KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump will happen “in the near future,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday, signaling progress in talks to end the nearly four-year war between Russia and Ukraine.
“We are not losing a single day. We have agreed on a meeting at the highest level – with President Trump in the near future,” Zelenskyy wrote on X.
“A lot can be decided before the New Year,” he added.
Zelenskyy's announcement came after he said Thursday he had a “good conversation” with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Trump has unleashed a diplomatic push to end the war, but his efforts have run into sharply conflicting demands by Moscow and Kyiv.
Zelenskyy said Tuesday he would be willing to withdraw troops from the country’s eastern industrial heartland as part of a plan to end the war, if Moscow also pulls back and the area becomes a demilitarized zone monitored by international forces.
Though Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Thursday that there had been “slow but steady progress” in the peace talks, Russia has given no indication that it will agree to any kind of withdrawal from land it has seized.
In fact, Moscow has insisted that Ukraine relinquish the remaining territory it still holds in the Donbas — an ultimatum that Ukraine has rejected. Russia has captured most of Luhansk and about 70% of Donetsk — the two areas that make up the Donbas.
On the ground, one person was killed and three others wounded when a guided aerial bomb hit a house in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region, local officials said Friday.
Russian drone attacks on the city of Mykolaiv and its suburbs overnight into Friday left part of the city without power. Energy and port infrastructure were damaged by drones in the city of Odesa on the Black Sea.
Meanwhile, Ukraine said it struck a major Russian oil refinery Thursday using British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles.
Ukraine’s General Staff said its forces hit the Novoshakhtinsk refinery in Russia’s Rostov region. “Multiple explosions were recorded. The target was hit,” it wrote on Telegram.
Rostov regional Gov. Yuri Slyusar said a firefighter was wounded when extinguishing the fire.
Ukraine’s long-range drone strikes on Russian refineries aim to deprive Moscow of the oil export revenue it needs to pursue its full-scale invasion. Russia wants to cripple the Ukrainian power grid, seeking to deny civilians access to heat, light and running water in what Kyiv officials say is an attempt to “weaponize winter.”
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks during a media conference at the EU Summit in Brussels, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — An independent counsel on Friday demanded a 10-year prison term for South Korea’s ousted President Yoon Suk Yeol in the first of seven criminal cases related to his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law in 2024 and other allegations stemming from his time in office.
The first of Yoon's trials to wrap up covers charges, including defiance of authorities’ attempts to investigate and detain him. Yoon's lawyers called the 10-year term request “excessive” and accused independent counsel Cho Eun-suk's team of being politically driven and lacking legal grounds to demand such a harsh punishment.
The court is expected to render a verdict as early as next month.
Yoon faces other trials on accusations ranging from corruption and favor trading to rebellion, a grave charge that is punishable by life imprisonment or the death penalty. The rebellion trial is also nearing an end.
Yoon’s martial law enactment brought armed troops into Seoul streets and triggered South Korea's most serious political crisis in decades.
The martial law lasted only a few hours, as lawmakers managed to enter the National Assembly and voted to lift it. Yoon was impeached by the opposition-controlled parliament in December 2024, before he was formally dismissed as president following a Constitutional Court ruling in April.
On Friday, independent counsel Cho's team requested the Seoul Central District Court to sentence Yoon to 10 years in prison on charges of obstruction of official duties, abuse of power, falsification of official documents and destruction of evidence.
Yoon holed up at his residence and hindered authorities' attempts to execute a warrant for his detention for weeks after his impeachment. The standoff caused worries about physical clashes between Yoon's presidential security service and those attempting to detain him and further deepened a national divide.
Park Eok-su, a senior investigator on Cho’s team, called Yoon's actions “an unprecedented obstruction of official duties” during Friday's court session. Yoon's lawyers have said the detainment warrant was invalid and illegal.
Yoon also faces charges that he sidestepped a legally mandated full Cabinet meeting before declaring martial law, and that he fabricated documents, including the martial law proclamation and ordered data deleted from phones used by those involved in his martial law imposition.
Yoon has denied those charges and maintained that his decree was meant to draw public support for his struggle against the main liberal opposition Democratic Party, which impeached some of his top officials and obstructed his agenda.
Wrapping up a six-month probe last week, Cho’s team said Yoon plotted for over a year to impose martial law to eliminate his political rivals and monopolize power.
Yoon's other trials deal with charges like the ex-leader ordering drone flights over North Korea to deliberately stoke tensions and justify his plans to declare martial law and committing perjury in the trial of his prime minister. Yoon also faces charges that he tried to manipulate the investigation into a marine’s drowning in 2023 and received free opinion surveys from an election broker in return for a political favor.
Yoon has said he wasn't informed of such drone flights and denied wrongdoing in the influence-peddling scandal.
A TV screen shows a file footage of South Korea's ousted President Yoon Suk Yeol during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Dec. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
A TV screen shows a file footage of South Korea's ousted President Yoon Suk Yeol during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Dec. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
FILE - South Korea's impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol attends a hearing of his impeachment trial at the Constitutional Court in Seoul, South Korea, Feb. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, Pool, File)
