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Kyiv will not meet Vladimir Putin's request for Ukraine to withdraw troops from its four partially occupied regions, Volodymyr Zelensky has said. The Ukrainian leader said "it's our land," in a briefing to reporters on Monday, according to The Kyiv Independent on the day when the Russian president and U.S. President Donald Trump held a much-touted phone call. Yuriy Boyechko, CEO of humanitarian group Hope for Ukraine, told Newsweek Putin's ceasefire demands, which include Ukrainian forces leaving all of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, were "impossible to meet." Newsweek has contacted the Kremlin for comment. Why It Matters In...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said two Chinese nationals fighting in the Russian army have been taken prisoner in eastern Ukraine. Zelensky said Tuesday that Ukrainian forces fighting in the Donetsk region obtained the Chinese nationals’ documents, bank cards and personal data. “We have information that there are many more Chinese citizens in the occupier’s units than just two. We are now finding out all the facts,” Zelensky said in a post on Telegram. “I have instructed the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine to immediately contact Beijing and find out how China is going to react to this.”

Ukrainian police conducted nationwide raids on draft dodger gangs on Friday as the country battles to generate enough conscripted soldiers to keep its military competitive in the war against Russia without radically widening recruitment criteria. The National Police of Ukraine said they conducted “over 200 searches” of gangs assisting illegal border crossings by adult Ukrainian males, who have been banned from leaving the country since the beginning of Russia’s invasion in 2022. The searches “at the premises of persons involved in illegal transactions” took place in 19 of 27 Ukrainian regions, police said Friday. According to the AFP news agency,...