The US and European leaders are placing their hopes in the Vatican to engage Russia and Ukraine in peace talks, after President Donald Trump said Pope Leo XIV had expressed interest in the idea. The Kremlin isn’t so keen.

The official assessment suggests Vladimir Putin is enlarging his nuclear arsenal not just to improve his position ion the battlefield, but also in response to global concerns about the possibility of WW3.

Marco Rubio refused to call Vladimir Putin a "war criminal," despite grilling former secretary of state Rex Tillerson over the same issue in 2017. At a House Committee on foreign affairs session on Wednesday, the current secretary of state dodged questions on Putin, though admitted there had been "war crimes" in the war.

Russia confirmed it still seeks to annex four regions of Ukraine, plus Crimea, and force Ukraine to be a buffer state.

The Russian army lost almost 900 soldiers in Ukraine in just one day, a new report shows. The General Staff of the armed forces of Ukraine claimed that yesterday (May 21), Putin’s military lost 870 soldiers and 32 artillery systems.

President Trump has said the U.S. could step away from Russia-Ukraine peace talks if they prove futile. VP Vance took it a step further by saying the U.S. is totally open to doing so.

President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the war in Ukraine and other matters by phone for two hours on Monday. The conversation yielded no breakthrough on efforts to end the largest ground war in Europe since World War II. A ceasefire seems as far as ever.