Ukraine live: Zelensky threatens Kyiv will pre-emptively attack Russia

 LIVE – Updated at 05:35

Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian forces were preparing to launch pre-emptive attacks on Russia facilities linked to the war.

“I instructed our intelligence services ⁠and military to ​act pre-emptively ⁠against facilities Russia uses to expand its war effort," the president said.

Kyiv is currently on the offensive in the war, launching major attacks on Russian oil infrastructure in particular. A recent drone attack caused extensive damage at the Moscow oil refinery, according to industry sources, taking it offline for ⁠at least six months and complicating Russian efforts to tackle fuel shortages in the country.

In the wake of the renewed Ukrainian assault, Vladimir Putin said this week he was ready for peace talks.

Meanwhile, US president Donald Trump said Zelensky was “doing pretty well” in the war and called him “courageous”.

“He's doing pretty well, no matter how you look at it, he's holding his own at least. A lot of people dying on both sides, but I think he's doing pretty well," he said during a meeting with Nato secretary general Mark Rutte at the White House.

Watch: Ukraine releases footage claiming to show destruction of key Crimean rail bridge

Putin is asking for peace talks. It’s time to kick him while he’s down

05:20 , Arpan Rai

Russia is losing its war against Ukraine. Proof of this has come from Vladimir Putin himself, who has issued a desperate call for a return to peace talks while his oil refineries burn and his bridges to occupied territory are pounded by Kyiv’s missiles.

Russia’s president has been badly rattled; his airports are closed, his military logistics chain has dangerously snapped, and public support is waning for a war he started, and for which Russia’s national media can no longer generate artificial enthusiasm.

His minions have been whining that an agreement they believe was struck with Donald Trump at the Anchorage summit with Putin last year – giving Moscow colonial ownership of 20 per cent of Ukraine – has been abandoned by the US president as he prepares to meet Nato’s secretary general Mark Rutte.