The big picture: What you need to know at the start of a new week
**By [Mark Wyatt](https://news.sky.com/author/mark-wyatt-998), live news reporter**
Welcome back to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
With the conflict now well into its fourth year, international efforts to bring the fighting to an end are growing weekly.
Early peace talks started between Russia and the US last month, with Ukrainian officials due to meet with the Americans this week in Saudi Arabia.
European leaders have also accelerated their plans to secure peace in Ukraine, holding an emergency security summit in Brussels last week alongside Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
In the UK, Sir Keir Starmer is also pushing his "coalition of the willing", which he says could provide boots on the ground in Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire.
At the same time, Kyiv is holding out on the battlefield in the face of a steady Russian advance on the frontline in the east.
Here's everything you need to know as we start our coverage of the war for another week:
**Ukraine-US talks to begin**
Officials from Ukraine are due to meet with their US counterparts this week in Saudi Arabia for talks over ending the war.
Zelenskyy is not expected to attend the talks himself, but he will be in the country this week to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.
Kyiv will instead be represented by foreign minister Andriy Sybiha and defence minister Rustem Umerov, among others.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will take part in talks on the American side, as he did with Russian officials in Riyadh last month.
The talks come at a time when relations between Kyiv and Washington are strained, to say the least.
Zelenskyy and Trump's very public Oval Office spat caused the US president to say he was "determined" that his Ukrainian counterpart "is not ready for peace if America is involved".
America then paused its military aid heading to Ukraine and stopped sharing intelligence with Kyiv last week.
CIA director John Ratcliffe said this would give Zelenskyy a "chance to think" about whether he was committed to peace or not.
**Trump halts military aid to Ukraine... now what?**
**Deadly Russian strikes continue**
While discussions take place over the possibility of peace, Ukraine has continued to be hit with deadly Russian drone strikes.
The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said last Friday was one of 2025's deadliest attacks for Ukrainian civilians.
At least 22 people were killed in multiple Russian attacks, including 11 in the frontline town of Dobropilla in Ukraine's embattled eastern Donetsk region.
Another seven people were killed in four towns close to the frontline, where Russian troops have been making steady advances, said regional governor Vadym Filashkin.
Three others died when a Russian drone hit a civilian workshop in the northeastern Kharkiv region, emergency services reported. One man was killed by shelling in the region.
Reacting to the strikes, Zelenskyy said Russia's continued attacks on civilians showed Moscow was "not thinking about how to end the war".
**Russians advancing in Kursk region**
On the battlefield, Ukraine's hold of Russian territory in the Kursk region looks to be on the wain.
Kyiv's forces launched a surprise offensive into the area last August,
Holding onto the territory would undoubtedly give Ukraine a better bargaining position in potential peace talks with Moscow, but recent developments make this now seem unlikely.
Open source maps showed this week that Ukraine's positions in Kursk have deteriorated sharply, with reports over the weekend suggesting Ukrainians were nearly surrounded by Russians.
Pro-Russian military bloggers even said Russian special forces had recently walked miles along the inside of a major gas pipeline before surprising Ukrainian forces from the rear near the town of Sudzha.