Ukraine war briefing: Next stop Istanbul after Trump scatters ceasefire choreography

Donald Trump suggested he might fly on from the Middle East to Turkey to join prospective Ukraine-Russia peace talks on Thursday. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has said he will travel to Istanbul, challenging Vladimir Putin to meet him there. The Russian foreign ministry on Monday gave no indication of whether the president would accept.

Patrick Wintour writes that Trump’s latest interventions have set back and possibly jeopardised European plans to rapidly crank up sanctions against Russia because of Putin’s refusal to accept the longstanding US proposal of a 30-day ceasefire. The leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Poland had for the first time gone together to Kyiv at the weekend to underline the call for a ceasefire that they said should start on Monday.

Trump has insisted that instead of the snap ceasefire – which he said “President Putin of Russia doesn’t want” – Russia and Ukraine should meet “immediately” for talks. “At least they will be able to determine whether or not a deal is possible, and if it is not, European leaders, and the US, will know where everything stands, and can proceed accordingly,” Trump posted.

The UK has now postponed further measures due to be announced on Monday, but the EU is continuing with its plans for another package of sanctions later this month. A German government spokesperson said on Monday that the EU would begin working on the sanctions if there was not a ceasefire by the end of the day. But extra US action would be a gamechanger and the Republican senator Lindsey Graham has prepared a sanctions package that has broad congressional support.

Russia launched more than 100 Shahed and decoy drones at Ukraine in night-time attacks, the Ukrainian air force said on Monday, after the Kremlin effectively rejected the 30-day ceasefire. The Ukrainian military’s general staff said that as of 10pm on Monday there had been 133 clashes with Russian forces along the frontline since midnight, when the ceasefire would have come into effect.

Ukraine’s top commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, was quoted by Zelenskyy as saying the heaviest fighting still gripped the Donetsk region, the focus of the eastern front, and Russia’s western Kursk region, nine months after Kyiv’s forces staged a cross-border incursion. Russia was “completely ignoring” the 30-day ceasefire call and attacking “all along” the frontline, said the Ukrainian foreign minister, Andriy Sybiga.

The UN aviation council on Monday ruled that Russia was responsible for the downing of Malaysian airliner MH17 in the Donetsk region that killed all 298 passengers and crew on 17 July 2014, soon after the Kremlin first began waging war on Ukraine. The Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) would in the coming weeks consider what form of reparation was in order, said the Dutch and Australian governments, whose citizens were killed.

Ukrainian and Polish officials said Polish protesters resumed blocking one of the main border crossings on Monday, a flashback to protests in 2023 over Polish claims of unfair competition from Ukrainian agricultural imports and transports companies. The original protests came when in response to the Russian invasion, the EU eased restrictions on Ukrainian hauliers operating across the border.