Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed holding “direct talks” with Ukraine on Thursday in Istanbul, as European leaders and the United States attempt to put pressure on Moscow to agree to a 30-day ceasefire in order to bring an end to the three-year conflict.

“We would like to start immediately, already next Thursday, May 15, in Istanbul, where they were held before and where they were interrupted,” Putin said in a rare late-night televised address. He emphasized the talks should be held “without any preconditions.”

“We are set on serious negotiations with Ukraine,” Putin said, adding they are intended to “eliminate the root causes of the conflict” and “reach the establishment of a long-term, durable peace.”

The proposal came just hours after the leaders of Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Poland told Putin to agree to a 30-day ceasefire starting on Monday or face possible “massive sanctions,” according to French President Emmanuel Macron, on a highly symbolic visit to Kyiv.

The demand comes with the backing of the White House after a joint phone call with US President Donald Trump, the Europeans said.

Shortly after the leaders called for a ceasefire, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Russia is “resistant to any kind of pressure.”

“Europe is actually confronting us very openly,” Peskov said, adding that Putin supports the idea of a ceasefire “in general,” but “there are lots of questions” about the recent proposal that still need answering. He did not expand on what these questions are.

Putin said Sunday he would speak with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about holding talks with Kyiv.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

It comes after US special envoy Steve Witkoff warned on Friday that if the next set of talks in Oman on Sunday were not productive, “then they won’t continue and we’ll have to take a different route.”

“The United States will ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon, but also wishes for lasting peace in the Middle East, a new relationship with Iran, and for the Iranian people to reach their nations full potential,” said the US official.

Earlier Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi – who is expected to meet Witkoff on Sunday – said Tehran had received “contradictory messages” from the US as “different individuals express different views.”

The Iranian source said the American side “is basically not ready for meaningful technical and political talks,” adding that the United States gives “short and general answers” to questions, ignores “main proposals,” and “constantly changes its position” throughout the negotiations.

According to the source, this situation has led Iran to conclude that the negotiations “likely will not yield the desired outcome in sanctions relief and economic benefit.”

As a result, Tehran is “preparing for the next stage, with political, economic, and other sectors having prepared the necessary scenarios over the past month.”

The comments come after Witkoff, in an interview with Breitbart posted Friday, described the US’ expectations for the talks in some of the greatest detail to date.

“An enrichment program can never exist in the state of Iran ever again. That’s our red line. No enrichment. That means dismantlement, it means no weaponization, and it means that Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan – those are their three enrichment facilities – have to be dismantled,” Witkoff said.

Iran has said it is nonnegotiable that it be allowed to enrich uranium.

Iran has long insisted it does not want a nuclear weapon and that its program is for energy purposes.

In his interview with Breitbart, the special envoy said the talks are focused exclusively on the nuclear issue, a change from the attempts of the first Trump administration to deal widely with Iran’s aggressive actions in the region.

They are considered one of the world’s most dangerous, and indiscriminate, weapons. Yet five European countries have turned their backs on an international treaty on the use of landmines, citing the growing threat from Moscow.

Finland, Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania – which all border Russia – have made moves to pull out of the Ottawa Treaty, the agreement that bans the use of anti-personnel landmines, which are designed to kill or maim if stepped on.

The developments have alarmed campaigners, who see the reintroduction of the weapons – which have killed or disfigured tens of thousands of civilians around the world and can contaminate an area for decades after a conflict ends – as a concerning regression.

The treaty, which also bans the weapons’ production and stockpiling, was signed in 1997, and was one of a series of agreements negotiated after the Cold War to encourage global disarmament. Since then, it has been credited with significantly reducing the harm from landmines.

Responding to Finland’s decision to leave the agreement, human rights NGO Amnesty International warned that the Nordic nation was endangering civilian lives, describing it as a “disturbing step backwards.”

The decision “goes against decades of progress on eliminating the production, transfer and use of inherently indiscriminate weapons,” the NGO warned.

At the start of this year, the pact had 165 member states. But major powers, including Russia, China, India, Pakistan and the United States, never signed up to it.

In a joint statement in March, Poland and the three Baltic states announced their withdrawal, arguing for a rethink on which weapons are – and which ones are not – acceptable in the face of Russia’s aggression.

The countries said they needed to provide their armed forces with greater “flexibility and freedom of choice,” to help them bolster the defense of NATO’s eastern flank.

The following month, in April, Latvia became the first country to formally withdraw from the treaty after its parliament strongly backed the proposal, meaning that after a grace period of six months, Riga would be able to start amassing landmines again.

Also that month, Finland unveiled plans to join Latvia. Explaining the decision, Finland’s Prime Minister Petteri Orpo told journalists that Russia poses a long-term danger to the whole of Europe. “Withdrawing from the Ottawa Convention will give us the possibility to prepare for the changes in the security environment in a more versatile way,” he said.

The announcements come as U.S. President Donald Trump has doubled down on efforts to wrap up the war in Ukraine, which has stoked fears in neighboring states that Moscow could re-arm and target them instead.

Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow of the Russia and Eurasia program at the thinktank Chatham House and author of the book “Who will Defend Europe?,” believes that if and when Russia’s grinding conflict in Ukraine does come to an end by whatever means, Moscow will be readying itself for its next target.

For Giles, the military benefits of using landmines are clear. The underground explosives, he said, can slow an invasion, either by redirecting oncoming troops to areas that are easier to defend, or by holding them up as they attempt to breach the mined areas.

They can be particularly beneficial for countries looking to defend themselves against an army with greater manpower. “They are a highly effective tool for augmenting the defensive forces of a country that’s going to be outnumbered,” he said.

He believes the five countries leaving the treaty have looked at the effectiveness of the weapons, including their use in Russia’s war on Ukraine, in deterring invading forces.

However, he stressed that the Western countries wouldn’t use landmines in the same way as Moscow’s forces, saying there were “very different design philosophies” in the manufacturing of mines and cluster munitions between countries that aren’t concerned with civilian casualties or may willingly try to cause them, and those that are trying to avoid them.

In Ukraine, extensive Russian minefields laid along Ukraine’s southern front lines significantly slowed a summer counteroffensive launched by Ukraine in 2023.

Ukraine is deemed by the United Nations to be the most heavily mined country in the world. In its most recent projections, Ukraine’s government estimates that Moscow’s forces have littered 174,000 square kilometers (65,637 square miles) of Ukraine’s territory with landmines and explosive remnants.

This means Ukrainian civilians, particularly those who have returned to areas previously on the front lines of the fighting, are faced with an ever-present risk of death.

“The large-scale contamination of land by explosive ordnance has created an ‘invisible threat’ in people’s minds,” Humanity & Inclusion, an international charity helping those affected by poverty, conflict, and disaster, warned in a February report on the use of landmines in Ukraine. “As a result, people’s movements are extremely reduced or restricted, they can no longer cultivate their land and their social, economic, or professional activities are hindered.”

According to findings from Human Rights Watch published in 2023, Ukraine has also used antipersonnel landmines during the conflict and has received them from the US, despite Kyiv being a signatory of the 1997 ban.

In comparison, Finland, Poland and the Baltic nations say they would remain committed to their humanitarian principles when using the explosives, despite withdrawing from the ban.

When announcing its plans to leave the Ottawa Treaty, Helsinki stressed it would use the weapons in a humane manner, with the country’s president Alexander Stubb writing on X, “Finland is committed to its international obligations on the responsible use of mines.”

While the responsible use of landmines is a complex issue, measures to reduce civilian harm can include making precise records of minefields and their locations, educating communities to their dangers and the clearance or neutralization of the weapons once the conflict is over.

‘Disturbing step backwards’

Despite such pledges of responsibility, the move away from the Ottawa Treaty has left campaigners horrified.

Landmines have killed or maimed tens of thousands of civilians across the world and continue to cause harm. In its 2024 report, the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor found that at least 5,757 people were killed and wounded by mines and explosive remnants of war across the globe in 2023, with civilians making up 84% of that number.

Alma Taslidžan, from Bosnia, was displaced from her homeland during the war of the early 90s, only to return with her family to a country laced with landmines – a contamination issue she says plagues the country to this day.

Now working for disability charity Humanity & Inclusion, she described the five countries’ decision to pull out of the treaty as “absolute nonsense” and “the most horrible thing that could happen in the life of a treaty.”

She continued, “We are surprised that such advanced militaries like the Finnish, like the Estonians, Lithuanians, Latvians, would consider putting this hugely indiscriminate weapon in their military strategy, and what is worse, putting it in their land.”

Yet, for some, the new, precarious security reality that Europe is facing means that previous red lines are now up for discussion.

This is the case for Giles, who sees the latest developments as a recognition from these countries that treaties on landmines were “an act of idealism which has proven to be over-optimistic by developments in the world since then.”

Five fishermen who spent 55 days adrift at sea arrived Saturday at a port in the Galapagos Islands after being rescued by a tuna boat, the Ecuadorian navy said on X.

The three Peruvians and two Colombians had been missing since mid-March and were found on May 7 by an Ecuadorian boat called Aldo.

The fishermen had reported damage to the boat’s alternator two days after setting sail from Pucusana Bay, to the south of Peru’s capital Lima, the navy said in a separate post on Friday.

The failure caused communication and navigation tools to malfunction, Ecuadorian navy Frigate Capt. Maria Fares told The Associated Press, adding that they had no power on the boat.

“They had no starter, lights and everything that a battery generates,” she said. To survive, they had to “take rusted water out of the engine (and) when a fish passed by, they caught it and parboiled it to eat.” Fares added that they also drank rain and sea water to survive.

The men are in stable condition and the navy said it is coordinating with local and foreign authorities to ensure their safe return to their respective countries.

Earlier this year, another Peruvian fisherman, 61-year-old Máximo Napa, spent 95 days at sea alone. He was also rescued by an Ecuadorian vessel and returned to Lima in mid-March to be reunited with his family.

Police on a Japanese holiday island have arrested three Chinese nationals after thousands of protected hermit crabs were found stuffed into multiple suitcases.

The three suspects – Liao Zhibin, 24, Song Zhenhao, 26, and Guo Jiawei, 27 – were found to have 160 kilograms (353 pounds) of the live crustaceans in their possession on Wednesday, according to police on the Amami Islands, near Okinawa.

Police said a hotel worker in Amami, a city on the island of Amami Oshima, alerted environmental authorities after spotting something suspicious about the suitcases the three men had asked hotel staff to watch.

Officers later arrived at the hotel and found the spiral-shelled hermit crabs stuffed into six suitcases, according to police.

When they returned to the hotel on Wednesday, the three men were arrested for possessing the crustaceans without proper authorization, Kyodo News reported.

It’s unknown why the three men were transporting the crustaceans.

The Amami archipelago, off southwestern Kyushu and just north of Okinawa, is a popular tourist destination and known to be home to a diverse array of native plants and animals.