Ukraine updates: Germany doubtful of Putin's 3-day ceasefire

Hundreds of North Korean soldiers fighting alongside Russian forces have been killed, South Korean lawmaker Lee Seong-kweun said.

"So far, North Korean troop casualties are estimated at around 4,700, including approximately 600 deaths," Lee said.

Lee is a member of the South Korean parliament's intelligence committee.

Earlier this week, Pyongyang acknowledged its soldiers had helped Moscow reclaim territory under Ukrainian control in the border region of Kursk.

Russian strikes on the Ukrainian cities of Dnipro and Kharkiv have left at least one person dead and 39 wounded, authorities said early Wednesday.

The strikes came after Russian President Vladimir Putin said his forces would observe a ceasefire on May 8-10 as the country marks the 80th anniversary of victory over the Nazis in World War II.

Following previous proclamations of Russia seeking to observe a ceasefire went unmet, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called the most recent gesture "manipulation".

Serhiy Lysak, governor of the central region of Dnipropetrovsk, said there had been a "massive" drone attack on Dnipro and that one person had died, with the fatality confirmed by the city mayor, Borys Filatov. 

Dnipro had been spared the worst of Russian attacks since an invasion started in February 2022 but has faced mounting pressure as Russian forces have sought to make territorial gains.

Meanwhile, Ihor Terekhov, mayor of the northeastern city of Kharkiv, said 39 people were injured after reporting 16 "strikes" on the city near the Russian border.

On the Russian side of the border, Alexander Khinshtein, the interim governor of Kursk region, said on Telegram that drone strikes on a suburb of the town of Rylsk had left three wounded, including two who were taken to hospital. 

Marking 100 days in office, US President Donald Trump spoke to ABC News anchor and Senior National Correspondent Terry Moran In an Oval Office sit-down.

During the interview, Trump expressed his belief that Russian President Vladimir Putin was ready to end the war against Ukraine.

This came despite the US President writing on social media on Saturday that "there was no reason for Putin to be shooting into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days," adding that "it makes me think that maybe he doesn't want to stop the war, he's just tapping me along." 

Moran pressed Trump on whether he still believes it was possible, with Trump responding: "Yeah, that's possible. Sure. He could be tapping me along a little bit. I would say that he would like to stop the war."

"If it weren't for me, I think he'd want to take over the whole country, personally," Trump continued. "When Biden got involved, I won't say whether or not he handled it properly, but obviously it wasn't good, because the war started."

The president claimed Putin invaded Ukraine because Joe Biden was in office. "I think if I didn't win the election, he would have gotten all of Ukraine."

Trump later added that, "And because of me, I do believe that — he's willing to stop the fighting."

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States could end its mediation efforts between Russia and Ukraine unless the two countries make "concrete proposals" on ending the war.

"If there is no progress, we will step back as mediators in this process," State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters.

Rubio made similar statements after his call with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov yesterday.

"This week is going to be a really important week in which we have to make a determination about whether this is an endeavour that we want to continue to be involved in," Rubio told US media, adding that it could be time for the country to "focus on some other issues that are equally, if not more important.

Ukraineordered the evacuation of seven villages in the country's east due to Russianforces advancing.

The evacuation "covers three villages in the Novopavlivka community and four more villages in the Mezhivska community," the local military administration said.

The head of the local military administration posted on his Telegram account that there are no Russian forces in the area, and that the Ukrainian army is defending the region.

Evacuations of regions close to the front line are commonplace in Ukraine.

Russia recently stepped up its aerial bombardments, with the US trying to broker a ceasefire deal at the same time.

The Kremlin said Ukraine had not responded to numerous offers by Russian President Vladimir Putin to start direct peace negotiations, and it was unclear whether it would join a three-day ceasefire he announced for May 8-10.

"We have not heard a response from the Kyiv regime so far," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Putin on Monday declared a three-day cease-fire in the war in Ukraine from May 8-10, when Russia plans celebrations to mark the 80th anniversary of its victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.

Ukraine responded by asking why Moscow would not agree to its demand for a ceasefire of at least 30 days, starting immediately.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius expressed skepticism about Russian President Vladimir Putin's unilateral ceasefire in Ukraine from May 8 to May 10.

Recent experience shows that such declarations often amount to little, the defense minister said. Pistorius pointed to Putin's Easter ceasefire, which both sides were accused of violating. 

He also said he is counting on continued US support for Ukraine's defense against Russia, emphasizing that the war affects the security of Europe as a whole.

In an interview with Germany's RTL/ntv on Monday night, Pistorius insisted that Europe's security has been of "paramount importance" to the US since World War II, adding that he believed it would continue to be so.

Responding to concerns that the US might reduce its military and financial support for Ukraine, Pistorius said: "We will do everything we can to compensate, but first we will campaign for the Americans to stay on board."

He also compared a recent US peace proposal to a de facto Ukrainian surrender.

The return of Donald Trump to the US presidency has significantly weakened Finns' confidence in the security guarantees of the NATO alliance their country joined two years ago, a survey shows.

Only 32% of respondents trusted NATO's security guarantees to be such a strong deterrent that no one would dare to challenge a member state militarily, according to the survey by the Finnish Business and Policy Forum (EVA).

That's a drop of 21 percentage points from the fall of 2023, when the same question was asked in an EVA survey.

A majority of 66% of Finns still see Finland's membership as a positive thing, but that was down five percentage points from a previous survey published in November and the lowest level since May 2022, when the country applied for membership following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

The poll also showed that 53% did not believe that membership would guarantee that other countries would "ultimately help Finland in a real crisis."

Finland, which shares a 1,340-kilometer (800-mile) border with Russia, joined the US-led alliance in April 2023, ending decades of military non-alignment.  

Russia's overnight drone strike killed a 12-year-old girl and injured her parents in the Dnipropetrovsk region in central Ukraine. Another child was rescued from under the rubble, the emergency service said in a social media post.

In Kyiv, an overnight Russian drone strike injured a woman and burned a recreation center, the capital's mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia launched 100 drones in an overnight attack. The military said it shot down 37 drones, while 47 others disappeared from radars without reaching their targets.

The attacks caused damage in the Kharkiv, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk and Kyiv regions, it added in a Telegram post.

Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry said its air defense units destroyed 91 Ukrainian drones overnight, with 40 of them downed over the Kursk region, which borders Ukraine.

Welcome to DW's coverage of developments from Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine on Tuesday, April 29.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said he's counting on continued US support for Ukraine's defense against Russia and expressed skepticism about Russian President Vladimir Putin's declaration of a unilateral ceasefire in Ukraine from May 8 to May 10.

In the meantime, Russia and Ukraine are trading drone strikes.

In this blog, we will keep you updated as the day unfolds.