This is what happened on Friday, May 16:
struggle
- The battle continued along the 1,100 km (683 miles) front line, and the Russian Ministry of Defense said its troops occupied two settlements near Moscow's long-term targets. Russia claims to have occupied the rural village Novooleksandrivka near the logistics center in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, as well as the Tosk towns located near the cities of Slovisk and Kramantoksk.
- The Ukrainian army acknowledged Novooleksandrivka was attacked, but it did not mention Torske in its latest report.
- Ukraine's top military commander Oleksandr Syrskii said in a telegram that Russia "turned its aggression against Ukraine into a war of attrition and used a joint force of up to 640,000 troops."
- Ukrainian Air Force said Ukraine lost its first F-16 fighter on Friday due to "anomalous circumstances", but the Ukrainian Air Force's claim successfully popped up.
Ceasefire
- The special envoys from Türkiye, Russia and Ukraine will hold trilateral negotiations in Istanbul, although hope for any breakthrough is lower than hope after Russia sends a low-level delegation to the conference. The meeting marks the first direct talks between Russia and Ukraine since a meeting in Istanbul in 2022.
- Türkiye will attend two trilateral meetings on Friday as part of a renewed diplomatic effort to end the Ukrainian war, a Turkish Foreign Ministry source told Reuters news agency.
- Sources told Reuters.
- The Ukrainian delegation will now be led by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov instead of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on Thursday.
- "We can't look for Putin around the world," Zelenskyy said after meeting with Erdogan. "I feel disrespectful to Russia. There is no meeting time, no agenda, no high delegation - this is personal disrespect. To Erdogan, to Trump."
- U.S. President Donald Trump said that a deal between Russia and Ukraine would be impossible without him meeting Putin for the first time. "I don't believe if anything will happen to him, whether you like it or not, until he's with me," Trump told Air Force One reporter.