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 War Zone, an online military magazine, notes that while nuclear-armed air-to-air missiles were part of the Soviet Union's arsenal during the Cold War, little is known about their current status within Russia's Aerospace Forces (VKS), which "makes the disclosure from [the Defense Intelligence Agency] intelligence all the more intriguing."

Kherson region. Late on May 18, Russian shelling of residential areas in Ukraine’s southern oblast, or region, of Kherson, killed a woman and injured three other people; earlier the same day, a man was killed in a drone strike on the village of Vesele on the Dnieper River.

Russia's Investigative Committee said on Tuesday that it had launched criminal proceedings against a prominent journalist who heads a publication in neighbouring Latvia providing critical coverage of the three-year-old conflict in Ukraine.

Russia and Ukraine have no direct peace talks scheduled, the Kremlin said Thursday, nearly a week after their first face-to-face session since shortly after Moscow’s invasion in 2022 and days after U.S. President Donald Trump said they would start ceasefire negotiations “immediately.”

From May 12 to 14, systematic Russian drone and artillery attacks killed four residents and wounded 16 others in Ukraine’s eastern region. U.S. officials warn th

The announcement was made ahead of an expected prisoner exchange between Ukraine and Russia on Friday – an outcome of last week’s face-to-face talks in Turkey, the first time the two countries have held direct talks at any level in three years.

Russia and Ukraine are expected to each swap 1,000 prisoners of war as part of deal reached at recent talks in Istanbul.