Zelenskiy says Turkey ready to host next peace talks

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, after his meeting with President Tayyip Erdogan, said that Türkiye is ready to host the next round of tripartite peace talks between Ukraine, Russia and the USA.

“The President stated that Türkiye is ready to host the next round of negotiations in a tripartite format. We appreciate this initiative and hope it will produce results,” he said on social media.

Zelenskiy added that the prisoner of war exchange and a possible leaders’ summit will be discussed in the next round of US-brokered talks between Ukraine and Russia.

He told reporters in a WhatsApp media chat that the talks were postponed until next week.

U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, a top adviser to President Donald Trump, said in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday that the next round of trilateral peace talks would likely be “next week.”

Meanwhile, Governor Alexander Bogomaz said on Tuesday that six civilians were killed and 37 injured in a Ukrainian missile attack on Russia’s Bryansk region.

Zelenskiy said that the Ukrainian army hit a Russian missile facility in Bryansk.

“The operation targeted the Bryansk facility that produces control systems for all types of missiles used by the Russian Federation,” Zelenskiy told reporters on WhatsApp. he said.

Russia’s deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children since 2022 constitutes crimes against humanity, a United Nations investigation concluded Tuesday.

Ukraine says nearly 20,000 children were illegally sent to Russia and Belarus, where they were sometimes subjected to military training and forced to fight against its own troops.

The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin and five other Russians over the illegal deportation of children.

Russia denies taking the children against their will, saying it voluntarily sent people elsewhere to get them out of a war zone.

“In this report, the Commission concludes that crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by the Russian authorities target children, who are among the most vulnerable victims,” ​​the report said.

“These crimes have irreversible consequences on their lives and futures.”

In the report prepared by the Independent International Ukraine Investigative Commission, the cases of 1205 children from five regions of Ukraine were examined and it was stated that 80 percent of them had not yet returned.

Their work is based on more than 200 interviews, including with families of the missing and some of the children returned home, as well as analysis of thousands of documents and submissions from rights groups.

“The deportations and transfers were carried out from various locations over a wide geographical area in the Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine, following an established pattern of behavior, which suggests that these actions were widespread and systematic,” the report, to be presented to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Thursday, said. The expression was also added.

It was also stated that Russian officials at the highest level of government helped coordinate the actions.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha welcomed the report and called on countries to increase pressure on Russia to secure the return of deported children.

Last year, US-funded research showed that Russia was expanding compulsory re-education programs for deported children.

US First Lady Melania Trump advocated for their release and was in contact with Putin’s team as part of their work.