Eastern Europe

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he is ready to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin "personally" in Istanbul on Thursday for talks over ending the war.

His post on X came shortly after Donald Trump demanded Ukraine agree to Putin's offer of direct talks between the two countries in Turkey.

"There is no point in prolonging the killings. And I will be waiting for Putin in Türkiye on Thursday. Personally," Zelensky wrote.

Friedrich Merz says Russian President Vladimir Putin's proposal for direct peace talks with Kyiv is insufficient. The German chancellor says a ceasefire with Ukraine should come first. 

Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna was tortured during the year she spent in Russian detention, and her body was returned to Ukraine with several organs missing, according to a joint investigation published on Tuesday.

Roshchyna, 27, disappeared in the summer of 2023 while reporting on black site prisons in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine. She died under unclear circumstances while being held at a Russian prison in September 2024. Her remains were returned in February 2025 as part of an exchange of bodies between Russia and Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced a temporary ceasefire in the war in Ukraine.

The Kremlin has said the ceasefire will run from the morning of 8 May until the 11 May - which coincides with victory celebrations to mark the end of World War Two.

In a statement it said Putin declared the ceasefire "based on humanitarian considerations".

Ukraine has not yet responded.

North Korea finally confirmed Monday that it had sent troops to fight in Russia’s Kursk area, after the Kremlin broke its silence on the issue on Saturday.

The belated confirmation of a mission that has been tracked by Kyiv, Seoul and Washington since October 2023 comes as combat operations in Russia’s Kursk Oblast appear to have almost wrapped up.

It also comes before one of the biggest dates on Russia’s annual calendar: the May 9 “Victory Day” celebrations, which this year mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Bosnia's state police, SIPA, on Wednesday tried to arrest Serb separatist leader Milorad Dodik who is wanted for attacking the constitutional order but were stopped by his armed police forces, a SIPA spokeswoman said.

The state court issued an arrest warrant for Dodik, the president of Bosnia's autonomous Serb Republic, and two of his close allies after they ignored a summons in the investigation of the separatist legislation they initiated and which has been suspended by the constitutional court.

I am a human rights activist and advocate for my country — Macedonia — and for its language and its culture.

As an American taxpayer, you have probably never heard of me. You might not know much about Macedonia or even be able to find it on a map.

But here’s one thing you have a right to know: Millions of your taxpayer dollars were spent to foment a political crisis in my country, to overthrow its government, and even to defame me personally.

The amendment declares that children's rights to moral, physical and spiritual development supersede any right other than the right to life, including the right to peaceful assembly.

Hungary's parliament has passed an amendment to the constitution that allows the government to ban public events by LGBTQ+ communities, a decision that legal scholars and critics are calling another step toward authoritarianism.

The amendment, which required a two-thirds vote, passed along party lines with 140 votes for and 21 against.

While Joe Biden publicly led the charge to punish Russia for its first invasion of Ukraine, he used his role as vice president to quietly open a backdoor for Moscow's gas to flow to its neighbor in fall 2014, at a time when his son Hunter's Ukrainian energy company sought such help, according to government messages in a private email account kept from Americans for more than a decade.

Russian-American woman Ksenia Karelina, who was serving a 12-year prison sentence for treason in Russia, was released as part of a prisoner exchange that saw her swapped for an accused smuggler held in the US.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on X early on Thursday that Karelina had been released and was on her way to the United States.

“American Ksenia Karelina is on a plane back home to the United States. She was wrongfully detained by Russia for over a year and President Trump secured her release,” Rubio said on X.