As Russian President Vladimir Putin explores a potential peace settlement to end the war in Ukraine, hawkish anti-Western nationalists at home are waging a campaign to keep the conflict going.

Last weekend saw a flurry of diplomatic activity surrounding the war in Ukraine. First, European leaders assembled in Kyiv on Saturday with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a show of unity to put pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin for a ceasefire.

A meeting between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin is the “only way” to move forward talks on ending the war in Ukraine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday.

President Donald Trump offered another glimpse of an emerging, sometimes contradictory foreign policy doctrine: trying to end various conflicts around the globe while vowing not to withdraw from the world entirely.

For days, President Donald Trump repeatedly floated the possibility of scrapping his Middle East travel schedule — one his team meticulously crafted for weeks — and adding a stop to personally mediate Ukraine-Russia peace talks in Turkey.

On May 5, Ukraine's National Guard released a clip it said showed how it used drones to rebuff a Russian motorcycle onslaught of troops trying to plant their flag on the ruins of a building. The video ends with the bodies of wounded or dead Russian soldiers lying next to their motorcycles.

Eastern Ukraine has been contested territory since 2014, when Russian-backed fighters seized large swathes of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Russia had already seized the southern peninsula of Crimea in February 2014 before annexing it soon afterwards.