Vladimir Putin has described initial contacts with the Trump administration as “inspiring a certain degree of hope”, his most positive remarks since US-Russia talks began on ending the war in Ukraine.

Donald Trump appeared to blame Ukraine for the war with Russia and signalled Kyiv should hold elections, hours after the US held high-level talks with Moscow in Riyadh.

The writer is US Treasury secretary. While much has been reported about the economic partnership that President Donald Trump has proposed to his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Z

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has rejected a US bid to take ownership of around 50 per cent of the rights to his country’s rare earth minerals and is trying to negotiate a better deal, according to several people familiar with the matter.

US national security adviser Mike Waltz has said Ukraine will sign a critical minerals deal with Washington in “the very short term”, even as Kyiv says several key points must still be agreed.

Gideon tests the mood in Kiev three years after the Russian invasion as the Trump presidency upends previous tenets of international politics. He talks to Ukrainian MP Lesia Vasylenko and Oleksandr Khomiak, director of Drone Space Labs, a defence start-up. Clip: European Commission

Simply sign up to the War in Ukraine myFT Digest -- delivered directly to your inbox. Yuri Bushkovsky was born not long after the death of Josef Stalin, lived through the cold war and dissolution of the Soviet Union,

China enjoys a close relationship with Russia. Weeks prior to Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the two reaffirmed the “no limits” partnership first mentioned by Beijing in 2021. Nato considers China a “decisive enabler” of the Kremlin’s war effort, with Beijing providing critical support to Moscow’s defence industrial base.