Ukraine-Russia war live: Putin accused of ‘hollow’ peace claims as 74 people wounded in Sumy missile strike

Vladimir Putin has gifted Donald Trump a portrait he commissioned of the US president, the Kremlin confirmed.

Mr Putin gave the painting to Mr Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, in Moscow earlier this month, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in a response to a journalist’s question, declining further comment.

The gift was first mentioned last week by Mr Witkoff in an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

Mr Witkoff told Carlson that Mr Trump “was clearly touched” by the portrait, which he described as “beautiful”.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has gifted Donald Trump a portrait he commissioned of the US president, the Kremlin confirmed yesterday.

Mr Putin gave the painting to Mr Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, in Moscow earlier this month, the Russian president’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in a response to a journalist’s question. He declined any further comment.

The gift was first mentioned last week by Mr Witkoff in an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

Mr Witkoff said the US president “was clearly touched” by the portrait from his Russian counterpart, which he described as “beautiful.”

It was not immediately known if the portrait Mr Putin gave to Mr Trump had been examined for bugs. The White House hasn’t commented on the portrait.

Senior US and Ukrainian officials are set to discuss territory and the ownership of Ukraine’s power plants today as negotiators work to a agree a partial ceasefire.

While the White House has previously said it wants “energy and infrastructure” covered in an initial truce, the Kremlin declared that the agreement referred more narrowly to “energy infrastructure.”

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has said he would also like to see infrastructure like railways and ports protected.

In an exchange with reporters at the White House, Donald Trump said territorial lines and the potential for US ownership of a key nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine have been part of the talks.

Last week, he floated the idea of the US taking control of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

The six-reactor facility – one of the world’s largest – was seized by Russia early in the war.

“Some people are saying the United States should own the power plant – work it that way because we have the expertise” to get the plant operating, Mr Trump said. “Something like that would be fine with me,” he said.

The Ukrainian and US delegations will meet for further talks in Saudi Arabia today, according to the Ukrainian national broadcaster Suspilne, which cited an unnamed source in the country’s delegation.

The talks come a day after Russia-US negotiations on a narrow ceasefire proposal between Kyiv and Moscow.

A powerful cyberattack knocked out the online ticketing system for Ukraine’s state railway service, causing long queues at stations on Monday in what Kyiv officials said appeared to be a Russian attempt to “destabilise” the situation.

Blaming the cyberattack on the “enemy”, officials said rail travel had not been affected but that work was still under way to restore the online ticketing system more than 24 hours after the hack.

An outage was first reported on Sunday when the rail company notified passengers about a failure in its IT system and told them to buy tickets on-site or on trains.

“The latest attack was very systemic, unusual and multi-level,” rail company Ukrzaliznytsia said.

A Ukrainian security official and a senior government source, both of whom were speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that the attack looked like it had been carried out by Russia.

“It was some hacker group. We think that they are Russians. It is a strong strike but not critical,” the government source said.

The US-led talks in Saudi Arabia with delegations from Ukraine and Russia have been making good progress and an announcement is expected soon, a White House source told Reuters yesterday.

“Talks facilitated by the Trump administration’s technical teams in Riyadh are going extremely well and all parties involved have been working all day and into the night. We expect to have a positive announcement in the near future,” the source said.

Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff has praised Russian president Vladimir Putin as “super smart”, as talks over a ceasefire in Ukraine get underway in Saudi Arabia.

Ahead of Sunday’s discussions in Riyadh, Mr Witkoff – a former real estate mogul tasked by Mr Trump with leading negotiations on Ukraine’s future – met with Mr Putin in Moscow for a second time on Thursday for talks on ending the war.

Speaking to far-right commentator Tucker Carlson in an interview broadcast on Friday, Mr Witkoff said he “liked” the Russian president, who he described as “gracious”. He added: “I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy. He’s super smart.”

And in remarks that will do little to assuage European fears that the White House is increasingly parroting Kremlin propaganda, Mr Witkoff claimed the “elephant in the room” in peace talks is whether Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky can acknowledge Moscow’s claimed right to Crimea and four “Russian-speaking” regions in eastern Ukraine.

Despite being unable to name two of the four mainland regions – which Mr Putin partly occupies, and attempted to illegally annex following sham referenda in September 2022 – and using the Russian name for a third, Mr Witkoff said he believed the “central issue” in the conflict was whether Ukraine would relent control of them to Moscow.

Read more details in this report:

Officials from Russia are holding ceasefire talks with a US delegation in Saudi Arabia, as Donald Trump reportedly pushes to secure a truce in time for Easter.

Here, The Independent takes a look at what to expect from the US-led talks in Saudi Arabia, which began on Sunday just hours after Russia killed seven people – including a five-year-old child – in overnight drone strikes on Kyiv, and four people in Donetsk: