A Russian court on Tuesday convicted four journalists of extremism for working for an anti-corruption group founded by the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny and sentenced them to 5 1/2 years in prison each.

Antonina Favorskaya, Kostantin Gabov, Sergey Karelin and Artyom Kriger were found guilty of involvement with a group that had been labeled as extremist. All four had maintained their innocence, arguing they were being prosecuted for doing their jobs as journalists.

On Friday Steve Witkoff travelled to St Petersburg to hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Friday’s meeting was the third time this year that President Donald Trump’s special envoy met with the Russian President. The meeting, which lasted for more than four hours, focused on ‘aspects of a Ukrainian settlement’. Witkoff’s visit came after President Trump warned the Kremlin on social media that it ‘has to get moving’ on a ceasefire.

While Joe Biden publicly led the charge to punish Russia for its first invasion of Ukraine, he used his role as vice president to quietly open a backdoor for Moscow's gas to flow to its neighbor in fall 2014, at a time when his son Hunter's Ukrainian energy company sought such help, according to government messages in a private email account kept from Americans for more than a decade.

As high-level delegations from the U.S. and Russia arrive in Saudi Arabia for the second round of bilateral talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, Moscow’s envoys will have one goal on their mind: buying time.

For the Kremlin, dragging out peace negotiations for as long as possible is imperative for seizing as much Ukrainian territory as it can and getting an upper hand over Kyiv in relations with the U.S., as Moscow isn’t capable of making these battlefield advances quickly, four sources familiar with the Kremlin’s thinking told The Moscow Times. 

U.S. and Russian officials began talks in Saudi Arabia on Monday aimed at making progress towards a broad ceasefire in Ukraine with Washington eyeing a separate Black Sea maritime ceasefire deal before securing a wider agreement.

The talks, which followed U.S. negotiations with Ukraine in Saudi Arabia on Sunday, come as U.S. President Donald Trump intensifies his drive to end the three-year-old conflict after he last week spoke to both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russia and Ukraine have launched air attacks that damaged each other's infrastructure, hours after Vladimir Putin said Russia would stop targeting Ukrainian energy sites.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia's targets included hospitals. He said the Russian leader had in effect rejected a comprehensive ceasefire in his call on Tuesday with US President Donald Trump.

Putin told Trump a full ceasefire would only work if Ukraine's allies stopped giving military assistance - a condition Ukraine's European allies have previously rejected.

Special Envoy Steve Witkoff said his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday was “positive” and involved a “solution based discussion” around peace negotiations with Ukraine.

Witkoff’s comments came during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union. He said the meeting lasted between three and four hours and that he expects there will be a call between Putin and President Donald Trump this week.

President Donald Trump said he would speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday as he pushes to end the war in Ukraine.

The U.S. leader disclosed the upcoming conversation to reporters while flying from Florida to Washington on Air Force One on Sunday evening.

“We will see if we have something to announce maybe by Tuesday. I will be speaking to President Putin on Tuesday,” Trump said. “A lot of work’s been done over the weekend. We want to see if we can bring that war to an end.”

Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, dressed in fatigues, visited a command post near the front in Kursk late Wednesday to cheer on his military’s ejection of Ukrainian forces from much of the territory they had been occupying in the Russian border region.

The Russian leader’s pointed visit came a day after a U.S. delegation met in Saudi Arabia with Ukrainian officials, who agreed to a 30-day cease-fire in the war. American officials planned to take the proposal to Mr. Putin, who has previously said he is not interested in a temporary truce.

Ukraine launched its biggest drone attack on the Russian capital on Tuesday with at least 91 drones targeting Moscow, killing at least one person, sparking fires, closing airports and forcing dozens of flights to be diverted, Russian officials said.

A total of 337 Ukrainian drones were downed over Russia, including 91 over the Moscow region and 126 over the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces have been pulling back, the defence ministry said.