negotiations”.
Putin ordered a unilateral three-day truce from Thursday through Saturday. But a Ukrainian army brigade operating in the east told AFP earlier the intensity of fighting had remained “pretty much the same”.
Europe and Ukraine argue more pressure is needed on Russia to respond.
After meeting Donald Tusk in France on Friday, Emmanuel Macron called for the speedy drafting of a US-Europe plan for the 30-day truce that would be backed by “massive economic sanctions” if one side “betrays it”.
According to the PA news agency, the phone call between Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the European leaders visiting Kyiv and US president Donald Trump on Saturday, was unplanned and lasted about 20 minutes. Citing a UK source, the news agency reports that the call was described as “warm”.
Here is the full report from Shaun Walker in Kyiv:
Zelenskyy and European leaders hold phone talk with Trump during Kyiv meeting
Shaun Walker
The leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Poland have travelled to Kyiv, and together with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a joint phone call to Donald Trump to discuss plans for a peace settlement.
Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz arrived in Kyiv on the same train on Saturday morning, while Donald Tusk travelled on a separate train. The leaders met with Zelenskyy for talks in central Kyiv.
“All five leaders had a fruitful call with @POTUS focused on peace efforts,” Ukraine’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on X, adding a picture of the five men gathered around a mobile phone on speaker mode.
Sybiha added:
Ukraine and all allies are ready for a full unconditional ceasefire on land, air, and at sea for at least 30 days starting already on Monday. If Russia agrees and effective monitoring is ensured, a durable ceasefire and confidence-building measures can pave the way to peace negotiations.
The symbolic visit to Kyiv came just one day after Vladimir Putin hosted a set-piece military parade on Red Square, and just as the US warned of intelligence about a big impending air attack on Ukraine.
“We, the leaders of France, Germany, Poland [and] the United Kingdom will stand in Kyiv in solidarity with Ukraine against Russia’s barbaric and illegal full-scale invasion,” the four leaders said in a joint statement as the visit commenced.
At a later press conference in Kyiv, the four European leaders are expected to reiterate calls for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire, something that Donald Trump and the US administration have said could be the first step on the way to a sustainable peace deal. Ukraine has said it is ready to implement but Russia has so far refused.
Nato secretary general Mark Rutte said on Saturday after joining a ‘coalition of the willing’ call with Kyiv’s partners that it was clear the group is committed and continues to stand with Ukraine.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Saturday that Ukrainian forces had made four more attempts in the past 24 hours to break across the border into Russia’s Kursk and Belgorod regions. Reuters could not independently verify the assertion.
The ministry said Russia’s own troops were still abiding by a three-day unilateral ceasefire in Ukraine which expires at midnight (10pm BST/9pm GMT) on Saturday.
Ukraine says Russia has continued to attack it and has called the ceasefire a “farce”.
Here are some more details on European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s comments.
“We support the proposal for a full and unconditional 30-day ceasefire. It must be implemented without pre-conditions to pave the way for meaningful peace negotiations,” she said on X.
Von der Leyen posted her message as the leaders of France, Germany, the UK and Poland were visiting Kyiv to show solidarity for Ukraine and ratchet up the pressure on Moscow for a ceasefire.
“The ball is now in Russia’s court. We stand ready to maintain strong pressure on Russia and impose further biting sanctions in the event of a breach of a ceasefire,” said the commission president
The Kremlin has shown no signs of halting its invasion of Ukraine, despite US President Donald Trump pushing for a ceasefire. Moscow warned earlier there could be no truce unless the west halted arms deliveries to Kyiv (see 9.26am BST).
Von der Leyen said the overall aim was to forge a “just and lasting peace for Ukraine“, which would in turn be vital for security and stability across Europe.
EU Commission president says bloc ready to impose more sanctions on Russia if ceasefire breached
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen on Saturday backed a proposed unconditional 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine and said that the EU is ready to impose further biting sanctions on Russia in the event of a breach of a ceasefire.
Shaun Walker
Ukrainian authorities claim to have busted a Hungarian spy ring operating on its territory, alleging that Budapest was collecting sensitive military data with one eye on a possible future incursion into the west of the country.
Hungary’s foreign minister dismissed the accusations as “propaganda” and announced the expulsion of two Ukrainians described as “spies working under diplomatic cover” at the Ukrainian embassy in Budapest.
The allegations will further test already fraught relations between the two neighbouring countries. While Hungary is a member of Nato and the EU, its prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has been an outlier among European leaders, strongly critical of Kyiv and neutral towards Russia.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said it had detained two Ukrainian military veterans as part of the operation, and claimed the network had engaged in the collection of information on military defences in the western part of Ukraine as well as sentiment among the local population. It published a video interrogation of one of the detainees in handcuffs, with his face blurred.
The SBU said the spy ring was run by a “staff officer of Hungarian military intelligence” and that the operation was designed to uncover information about vulnerabilities in Ukraine’s defence of western regions.
An Associated Press tally based on reports from Ukrainian authorities found at least 117 civilians have been killed and more than 1,000 injured in Russian aerial attacks since Ukraine announced on 11 March its willingness for a ceasefire.
On Saturday morning, local officials in Ukraine’s northern Sumy region said Russian shelling over the past day killed three residents and injured four more. Another civilian man died on the spot on Saturday as a Russian drone struck the southern city of Kherson, according to regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un says participation in Russia-Ukraine war justified – KCNA
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said North Korea’s involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war was justified, calling it an exercise of sovereign rights in defence of a “brother nation,” state media KCNA reported on Saturday, according to Reuters.
He also said Pyongyang would not hesitate to authorise the use of military force if the United States persists in military provocations against Russia.
