Ukraine: Zelenskyy-Putin talks should be ‘next step’ — Kyiv

Putin ‘enjoys’ fooling the West, says former Russian foreign minster

After lower-level delegations from Russia and Ukraine held brief talks in Istanbul, DW spoke with Andrei Kozyrev, Russia’s foreign minister from 1990 to 1996 under Boris Yeltsin, about the ongoing situation in Ukraine.

Kozyrev, who lives in the US, lamented the slowness of sanctions on Presdient Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

“Three years ago, at the beginning there was a possibility probably to stop Putin by sanction,” he said.

The former diplomat said the sanctions have been softened by the help from China, which is “supplying Putin with everything needed for the war of attrition.”

Kozyrev doesn’t take Putin nor the Istanbul talks seriously. “It’s theatrics, diplomatic theatrics,” he said. “And Putin enjoys it.”

“He enjoys bombing Ukraine and he enjoys fooling Western leaders because that’s what he wants. The West is too weak to stand against him,” the former minister said.

Australian sentenced to 13 years in prison for fighting for Ukraine

Oscar Jenkins, a 33-year-old Australian man from Melbourne, was convicted of being a “mercenary in an armed conflict” and sentenced to 13 years in a strict-regime penal colony by a Russian-installed court in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region.

Russia considers foreigners who travel to Ukraine to fight as “mercenaries” and prosecutes them under its criminal code rather than treating them as prisoners of war, who are protected by the Geneva Convention.

The Australian government has repeatedly called on Russia to release Jenkins, a former biology teacher.

Russian forces captured Jenkins in December 2024. That same month, a video was shared by a Russian military blogger showing him being roughly interrogated and slapped in the face.

It was believed that he had been killed in captivity until Russia confirmed he was alive.