Donald Trump has spoken about talks in the Saudi city of Riyadh today as efforts to end the Ukraine war continue. Volodymyr Zelenskyy has also given a revealing interview. Follow the latest, submit a question for defence analyst Michael Clarke and listen to The World podcast below.
Monday 24 March 2025 18:57, UK
Live reporting by Brad Young
Security and defence analyst Michael Clarke returns for his weekly Q&A on the Ukraine war tomorrow afternoon – covering anything from the battlefield to the negotiating table.
He’ll tackle as many of your questions as he can – submit yours in the box above to join in.
US-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia are coming to a close, Russian state media reports.
RIA Novosti cites an unnamed source as saying the delegations are agreeing on the wording of a joint statement.
“We are completing negotiations,” said Grigory Karasin, a member of the Russian delegation.
A ceasefire agreement in the Black Sea to restart commercial shipping has been at the heart of discussions, though Donald Trump said territory and the ownership of Ukraine’s power plants has also come up.
Earlier we featured reports that Russia was striking a residential area in Sumy, northeastern Ukraine.
Sumy City Council has now said at least 88 people were wounded including 17 children, reports Interfax-Ukraine.
Mayor Artem Kobzar earlier said the attacks targeted “children’s institutions” and a hospital.
Sky News cannot independently verify these battlefield reports.
Pictures from Reuters photographers on the ground show wounded people being tended to as firefighters attempt to put out a blaze in an apartment building.
Donald Trump is holding a cabinet meeting, where he tells reporters Ukraine talks are covering territory and power plant ownership.
US and Russian delegations are holding talks in Saudi Arabia today, after the US and Ukraine held talks yesterday.
“We’re talking about territory right now. We’re talking about lines of demarcation, Talking about power, power plant ownership,” Trump told reporters.
“Some people are saying the United States should own the power plant… because we have the expertise.”
The president said he expects a US-Ukraine revenue-sharing agreement on Ukrainian critical minerals to be signed soon.
Two senior Ukrainian officials told the Financial Times that Trump may want to use the plant to power the extraction of rare minerals that Ukraine holds.
You can watch the cabinet meeting – if you must – and scroll back through it using the YouTube video below.
The head of the British armed forces has said Europe’s “two leading nuclear powers” are forging a deeper relationship after a meeting with French counterparts.
The meeting will help shape the future of British and French military cooperation and “our shared efforts to support Ukraine with military aid now and after any peace deal”, said Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, chief of the defence staff.
Heads of the British and French armies, navies, and air forces met in London today, as well as the head of both countries’ defence forces.
“The combined convening power of Britain and France is immense,” said the admiral.
“The political leadership of Prime Minister Starmer and President Macron is reflected in the military planning that is now under way between our respective staffs as we draw together a coalition of the willing from Europe and beyond.”
Russia has started military exercises involving nuclear-capable missiles, according to Russian media.
Yars intercontinental ballistic missiles are part of the planned exercises, RIA reported, citing the Russian defence ministry.
The ministry said ICBM regiments in the Sverdlovsk and Altai regions “will be deployed to field positions”.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy once again invited US vice president JD Vance to visit Ukraine during a recent phone call – but he is still waiting for a response.
In an interview with Time magazine (see our 16.16 post for more), the Ukrainian president said he had suggested that Vance reconsider his decision not to visit Ukraine during the war.
“We’re still waiting for you,” Zelenskyy told Vance, but the US official did not reply.
During the interview, Zelenskyy also said he hoped Donald Trump would realise that Vladimir Putin was “weaker than he seems” and “cannot be trusted”.
He said that while he did not believe in apocalyptic scenarios, in one of his recent phone calls with Trump, he tried to paint a picture of a scenario in which the ceasefire proves vulnerable to endless Russian violations.
Describing such a scene, he said it all the towns and cities in Ukraine that sit along the frontline would become like a “thousand Berlins” during the Cold War.
He said they would be “dead zones” on the map of Europe.
Watch: Zelenskyy and Trump’s body language during row analysed
What did Vance say to Zelenskyy in the Oval Office?
During tense talks in the Oval Office this month, Vance said Ukraine was relying on conscription.
In response to the conscription comment, Zelenskyy asked Vance: “Have you ever been to Ukraine?”
The answer, as Zelenskyy knew, was no.
Ignoring the suggestion that he should visit, Vance countered: “I’ve actually watched and seen the stories, and I know that what happens is you bring people, you bring them on a propaganda tour, Mr President.”
Further to reports we have been bringing you through the day on strikes on Sumy, the region’s acting mayor has said the attack today targeted “children’s institutions and a hospital”.
In a post on Telegram, Artem Kobzar said emergency services were working at the scene to provide assistance to the injured.
He said the residential sector and infrastructure facilities of the city were damaged, including children’s institutions and a hospital.
During the war, Russia has maintained that it does not hit civilian targets and its strikes target critical infrastructure and military facilities in Ukraine.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russia of managing to influence high-level officials in the White House.
In an interview with Time magazine, Ukraine’s president said the Kremlin has successfully managed to convince members of the Trump administration to believe false narratives about the war.
“I believe Russia has managed to influence some people on the White House team through information,” he said.
“Their signal to the Americans was that the Ukrainians do not want to end the war, and something should be done to force them.”
Zelenskyy also referenced his Oval Office spat with Trump and JD Vance last month, saying he was “defending the dignity of Ukraine” during the shouting match.
“In that moment there was the sense of not being allies, or not taking the position of an ally,” he said. “In that conversation, I was defending the dignity of Ukraine.”
Watch: How Trump-Zelenskyy talks unravelled
On recent US diplomacy surrounding the war, it was put to Zelenskyy that Trump seems to have reserved all the carrots for Russia, while the Ukrainians get the stick.
“If the carrot is poisoned, then thank God,” Zelenskyy says. “Maybe that’s the sneakiness of this diplomacy.”
Russia must stop its attacks instead of “making hollow statements about peace”, Ukraine’s foreign minister has said this afternoon after the Kremlin’s strikes on Sumy.
In a statement on X, Andrii Sybiha said dozens had been injured after Russian bombing in the northern region.
He said any diplomacy with Moscow “must be backed up by firepower, sanctions and pressure”.
You can read his statement here…
Sumy is about 18.6 miles from the Russian border and is subject to regular drone and missile strikes by Russia.
Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine with the intent, among other things, of stealing its children, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reports.
In its latest war update, the US-based thinktank states that when Russian troops rolled across the border into Ukraine, “the groundwork for the massive deportation of Ukraine’s children was already in place”.
Ukrainian human rights activists uncovered Kremlin documents dated February 2022, which laid out plans to remove Ukrainian children from orphanages in the occupied Luhansk and Donetsk regions and bring them to Russia, the thinktank says.
“In the subsequent three years, Russia has embarked on a Kremlin-directed, deeply institutionalised project to abduct Ukrainian children and forcibly turn them into the next generation of Russians,” the ISW reports.
The thinktank says Ukraine has been able to verify Russia’s deportation of 19,456 children to date.
Meanwhile, Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab has placed the number of deported children closer to 35,000 as of 19 March.
The ISW adds: “The true number of deported children is near-impossible to verify, but the implication remains the same – Russia has stolen tens, potentially hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children with the explicit intent of eradicating their Ukrainian identities and turning them into Russians.”
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