Russia and Ukraine are set to resume direct peace talks in Istanbul next Monday, amidst international pressure. While Kyiv demands advance peace terms, Moscow insists on Ukraine abandoning its NATO aspirations and ceding territory.

Turkey's foreign minister will travel to Kyiv on Thursday for a two-day visit after discussing peace efforts to end Russia's war in Ukraine in Moscow earlier this week, a Turkish Foreign Ministry source said on Wednesday.

Three open coffins, one adult-sized, one medium and one child-sized, lay inside the Soviet-era Palace of Culture in a northern Ukrainian city.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced a cooperation with Ukraine to produce long-range weapons after a meeting in Berlin with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Third-grader Stanislav Martynyuk looks extremely proud in his school photograph. Hands folded on his desk; his eyes framed with spectacles that make him look like a serious – and adorable – 8-year-old scholar.

More than 200 Ukrainian POWs have died in Russian prisons since Moscow’s full-scale invasion three years ago. Officials from human rights groups, the U.N. and the Ukrainian government say torture, starvation and inadequate health care were likely contributing factors in many of these deaths.

It appears to be the first known strike in the war on a facility linked to the FSB, Moscow's main successor to the KGB.

Abuse inside Russian prisons likely contributed to many of these deaths, adding to evidence that Russia is systematically brutalizing captured soldiers, according to officials from human rights groups, the U.N. and the Ukrainian government, and a Ukrainian medical examiner who has performed dozens of POW autopsies.

Russia and Ukraine exchanged hundreds more prisoners Saturday as part of a major swap that amounted to a rare moment of cooperation in otherwise failed efforts to reach a ceasefire.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced that the two countries would jointly produce long-range missiles, enabling strikes deep inside Russia.