The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has said he would agree to direct talks with Vladimir Putin to end the war. “If that is the only set-up in which we can bring peace to the citizens of Ukraine and not lose people, definitely we will go for this set-up,” adding that he would also require other “participants” to be present. “If people believe we must move to the diplomatic track, and I believe we are ready to move to the diplomatic track, there must be the US, Europe, Ukraine and Russia [at the talks],” Zelenskyy said in an interview with British journalist Piers Morgan.

In the Morgan interview, Zelenskyy put Ukraine’s war dead at 45,100 people and injured at 390,000. He estimated Russian losses at 350,000 dead and between 600,000 and 700,000 injured, with “many” Russian forces missing in action.

A Russian strike killed five civilians including a pregnant teenager and wounded 55 on Tuesday in the town of Izium in Ukraine’s north-eastern Kharkiv region, partially destroying the city council building, officials said. A ballistic missile hit the building in the town’s central district, said the governor, Oleh Syniehubov. Three children were among the injured, who also included many local government and social services workers, he said.

Russian shelling killed two civilians on Tuesday in different parts of southern Ukraine, officials said. Prosecutors in Dnipropetrovsk region in the south-east said one person was killed in a district east of the major city of Dnipro. The governor of Kherson region further to the south, Oleksandr Prokudin, said one person died in the shelling of a town north of his region’s largest city, also called Kherson.

A drone attack by Ukraine sparked a fire at an oil depot in Russia’s Krasnodar region, Veniamin Kondratyev, the governor of the region, said early on Wednesday.

International lawyers have “laid the foundations” for a special tribunal to try Russia for the crime of aggression, Jennifer Rankin writes from Brussels. The EU executive on Tuesday declared a breakthrough that it said would mean the Russian political and military leaders “who bear the greatest responsibility” would be held to account. “There is no doubt that Putin has committed the crime of aggression, which is deciding to attack another country,” said Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief.

Ukraine said there had been a recent surge in queries from Russian families seeking information on missing soldiers, indicating “huge losses” for Moscow on the battlefield. Since it launched a hotline in January 2024, it had received more than 60,000 requests for details of missing Russian troops, and the real number of missing was likely two or three times higher “as not all relatives have yet applied to the Ukrainian project”. Out of all inquiries, 1,790 Russian soldiers were found to be in Ukrainian captivity and 408 of those were exchanged.

European and US shipowners have sold at least 230 ageing tankers into the “shadow fleet” used by Russia to evade oil sanctions, an international investigation led by the Dutch investigative outlet Follow the Money (FTM) has revealed. The owners made more than $6bn (£4.8bn) selling their vessels into countries that have not sanctioned Moscow such as India, Hong Kong, Vietnam or Seychelles. Many of the sellers were from countries with sanctions in place against Russia. Greek owners sold 127, the most; UK companies sold 22; and German and Norwegian owners 11 and eight. Most tankers would otherwise have been sold for scrap at a fraction of the price, Jon Henley reports.

New western sanctions, a weaker rouble and a lower harvest were to blame for Russia’s high inflation rate in December 2024 and January 2025, the Russian central bank reported on Tuesday. Inflation, which reached 9.5% in 2024, has emerged as the biggest economic challenge for Russian authorities as the country approaches the fourth year of what it calls “a special military operation” in Ukraine.

A former Conservative MP has reportedly joined the International Legion in Ukraine in a non-combat role. Jack Lopresti, 55, a former Tory deputy chair and ex-serviceman, said it was a “huge honour and an immense privilege”. While British citizens are warned by the Foreign Office that it may be illegal for them to fight in Ukraine, there are no examples of UK prosecutions, and it is legal in Ukraine itself.

The family of an American killed when flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine in 2014 can sue Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, for allegedly providing money transfers to the Russia-backed separatist group Donetsk People’s Republic, which is blamed for downing the airliner, a US court ruled on Tuesday. Quinn Schansman, 18, was one of 298 people on board the Malaysia Airlines flight, all of whom were killed when it was shot down over DPR-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine by a surface-to-air missile.