Ukraine-Russia war: Putin sets conditions for ceasefire - but Ukraine says it is 'complete sham' (2024)

Ukraine has shelled a town in Russia's border region of Belogorod, killing two people, news agencies are citing Russia's emergencies ministry as saying.

According to the reports, the attack hit an apartment building in the town of Shebekino and caused a stairwell to collapse.

The bodies of a man and a woman were pulled from the rubble by rescuers, the ministry said.

Sky News cannot independently verify the reports.

By Artem Lysak, Ukraine producer, and Deborah Haynes, security and defence editor

Ukrainian forces have struck a military airfield in Russia, targeting warplanes and glide-bomb facilities used to launch deadly attacks against Ukraine, a security source has revealed.

The source said the operation last night was part of a "sustained campaign to degrade the Russian Air Force" just as Ukraine has done with Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

Satellite imagery shared by the source purported to show two SU-34 fighter-bombers at the Morozovsk airbase in southern Russia as well as a white structure before the attack.

A second image is purported to show the aftermath, with both aircraft and the structure destroyed.

There has been no official confirmation about the strikes from Ukraine.

Read the full story here...

By Dominic Waghorn, international affairs editor

They came battered and worn by battles back home for a few days by the sea seeking sanctuary and solace in a wellness resort turned summit venue.

The G7 leaders will leave fortified by some surprisingly robust diplomatic progress but potentially terminal doubts remain for the alliance.

They have sent Russia a clear message. They may individually be on borrowed time as leaders but the West has Ukraine's back for as long as it takes.

And China's been on the sharp end of some particularly proactive diplomacy too.

Two signature deals send billions more aid to Ukraine. The allies overcame stark differences between themselves to forge a creative deal that uses interest from frozen Russia banking assets to send fifty billion more dollars to Kyiv by the year's end.

In Moscow the Russians did not conceal their fury at the prospect of their money being used against them.

And a ten year bilateral security pact between America and Ukraine is another blow to Vladimir Putin. He started this war to deter the expansion of the western military alliance. Yet again it is having the opposite effect. The pact is a bridge to Ukraine joining NATO, even if that is many many years still away.

The G7 warned China in a number of ways. The final communique criticised its belligerence in the South China Sea and admonished Beijing for quietly helping Putin's war effort by trading dual use products that could help bolster his war effort.

But the composition of this summit was also a message for Beijing. The G7 invited pretty much the entire G20 here except for China. If you want to be in the club they were saying, not very subtly, then stop conniving with Putin and play by our rules.

In Beijing that will be infuriating.

The leaders have seemed all the better for their spell in the sunshine, spirits lifted before going home to face the music.

But what they cant do is dispel doubts about their future and that of the alliance.

Security pacts tend to survive changes of administration, Ukraine will have its $50bn by year's end.

But what will the G7 look like when they next meet a year from now?

Donald Trump looks increasingly likely to win the US election and Joe Biden's performance here will have nothing to reassure the allies. He has seemed vacant and distracted at times, older than ever.

Trump has no time for multilateral organisations. That was made abundantly clear in his first term in office. In his transactional zero sum game world view they make no sense.

A year from now he could be six months into destroying NATO, deserting Ukraine and dismantling the G7.

First time round for all his puerile antics, he could do limited damage at these summits contained by the likes of Merkel and Macron both at the height of their powers.

Olaf Scholz is no Merkel and may be gone by then, joining Sunak, Kishida and Trudeau perhaps too heading for the history books. Macron is on the way to being a lame duck president hamstrung by a far right national assembly if current polling is correct.

The alliance is in peril like never before, however successful they've been holding it together for now.

Earlier we reported comments by Volodymyr Zelenskyy that a ceasefire offer put forward by Vladimir Putin cannot be trusted.

In an interview with our Italian partner network Sky TG24, Mr Zelenskyy warned the Russian president would not stop his offensive, even if Ukraine agreed to hand over the regions Russia claims to have annexed.

He also drew a comparison between Mr Putin and Adolf Hitler's Nazi policies of expansion before the Second World War, saying: "It is the same thing that Hitler used to do... thisis why we should not trust these messages."

Watch the clip here...

Three Russian servicemen have reportedly died following an ammunition explosion in a Russian town about four miles north of the Ukraine border.

Shells from a thermobaric warhead, also called an aerosol bomb, exploded in Shebekino, as reported by the Russian Telegram channel Astra.

"Astra's sources in the region's emergency services reported that in the evening, ammunition from the Russian Solntsepyok MRLS thermobaric weapon system exploded in the suburb of Shebekino," the report said.

The cause of the explosion is unknown, but preliminary reports indicate it was "spontaneous".

Despite Astra's sources claiming three Russian servicemen died in the explosion, Shebekino's governor reported there were zero injuries .

Ten private households and one car were damaged, they said.

In a show of unity aimed at Vladimir Putin, G7 leaders meeting in Italy this week finally agreed to a deal to use profits from frozen Russian assets to provide around $50bn (£40bn) worth of support to Ukraine.

And in another significant announcement, Joe Biden signed a 10-year bilateral security deal between the US and Ukraine which Kyiv is calling "historic".

On this episode, Niall Paterson explores the impact these deals will have for Ukraine in its war against Russia with international editor Dominic Waghorn.

Prosecutors at theInternational Criminal Court (ICC) are reportedly investigating alleged Russiancyberattacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure as possiblewar crimes.

According to sources familiar with the case gathered by Reuters, the probe is examining attacks on infrastructure that endangered lives by disrupting power and water supplies, cuttingconnections to emergency responders or knocking out mobile dataservices that transmit air raid warnings.

Ukrainian teams are said to be helping to investigate cyberattacks committed from the beginning of the invasion in February 2022.

Probes could look as far back as 2015, the year after Russia's seizure and annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine.

Moscow has previously denied that it carries outcyberattacks.

The ICC has already issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over alleged war crimes.

In a statement, the court issued the warrant on suspicion of unlawful deportation of children and unlawful transfer of people from the territory of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.

Vladimir Putin has not offered a peace plan to Ukraine but instead set a list of "maximalist demands", says a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

Speaking today at a meeting with Russian foreign ministry officials, Mr Putin said his country would be ready for peace talks "tomorrow" if Ukraine agreed to his demands.

Those include the immediate withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk regions and the assurance that Ukraine will give up on its plans to join NATO.

"This is not a peace plan but a series of maximalist demands directed at the West and Ukraine in exchange for ending hostilities," Tatiana Stanovaya posted on X.

"Moscow offers no concessions; there is no scope for compromise."

Timing of Swiss summit

Mr Putin's peace proposal has come the day before world leaders are due to meet in Switzerland to hold an international peace summit.

The high-level gathering is aimed at broadening support for Kyiv's peace plan and dialling up pressure on Moscow to end the conflict.

The timing of Russia's peace plan immediately before the Swiss summit is "with the intention of devaluing it," according to Ms Stanovaya.

She added: "Contrary to the popular belief that 'Putin has time,' he urgently needs to consolidate Russia's military advantage in Ukraine through a 'peace process' to render this superiority irreversible, as Russia may lose its military advantage in the coming year.

"Thus, Moscow views the Swiss conference as an escalating action against Russia, an effort to solidify an anti-Russian stance globally, and the Kremlin is determined to thwart this."

Putin sowing destabilisation and discord

The Kremlin is also aware that a destabilised Ukraine and a divided West would bring Russia closer to its definition of victory in the conflict.

That, according to Ms Stanovaya, is a key reason for Mr Putin's peace plan announcement.

She argues that the plans are designed to spread division, with some likely attracted to the idea of an immediate ceasefire even if it comes with accepting Russia's demands.

"Putin's immediate goal is to create conditions that would compel Zelenskyy to step down and draw Ukraine into 'negotiations' that would destabilise the state, thereby coercing Kyiv to acquiesce to Russian demands in the future," added Ms Stanovaya.

"This strategy would relieve Russia of the need to continue military action and reduce the necessity for the West to arm Ukraine.

"At the same time, the 'proposal' is designed to sow discord in the West and appeal to those who desire immediate peace, encouraging support for the Russian 'proposal'."

The last operational trans-shipping point for Russian gas exports to Europe has reportedly been shelled by Ukraine.

According to Alexei Smirnov, the acting governor of Russia's western Kursk region, Ukraine shelled several settlements including the key town of Sudzha.

Mr Smirnov made nomention of any damage to the gas infrastructure, though said two people were treated for injuries.

He also said a residential house was destroyed as a result of the shelling.

Russian gas supplies to Europe have plummeted since the start of its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The country supplied a total of about 63.8 billion cubicmetres (bcm) of gas to Europe by various routes in 2022,according to Gazprom data and Reuters calculations.

The volumedeclined by 55.6% to 28.3 bcm last year.

Russia has increasingly centralised their command and control of irregular forces, according to the UK Ministry of Defence.

Irregular military is any non-standard military component that is distinct from a country's national armed forces.

In February 2023, Russia established its Volunteer Corps, uniting over 20,000 volunteers, reservists, mercenaries and ex-convicts, who serve in numerous irregular units.

Since then, more irregular forces have been deployed in Ukraine, mainly as light infantry units which, according to the MoD, "lack integrated artillery or air support".

As a result of this, the MoD says Russia's irregular forces have likely sustained proportionally higher casualty rates than Russia's regular units over the last nine months.