KYIV: Russia launched 10 Shahed and decoy drones at Ukraine in nighttime attacks, the Ukrainian air force said Tuesday, in its smallest drone bombardment this year as the warring countries prepare for possible peace talks in Turkey.
The Kremlin hasn’t directly responded to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s challenge for Russian leader Vladimir Putin to meet him in person at the negotiations in Istanbul on Thursday.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused for the second straight day Tuesday to tell reporters whether Putin will travel to Istanbul and who else will represent Russia at the potential talks. “As soon as the president considers it necessary, we will make an announcement,” Peskov said.
Russia has said it will send a delegation to Istanbul without preconditions.
The U.S. has been applying stiff pressure on both sides to come to the table since President Donald Trump came to power in January with a promise to end the war.
Military analysts say both sides are preparing a spring-summer campaign on the battlefield, where a war of attrition has killed tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said Monday that Russia is “quickly replenishing front-line units with new recruits to maintain the battlefield initiative.”
Zelenskyy will not be meeting with any Russian officials in Istanbul other than Putin, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskyy, said Tuesday on a YouTube show run by prominent Russian journalists in exile.
Lower-level talks would amount to simply “dragging out” any peace process, Podolyak said. European leaders have recently accused Putin of dragging his feet in peace efforts while he attempts to press his bigger army’s battlefield initiative and capture more Ukrainian land.
Russia effectively rejected an unconditional 30-day ceasefire demanded by Ukraine and Western European leaders from Monday, when it fired more than 100 drones at Ukraine. Putin instead offered direct peace talks with Ukraine in Istanbul on Thursday.
Russia shunned the ceasefire proposal tabled by the U.S. and European leaders but offered direct talks with Ukraine.
Putin has repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of the Ukrainian government, especially Zelenskyy himself, saying his term expired last year. Under Ukraine’s constitution, it is illegal for the country to hold national elections while it’s under martial law, as it now is.
In a further complication, a Ukrainian decree from 2022 rules out negotiations with Putin.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke Monday with the top diplomats from the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Poland, who were meeting in London, to assess “the way forward for a ceasefire and path to peace in Ukraine,” spokesperson Tammy Bruce said.
Those European countries had pledged further sanctions on Russia if it didn’t comply with a full ceasefire that Ukraine had accepted from Monday, but they made no announcement of additional punitive measures.
Russia launches smallest nighttime attack on Ukraine in months in run-up to possible peace talks
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Russia launches smallest nighttime attack on Ukraine in months in run-up to possible peace talks
US warns UK to stop arresting Palestine Action supporters
- Undersecretary of state for diplomacy: Arrests doing ‘more harm than good’ and ‘censoring’ free speech
- Group was banned in July 2025 after series of break-ins
LONDON: UK authorities should stop arresting protesters showing support for banned group Palestine Action, the White House has warned.
The US undersecretary of state for diplomacy said arrests are doing “more harm than good” and are “censoring” free speech.
Sarah Rogers told news site Semafor: “I would have to look at each individual person and each proscribed organization. I think if you support an organization like Hamas, then depending upon whether you’re coordinating, there are all these standards that get applied.
“This Palestine Action group, I’ve seen it written about. I don’t know what it did. I think if you just merely stand up and say, ‘I support Palestine Action’, then unless you are really coordinating with some violent foreign terrorist, I think that censoring that speech does more harm than good.”
So far, more than 2,000 people have been arrested in the UK for showing support for the group.
It was banned in July 2025 after a series of break-ins nationwide, including at a facility owned by a defense manufacturer and a Royal Air Force base, during which military aircraft were damaged.
Last year, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg was among those arrested while protesting for Palestine Action.
The group is challenging its ban, saying it should not be compared to terrorist organizations such as the Irish Republican Army, Daesh or Al-Qaeda.
The ban has been criticized by numerous bodies, with Amnesty International calling it a case of “problematic, overly broad and draconian restrictions on free speech.”
In Scotland, prosecutors have been offering to drop charges against some protesters in return for accepting a fine of £100 ($134.30).
Adam McGibbon, who was arrested at a demonstration in Edinburgh last year, refused the offer, saying: “The fact that the authorities are offering fines equivalent to a parking ticket for a ‘terrorism offence’ shows just how ridiculous these charges are. Do supporters of (Daesh) get the same deal?
“I refuse to pay this fine, as has everyone else I know who has been offered one. Just try and put all 3,000 of us who have defied this ban so far in jail.”
Rogers said the UK is also wrong to arrest people using the phrase “globalize the intifada” while demonstrating in support of Palestine, after police in Manchester said in December that it would detain people chanting it.
“I’m from New York City where thousands of people were murdered by jihadists,” she said. referring to the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “I don’t want an intifada in New York City, and I think anyone who does is disgusting, but should it be legal to say in most contexts? Yes.”
