Zelensky ready to discuss status of Crimea and self-declared Donbas republics with Putin

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky renewed an offer of direct peace talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin overnight to Tuesday, declaring the status of disputed territories could be up for debate and a possible referendum.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in a video published on Facebook

Zelensky told local media that he was ready to meet Putin “in any format” to discuss ending the almost one-month-old war that has shattered several Ukrainian cities.

Zelensky said even the status of Russian-occupied Crimea and Russian-backed self-declared republics in Donbas was up for debate. “At the first meeting with the president of Russia, I am ready to raise these issues,” he said

“If I have this opportunity and Russia has the desire, we would go through all the questions,” he told Ukrainian journalists in an interview published by media outlet Suspilne. “Would we solve them all? No. But there is a chance, that we partially could – at least to stop the war.”

China plane crash: ‘Grim’ search as rescue teams comb hillside

Firefighters and paramilitary police deployed to steeply-forested slopes of China’s first air crash in a decade.

Paramilitary police officers work on a hillside where a China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 plane flying from Kunming to Guangzhou crashed on Monday afternoon

Rescuers in China are scouring heavily forested slopes in southern China where a China Eastern Airlines crashed and exploded in flames, as the airline expressed “deep condolences” for those on board.

Some 132 people, including nine crew, were on flight MU5735 when it crashed in the mountains of southern Guangxi on a flight from Kunming to Guangzhou.

The Boeing 737-800 crash is the first involving a commercial aircraft in China since 2010.

Debris was strewn across mountain slopes with state media reporting that the burned remains of identity cards, purses, and wallets had been seen.

“The company expresses its deep condolences for the passengers and crew members who died in the plane crash,” China Eastern said in a statement, without providing more information.

The plane was flying at a cruising altitude when it suddenly plunged from the sky.

Flight tracking website FlightRadar24 showed the aircraft dropped from an altitude of 29,100 feet (8,870 metres) to 7,850 feet (2,393 metres) in just over a minute.

After a brief upswing, it then plunged to 3,225 feet (982 metres), the tracker said.

Ukraine's Zelensky calls for fresh talks, Russia says entered besieged Mariupol centre

• Ukraine's leader Volodymyr Zelensky made a fresh appeal for meaningful talks with Moscow on Saturday to stop the invasion, as Russia said its soldiers had entered the centre of besieged city Mariupol, "tightening the noose" around the key port.

President Volodymyr Zelensky

• Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky made a fresh appeal for talks with Moscow in a video posted to Facebook, saying it "this is te time to meet, to talk, time for renewing territorial integrity and fairness for Ukraine," adding that "otherwise, Russia's losses will be such, that several generations will not recover."

• But Russia's defence ministry said Friday that the army and its separatist allies had made a breakthrough in Mariupol, which has been under Russian shelling for days, and were now inside the city, with "units of the Donetsk People's Republic, with the support of the Russian armed forces" also "squeezing the encirclement" the ministry said. The mayor of the city confirmed to the BBC that gun battles had reached the heart of Mariupol.

• Ukrainian human rights ombudswoman Lyudmyla Denisova on Friday said 130 people had been rescued so far from the rubble of a theatre in the besieged city of Mariupol, after Ukraine said a powerful Russian air strike hit the building where hundreds of people had been sheltering from the war on Thursday. On Friday evening, rescuers were still searching for hundreds of people trapped.

• Russian missiles hit an aircraft maintenance plant Friday near the airport in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, said the mayor.

• Russian bombardments have expanded in eastern Ukraine with deadly attacks on Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, and shelling in Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region.

• Kyiv city authorities on Friday said 222 people had been killed in the capital since Russia's invasion of Ukraine began.

• The UNHCR said Friday that more than 3.25 million Ukrainians had fled across the border since the war began on February 24, with more than 2 million crossing the Polish border. The UN children’s agency says around half of those who have fled are children