Donald Trump has said the US might “take a pass” on brokering further peace talks between Russia and Ukraine if either side “makes it very difficult”. Meanwhile, Moscow’s forces claim to have retaken another village in Kursk.
Saturday 19 April 2025 12:40, UK
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A US congressman signed an artillery shell with a message to Vladimir Putin during a visit to the frontline in Ukraine this week.
Brian Fitzpatrick, a pro-Ukraine Republican representing Pennsylvania, visited Ukrainian troops yesterday following a meeting with Volodymyr Zelebskyy.
Fitzpatrick said that during the visit, the group was shelled near the Russian border, tracked by Russian drones, and forced to carry out an emergency evacuation from the area.
“They’re fighting for their democracy, they’re fighting for the freedom – all of us in America need to stand behind them,” Fitzpatrick said in a video address published on his Facebook account.
“I always have and always will have their back. I encourage all my colleagues in Congress to come here.”
In a separate video, Fitzpatrick is filmed signing an artillery shell with a “very personal” message to Putin.
The message reads: “To: Putin, From: PA-1. #PeaceThroughStrength”. PA-1 refers to the Pennsylvania community Fitzpatrick has represented since 2017.
He said the “message was delivered on target”.
The families of Ukrainian soldiers severely wounded during a prison massacre in 2022 say they’re going on an indefinite hunger strike to demand the return of their loved ones.
Nearly 60 soldiers are believed to have been killed and between 75-130 wounded when a building housing Ukrainian prisoners of war was destroyed near Olenivka in the eastern Donetsk region in July 2022.
Russia denied culpability for the explosion but has been widely blamed for it by the international community, with the EU labelling the attack as a “horrific atrocity”.
Ukrainian authorities said it was a deliberate Russian war crime, claiming soldiers of the Azov Regiment were purposefully moved to a separate part of the prison that was later destroyed in the explosion.
The Olenvika Community says it will go on hunger strike from 24 April and has issued three demands to end it. They include:
Donald Trump has said he wanted to see “enthusiasm” from both sides to end the war in Ukraine, but American hopes for a quick peace deal are fading.
That’s despite US officials meeting with Ukrainian and European counterparts in Paris on Thursday for talks focused on ending the war.
Here’s Europe correspondent Adam Parsons reporting on how US confidence seems to have ebbed away of late.
Vladimir Putin will hold talks on Tuesday in Moscow with the Sultan of Oman, the Kremlin has said.
The pair will discuss trade and economics ties between their countries and “current issues on the international and regional agendas”, it added.
Oman – sometimes referred to as the “Switzerland of the Middle East” – has refused to pick a side in the war in Ukraine and has not singled out Russia as the aggressor.
Donald Trump has put his prestige on the line over Ukraine and is now coming under increasing pressure to solve the conflict he promised he would end within 24 hours of taking office.
That’s according to Jim Townsend, the former US deputy secretary of defence for European and NATO policy during the Obama administration.
He’s been speaking to Sky News presenter Leah Boleto about recent comments from Trump and Marco Rubio, US secretary of state, that the US could “pass” on peace talks if either side “makes it difficult” for Washington.
That’s raised concern that the White House no longer sees peace, which Trump promised to deliver immediately after his second inauguration, as being high on its list of priorities.
“The problem is that it puts his prestige on the line because the media is holding him to this [24-hour] deadline,” Townsend says. “And so he’s got to show something for it. He’s under pressure to put up or shut up in a lot of ways.”
The art of the deal?
Townsend says we might be seeing some high-level negotiating tactics being deployed by the Trump administration, given JD Vance’s comments about being “optimistic” for peace (see 9.05 post) seemingly contradicting the feeling coming from the Oval Office.
“There’s some good cop bad cop going on here with Rubio sounding like things are going to head south if there’s not some movement soon on the Russian side and Trump saying that as well,” he adds.
“But on the other side, JD Vance in Rome has said some positive things about the future. So there is definitely some posturing in negotiating going on.”
Russian troops have recaptured the village of Oleshnya in its Kursk region, the RIA state news agency cited the Russian defence ministry as saying this morning.
Sky News has not independently verified this report.
Russia has been fighting to remove Ukrainian forces from Kursk since Kyiv sent its forces into the territory last August. Many of the territorial gains it made there have since been wiped out.
Australia’s prime minister says his country has not abandoned one of its citizens who faces a 15-year jail sentence in Russia for fighting with Ukrainian troops.
Anthony Albanese said Australia will use “whatever avenues” to can to help Melbourne man Oscar Jenkins, a 33-year-old former biology teacher who fought with Ukraine’s armed forces against Russia’s invasion.
“[Australia will] continue to make representations to the reprehensible regime of Vladimir Putin on behalf of Mr Jenkins,” he said.
“We will stand up and use whatever avenues we have at our disposal to continue to make those representations.”
Reports emerged in January suggesting Jenkins had been killed by Russian forces, until Moscow confirmed he was alive and later released a video of the Australian in which he appeared weak.
After the video, Albanese said Australia had made it clear to Russia that Jenkins was a prisoner of war and that there were obligations that needed to be met in accordance with international humanitarian law.
Russia typically considers foreigners travelling to fight in Ukraine as “mercenaries”, enabling them to prosecute fighters under its criminal code, rather than treating them as prisoners of war with protections and rights under the Geneva Convention.
More recently, British man James Scott Rhys Anderson was jailed for 19 years after a Russian court found him guilty of fighting for Ukraine in the country’s Kursk region.
These images show Ukrainian troops preparing and firing self-propelled artillery on Russian positions in the Donetsk region.
The heavily-industrialised eastern region has been the site of an ongoing theatre of operations since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, with daily assaults across the area from Moscow’s forces.
JD Vance has just arrived at the Vatican as part of his Easter trip to Rome.
Yesterday, the vice president met with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni before attending Good Friday mass at St Peter’s Basilica.
Vance said he would brief Meloni on negotiations involving Ukraine and Russia, and “some of the things that have happened even in the past 24 hours”.
“I won’t prejudge them, but we do feel optimistic that we can hopefully bring this war, this very brutal war, to a close,” he said, seemingly in contrast to Donald Trump who said he was not expecting a truce to come in a “specific number of days”.
Washington and Kyiv are moving closer to signing a deal involving Ukraine’s minerals, almost two months after Volodymyr Zelenskyy first travelled to the White House to sign it.
Both Ukraine and the US have signed a memorandum of intent, published by the Ukrainian government yesterday, that says they “intend to set up an investment fund for the reconstruction of Ukraine as part of an economic partnership” between the two countries.
What’s in the deal?
Trump has pushed for a deal that would allow the US to share in profits of Ukraine’s natural resources and critical minerals, something he casts as repayment for military aid provided by Washington to Kyiv since 2022.
The memo notes the US’s “significant financial and material support”, with Ukraine’s economy minister Yulia Svyrydenko saying she expected the deal to be “very beneficial for both countries”.
US treasury secretary Scott Bessent, who signed the memo over video call with Svyrydenko, said the current deal was “substantially what we’d agreed on previously”.
That previous agreement, which Zelenskyy failed to finalise in February after a fiery clash with Donald Trump and JD Vance in the Oval Office, was never published, but details were shared by Ukrainian media at the time.
Those details envisaged Ukraine contributing 50% of its future proceeds from state-owned mineral resources, oil and gas to an investment fund, which would be used “to promote the safety, security and prosperity of Ukraine”.
The latest deal is not believed to include any security guarantees from the US for Ukraine, something Zelesnskyy has long called for.
Trump has previously suggested the presence of US contractors in Ukraine would act in itself as a security guarantee, but responsibility for its security would now fall to Europe.
When could it be signed?
The memorandum says both countries aim to complete discussions by 26 April, with the aim of signing a final deal “as soon as possible”.
Trump, however, has said he hopes to sign the deal sooner, by 24 April.
“We have a minerals deal which I guess is going to be signed on Thursday… next Thursday. Soon. And I assume they’re going to live up to the deal. So we’ll see. But we have a deal on that,” he said this week.
What minerals does Ukraine have?
Before Russia’s invasion in February 2022, minerals made up 6.1% of Ukraine’s GDP (gross domestic product) and 30% of its exports.
It is home to various ‘critical’ minerals, so called for their use in technology manufacturing, defence systems, and green energy, with examples including copper, nickel, lithium, and titanium.
Back in February, Sky’s economics and data editor Ed Conway looked into the nuts and bolts of Ukraine’s minerals. Watch his report below.
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