Ukraine-Russia struggle newest: US to restart army dialogue with Moscow after virtually five-year suspension

US president Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said the delegations from the US, Ukraine and Russia had agreed to an exchange of 314 prisoners of war, which took place yesterday, marking the first such swap in five months.

Aside from agreeing to resume negotiations soon, Russia and Ukraine have exchanged 157 prisoners of war each, the Russian defence ministry said. Three civilians from the Kursk region were also returned to Russia.

A video released by Ukraine’s presidency showed dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war – many wrapped in the national flag – disembarking from buses in the snow, some hugging each other and others crying as they spoke to relatives on mobile phones.

POW exchanges were the only concrete steps towards peace that emerged from the previous rounds of talks between Ukraine and Russia last year in Turkey.

Hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides have been killed, wounded, or gone missing in nearly four years of war.

At least two people have been killed this morning in a Russian drone strike on Zaporizhzhia’s Vilniansk, regional officials said.

“The Russians hit Vilniansk with a drone. A house was destroyed. A married couple were killed – a 49-year-old man and a 48-year-old woman,” said Ivan Fedorov, head of Zaporizhzhia oblast military administration.

The overnight attack also wounded a 14-year-old boy, he said. Several residential buildings were damaged and 12,000 consumers were left without electricity due to damage to energy infrastructure.

A Ukrainian-born grappler is on the cusp of making history in Japan’s national sport of sumo, as he trains intensely for a shot at its highest honour.

Aonishiki, whose sumo name translates to “blue brocade” in homage to the Ukrainian flag, has rapidly ascended through the ranks.

The 21-year-old has secured two consecutive grand tournament victories and already holds the sport’s second-highest status as an ozeki champion.

A triumph at the upcoming spring tournament in Osaka next month would qualify him for promotion to yokozuna, an esteemed grand champion title achieved by only 75 men throughout sumo’s long history.

“I wake up every day wanting to get stronger, wanting to climb another rank higher,” the 140kg grappler told reporters in Japanese after a morning training session in Tokyo.

“The simple fact is that you can’t progress without a struggle. It’s my job to overcome that.”

Volodymyr Zelensky said his administration is working to bring home every single Ukrainian held in Russian captivity.

Ukraine and Russia completed the first prisoner swap in around five months yesterday, exchanging a total of 314 people.

Zelensky celebrated the exchange on X, writing: “We are bringing our people home – 157 Ukrainians. Warriors from the Armed Forces, National Guard, and the State Border Guard Service. Soldiers, sergeants, and officers. Along with our defenders, civilians are also returning. Most of them had been in captivity since 2022.”

Zelensky said it was critical for Ukraine to make the exchange happen and thanked everyone on the frontline who captured Russian soldiers to be used in prisoner swaps.

“Without the determination of our warriors, such exchanges would be impossible. And thus every result achieved by our units is what also sustains the ability to bring Ukrainians home from Russia. We will continue to work to release our people from captivity. We must bring everyone back – and we certainly will,” he said.

“We are working on every name so that each family can finally welcome their loved ones home.”

The US and Russia have agreed to reestablish high level dialogue between their militaries, the US European Command said in a statement published yesterday.

“Following the productive and constructive progress towards President (Donald) Trump’s goal of peace in Ukraine made by Jared Kushner and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff over the past week, the US and Russian Federation agreed today in Abu Dhabi to reestablish high level military-to-military dialogue,” the statement said.

“This channel of communication was suspended in the fall of 2021, just prior to the onset of the conflict,” the United States European Command said in a statement, referring to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The most divisive issues are Moscow’s demands that Kyiv give up land it still controls and the fate of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, which sits in a Russian-occupied area.

Russia wants Ukraine to pull its troops out of all the Donetsk region, including heavily fortified cities regarded as one of Ukraine’s strongest defences, as a precondition for any deal.

Ukraine says the conflict should be frozen along current front lines and rejects any unilateral pullback of its forces.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russian troops would keep fighting until Kyiv made “decisions” that could bring the war to an end.

Russia occupies about 20 per cent of Ukraine’s national territory, including Crimea and parts of the eastern Donbas region seized before the 2022 invasion.

Analysts say Russia has gained about 1.5 per cent of Ukrainian territory since early 2024.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said further US sanctions against Russia depend on peace talks aimed at ending the nearly four-year-old Ukraine war.

Bessent, who participated in talks with Russian officials and president Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner in Miami on Saturday, said he would consider new sanctions against Russia’s shadow fleet – a step Trump has not taken since returning to office in January 2025.

“I will take it under consideration. We will see where the peace talks go,” Bessent said at a Senate Banking Committee hearing.

He said the Trump administration’s US sanctions against Russian oil majors Rosneft and Lukoil had helped bring Russia to the negotiating table in the peace talks.

Nato defence ministers will likely discuss measures to bolster the security of Greenland in a meeting next week, defence secretary John Healey said, after US president Donald Trump nearly upended the alliance over his desire to acquire it.

Trump has repeatedly asserted that he wants Greenland, saying European allies have failed to properly secure it. His comments sparked a dispute with Nato member Denmark over its overseas territory and strained the defence alliance.

Those tensions eased after Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte said he had discussed how Nato allies could work collectively to ensure Arctic security with Trump, but details of those plans remain scarce.

Nighttime shelling by Ukraine inflicted “serious damage” in the Russian city of Belgorod, near the border, the region’s governor said in the early hours today.

Vyacheslav Gladkov, in a solemn video posted on Telegram after midnight, said city officials were holding an emergency meeting to devise a plan of action.

“I cannot say good evening, unfortunately, my dear friends,” Gladkov said in the video, recorded in near-darkness.

“The enemy has shelled the civilian city of Belgorod. Everyone knows we have no military targets. There has been serious damage. I have been out to look around,” he said.

A post on the unofficial Russian Telegram channel Mash, which has sources in the security services, said missiles had hit the city that lies about 40km (25 miles) from the Ukrainian border and power had been cut in some districts.

Ukrainian forces have regularly attacked Belgorod and nearby parts of the region since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of its smaller neighbour.