Speaking about past negotiations with Moscow, Trump said U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff "had no idea about Russia, had no idea about Putin too much" at the time.

The Kremlin said Russia was deeply concerned about the possibility of the U.S. supplying Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine.

Three of the eight children were separated from their parents and “displaced” to Russia because of front-line fighting, Melania Trump said. The other five were separated from family members across borders because of the conflict, including a girl who has gone from Ukraine to Russia, she said.

For more than a decade, Russian aggression has made Ukraine’s Donetsk region synonymous with war. It’s both a symbol of Kyiv’s resistance and a gauge of the conflict’s progress.

Russia has lost around 1,121,570 troops in Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces reported on Oct. 13.

The departure of a senior delegation, led by Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko, was announced on Monday, just as Ukraine’s Energy Ministry said it had imposed power outages across the country in a bid to reduce pressure on the grid in the wake of damaging Russian attacks.

A representative of Ukraine's state-owned rail company said the attacks coincide with Russia's "dramatic increase" in drone production.

Scores of sanctions from the US, EU, UK and others have weakened Russia’s economy, but not its resolve to carry on fighting. What’s now needed is not just more but smarter penalties, experts say.