Israeli strikes kill 86 in Gaza since ceasefire announced, officials say
Hasan N. H. Alzaanin/Anadolu via Getty Images
(LONDON) — Israeli strikes killed at least 86 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip since the announcement of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas on Wednesday, Gaza’s Civil Defence body in the Hamas-run territory said.
More than 250 other people were injured in Israeli attacks, they added.
The strikes came despite the ceasefire agreement announced on Wednesday after weeks of intense negotiations in Doha, Qatar. The final round of talks followed more than a year of failed efforts to reach an accord.
The first of three ceasefire phases is set to go into force on Sunday, though is still pending approval by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet. If the first is successful, the second phase will begin after 42 days, according to Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who announced the deal in Doha.
On Thursday, Netanyahu’s office accused Hamas of trying to renege on parts of the deal, an allegation Hamas denied, saying in a statement that “The organization is committed to the ceasefire agreement announced by the mediators.”
Mediators hope the nascent ceasefire will form a roadmap to end more than 15 months of conflict in Gaza, which has devastated the Palestinian territory and created a vast humanitarian crisis.
Gaza Health Ministry officials said Thursday that at least 46,788 Palestinians had been killed and 110,453 injured in the strip since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas launched a terrorist attack on southern Israel.
Some 1,200 people in Israel were killed in the attack, with 253 more taken hostage by militants, according to Israeli officials. Following several rounds of hostage releases, Israeli officials say 94 abductees remain in Gaza, including 34 who have been confirmed dead. Four more hostages abducted in 2014 are still being held in Gaza by Hamas, two of whom are believed to be alive.
More than 400 Israeli soldiers and security personnel have been killed during the fighting inside Gaza, nine of whom were killed in the past week, the IDF said.
The Israel Defense Forces claims to have killed more than 15,000 Hamas fighters and other militants throughout the course of the war. Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh, Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif were among those killed since October 2023.
ABC News’ Samy Zyara, Diaa Ostaz, Nasser Atta, Meredith Deliso, Somayeh Malekian and Joe Simonetti contributed to this report.
LONDON — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said President Donald Trump is in a “disinformation space” as public recriminations between the two leaders deepened on Wednesday amid nascent talks to end Russia’s three-year-old full-scale invasion of its neighbor.
The series of attacks, Zelenskyy suggested, were informed in part by “disinformation,” which the Ukrainian president said “comes from Russia — and we have evidence.”
Trump called Zelenskyy a “dictator without elections,” claiming — without providing evidence — that his Ukrainian counterpart’s approval rating was as low as 4%. Trump also wrote on Truth Social that Zelenskyy “better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.”
Trump’s apparent push for new elections in Ukraine aligns with longstanding Kremlin talking points framing Zelenskyy as an “illegitimate” leader unsuitable for peace talks.
Ukraine’s latest presidential election was scheduled to be held in 2024, but was postponed due to Russia’s war on the country. Ukraine’s constitution stipulates that elections cannot be held under martial law, which was introduced within hours of Moscow’s February 2022 invasion.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought to weaponize the delay to undermine Kyiv. “You can negotiate with anyone, but because of his illegitimacy, he has no right to sign anything,” Putin said of Zelenskyy in January.
The country’s parliament and its speaker “remain the only legitimate authorities in Ukraine,” Putin declared in May 2024, the month that was supposed to mark the end of Zelenskyy’s term.
Trump’s broadside against Zelenskyy included a call for new elections, despite the ongoing war. “That’s not a Russia thing, that’s something coming from me and coming from many other countries also,” Trump said.
Dmitry Medvedev — Russia’s former president, prime minister and a longstanding top ally of Putin — was gleeful in his response to Trump’s most recent remarks.
“If you’d told me just three months ago that these were the words of the US president, I would have laughed out loud,” Medvedev — who is now the deputy chairman of Russia’s security council — wrote on X. Trump, he added, “is 200 percent right,” describing Zelenskyy as a “bankrupt clown.”
Russia’s ambassador to the U.K., Andrei Kelin, also celebrated the U.S. pivot. “For the first time we have noticed that they are not simply saying that this is Russian propaganda and disinformation,” he told the BBC.
“They have listened and they hear what we’re saying,” Kelin said.
Trump suggested this week that Ukraine’s long-time desire to join NATO was a major cause for Russia’s 2022 invasion. The assertion won him more praise in Russia.
“He is the first, and so far, in my opinion, the only Western leader who has publicly and loudly said that one of the root causes of the Ukrainian situation was the impudent line of the previous administration to draw Ukraine into NATO,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told lawmakers.
Like Moscow, Trump and his domestic allies appear to be presenting Zelenskyy as a key impediment to peace.
Vice President JD Vance said the Ukrainian leader’s “badmouthing” of Trump was an “atrocious” way to interact with the administration.
“We obviously love the Ukrainian people,” he told the Daily Mail. “We admire the bravery of the soldiers, but we obviously think that this war needs to come to a rapid close.”
“That is the policy of the President of the United States,” Vance said. “It is not based on Russian disinformation. It’s based on the fact that Donald Trump, I think, knows a lot about geopolitics and has a very strong view, and has had a strong view for a very long time.”
Trump confidante Steve Bannon, meanwhile, told Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper he believed Zelenskyy is “finished.”
“Of course, if he decides to accept the terms of the agreement with Russia, he will be welcome, but he no longer has the power to dictate them,” Bannon said.
Russian officials, meanwhile, also framed Kyiv as the key impediment to peace.
“The Ukrainian side is practically ready to use any tool that will be aimed at stopping or preventing dialogue and preventing the search for a scenario for a political and diplomatic settlement,” Rodion Miroshnik, an ambassador-at-large for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, told state television on Thursday, as quoted by Russia’s state-run Tass news agency.
Several of Kyiv’s European partners, meanwhile, expressed deep concern over the the latest developments.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer “stressed the need for everyone to work together,” in a statement, expressing “his support for President Zelenskyy as Ukraine’s democratically elected leader.” Starmer said it was “perfectly reasonable to suspend elections during war time as the U.K. did during World War II.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said it was “simply wrong and dangerous to deny President Zelenskyy democratic legitimacy.”
ABC News’ Molly Nagle and Patrick Reevell contributed to this report.
(LONDON) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hit back at President Donald Trump’s call for the country to hold fresh presidential elections following Tuesday’s historic Russia-U.S. talks in Saudi Arabia.
The U.S.-Russia talks in Riyadh — to which Ukraine was not invited — represented “an important step forward” toward ending Russia’s three-year-old invasion of its neighbor, according to a State Department readout.
Hours after the talks concluded, Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago that Zelenskyy’s public approval rating was “down to 4%,” failing to provide a source for the figure. Russian President Vladimir Putin has also repeatedly framed Zelenskyy as illegitimate, citing the postponement of the country’s 2024 presidential elections due to martial law.
During a Wednesday press conference in Kyiv, Zelenskyy challenged Trump’s claim, pointing to respected recent surveys showing him polling consistently above 50% with voters and describing Trump’s assertion as Russian “disinformation.”
“If someone wants to replace me right now, then right now it won’t work,” Zelenskyy said. “If we are talking about 4% then we have seen this disinformation, we understand that it comes from Russia. And we have evidence.”
The Ukrainian president said he would conduct opinion polls for trust ratings for world leaders, including Trump, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Zelenskyy said he took Trump’s comments “calmly.”
“As for President Trump, with all due respect to him as a leader of the American people, who we deeply respect and are thankful for all his support, but President Trump, unfortunately, is living in this disinformation space,” Zelenskyy continued.
Meanwhile, Trump on Wednesday, without providing evidence, called the Ukrainian president a “Dictator without Elections,” writing on Truth Social that Zelenskyy “better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.”
Russia launches drone strike on Ukraine in wake of talks
Hours after the U.S.-Russia discussions concluded with a commitment to continue talks, Russia launched a major missile and drone barrage into Ukraine. Ukraine’s air force reported 167 drones and two Iskander ballistic missiles launched into the country, with 106 intercepted and 56 more lost in flight.
Odesa Mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov reported a “massive enemy strike on a densely populated area of the city” causing electricity, heating and water outages.
Zelenskyy said in a post to social media that the strike targeted “civilian energy facilities,” in keeping with longstanding Russian doctrine. “For nearly three years now, the Russian army has relentlessly used missiles and attack drones against them,” he said.
“Just yesterday, after the notorious meeting in Riyadh, it became clear that Russian representatives were once again lying, claiming they do not target Ukraine’s energy sector,” Zelenskyy continued.
“Yet, almost simultaneously, they launched another attack, with drones striking electrical transformers,” he wrote. “And this is during winter — it was minus 6 degrees Celsius at night.”
“We must never forget that Russia is ruled by pathological liars — they cannot be trusted and must be pressured,” the president said.
Trump says Ukraine has ‘had a seat for 3 years’
Kyiv’s exclusion from the Saudi talks has badly unsettled Ukraine and its European allies. Trump was unapologetic when speaking with reporters Tuesday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, just as Odesa came under attack.
“They’ve had a seat for three years and a long time before that,” Trump said of Ukraine, suggesting Kyiv could have made a deal with Moscow to avoid the huge loss of lives and land.
Trump said he believes he has “the power to end this war,” while falsely claiming Ukraine started the conflict against Russia. The war began when Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022, a campaign that followed eight years of cross-border Russian aggression in Crimea and Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
“I think it’s going very well,” Trump said of U.S. efforts to end the war. “But today I heard, oh, ‘Well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it three years — you should have never started it.”
Speaking on Wednesday, Zelenskyy criticized the Trump administration’s recent demand for a treaty that would hand over 50% of Ukraine’s natural resources to the U.S., in exchange for no security guarantees. Trump himself has repeatedly said he wants $500 billion worth of Ukraine’s rare minerals to pay back the U.S. for its support during Russia’s invasion.
Zelenskyy said such a demand was “not serious”, and corrected Trump’s claim that the U.S. has provided more money than Europe.
“There wasn’t a word there about security guarantees,” he said. “There is nothing precise there. I can’t sell the state.”
Zelenskyy said that if Ukraine cannot join NATO, it needs a strong army backed by Western weapons and air defense. He said Ukraine was looking for a troop contingent from European countries to help protect Ukraine after a ceasefire, but warned that Ukraine’s own troops needed to be backed by air defense, which only the U.S. can provide.
“Only the Americans, President Donald Trump, have this protection, this air defense, it’s exclusively from them, and that’s what’s important,” Zelenskyy said. “We have a map that shows us this, but we are ready for dialogue, for discussion, about what quantity, how much is needed. We’ve calculated everything; we’ve figured it all out. So this is essentially the main point of what we are requesting.”
Zelenskyy suggested on Tuesday that the U.S.-Russia talks in Riyadh merely revived ultimatums issued by Moscow in the early stages of its invasion.
“I have the impression that there are now some negotiations happening and they have the same mood, but between Russia and the United States,” Zelenskyy said during a visit to Turkey.
“Again, about Ukraine without Ukraine,” he added. “It’s interesting, if Ukraine didn’t yield to ultimatums in the most difficult moment, where does the feeling come from that Ukraine will agree to this now?”
“I never intended to yield to Russia’s ultimatums and I don’t intend to now,” Zelenskyy added.
Putin addresses US-Russia meeting
In Riyadh, the U.S. and Russia agreed to appoint as-yet-unnamed special representatives to continue peace talks, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry.
Addressing the Russian parliament on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov — who led Moscow’s team in Riyadh — told lawmakers that “the atmosphere is positive, the intentions are correct, we will see how the situation develops further, what decisions will be made.”
He added, “The main thing is to meet, listen and hear, make decisions that will be realistic.”
Putin — in his first public comments since the talks — said on Wednesday that he had been informed of the results of the meeting in Riyadh. The Russian leader added that the talks were intended as a trust-building exercise which produced positive outcomes. Putin also said he would be happy to meet with Trump in person, though did not offer any information on when such a meeting might occur.
Putin aide Yuri Ushakov told the state-controlled Channel One television channel that Trump’s Ukraine-Russia envoy — Keith Kellogg — would negotiate a settlement with Kyiv and European nations.
Kellogg arrived in Kyiv on Wednesday morning, where he is expected to hold talks with Ukrainian leaders.
Kellogg told reporters his “mission is to sit and listen” and then report back to Trump. He parried questions about whether Trump is siding with Putin, saying that Trump wants to end the war because “he understands the human suffering” it is causing.
Kellogg added that he agrees with Trump that the war would never have begun if he had been president at the time.
ABC News’ Fidel Pavlenko, Oleksiy Pshemyskiy, Joe Simonetti and Will Gretsky contributed to this report.
(LONDON) — Ukrainian special forces claimed on Monday to have inflicted more than 100 casualties among North Korean forces over three days of operations.
Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces branch claimed in a post to its official Telegram channel that 77 North Koreans were killed and 40 wounded in recent fighting.
On Sunday, the SSO posted photos of what it said were North Korean troops killed in Russia’s western Kursk region. The SSO also uploaded photos of purportedly fabricated Russian military identity cards. ABC News was not immediately able to independently verify the images.
“Russia is trying to hide the presence of military personnel from North Korea by issuing them with fake documents,” the SSO wrote.
It added that the documents “do not have all the seals, photographs, the patronymics are given in the Russian manner and the place of birth is signed as the Republic of Tuva,” the home region of Sergei Shoigu — formerly Russia’s defense minister and now the secretary of the Security Council.
The SSO said the signatures of the document owners were written in Korean, which it said “indicates the real origin of these soldiers.”
U.S., South Korean and Ukrainian officials have said there are currently up to 12,000 North Korean soldiers inside Russia, deployed there primarily to help push Kyiv’s forces out of positions taken in Russia’s western Kursk region since August 2024.
Ukrainian military sources told ABC News in November that North Koreans were expected to be among the 50,000 troops arrayed for a major counter-offensive in Kursk.
The deployment of troops marks a new milestone in North Korean support for Russia’s war, Pyongyang already having supplied Moscow with ammunition and weapons — including ballistic missiles — since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said earlier this month that Kyiv has “preliminary data that the Russians have begun to use North Korean soldiers in their assaults — a significant number of them.”
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Directorate of Intelligence, meanwhile, has reported “significant casualties” among North Korean troops deployed on the front lines alongside Russian units.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported on Monday that Seoul expects Pyongyang to send more troops and equipment to Russia.
“North Korea is preparing to rotate or increase the deployment of troops [in Russia], while currently supplying 240mm rocket launchers and 170mm self-propelled artillery,” said South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, as quoted by Yonhap.
“There are also some signs of [the North] moving to manufacture and supply suicide drones,” the JCS said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited a drone production and test facility in November. Then, the state-run Korean Central News Agency said Kim “underscored the need to build a serial production system as early as possible and go into full-scale mass production.”
