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Peace plans ready to be presented to Russia in days, says Zelenskyy
Volodymyr Zelenskyy says proposals negotiated with US officials on a peace deal to end Russia’s war in Ukraine could be finalised within days, after which American envoys will present them to the Kremlin.
After two days of talks in Berlin, US officials said on Monday they had resolved “90%” of the problematic issues between Russia and Ukraine, but despite the positive spin it is not clear that an end to the war is any closer, particularly as the Russian side is absent from the current talks.
In the early hours of Tuesday morning the Ukrainian president said the US Congress was expected to vote on security guarantees and that he expected a finalised set of documents to be prepared “today or tomorrow”. After that, he said, the US would hold consultations with the Russians, followed by high-level meetings that could take place as soon as this weekend.
“We are counting on five documents. Some of them concern security guarantees: legally binding, that is, voted on and approved by the US Congress,” he said in comments to journalists via WhatsApp. He said the guarantees would “mirror article 5” of Nato.
On Monday, US officials declined to give specific details of what the security package was likely to include, and what would happen if Russia attempted to seize more land after a peace deal was reached. They did, however, confirm that the US did not plan to put boots on the ground in Ukraine.
Leaders of the UK, France, Germany and eight other European countries said in a joint statement that troops from a “coalition of the willing” could “assist in the regeneration of Ukraine’s forces, in securing Ukraine’s skies, and in supporting safer seas, including through operating inside Ukraine”.
They stopped short, however, of suggesting these would be guarantees that would match Nato’s article 5, and in any case there is little sign that Russia is anywhere close to agreeing to the kind of package under discussion between Washington and Kyiv.
On Tuesday, the Kremlin said it had not seen the details of proposals on security guarantees. “We have seen newspaper reports so far, but we will not respond to them. We have not seen any texts yet,” its spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters.
Peskov added that Moscow, which has in the past demanded Kyiv cede territories Russia claims as its own and ruled out the presence of any foreign troops in Ukraine, had not changed its stance on the conflict and the achievement of its military goals.
“Our position is well known. It is consistent, it is transparent and it is clear to the Americans. And, in general, it is clear to the Ukrainians as well,” Peskov said.
Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said Russia would not agree to troops from Nato countries operating in Ukraine “under any circumstances”. It was unclear whether that formulation also included troops drawn from Nato countries operating under a separate non-Nato command.
The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said on Monday that peace was closer than at any time since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion. But privately, European officials say that at this stage the talks are more about keeping the Trump White House onboard with supporting Ukraine than about reaching a lasting deal between Moscow and Kyiv.
The main sticking point between the Ukrainian team and US negotiators remains the issue of land. Trump wants Ukraine to give up the parts of the Donbas region it still holds, while Ukraine wants to freeze the lines at the current point of contact. “We are discussing the territorial issue. You know it is one of the key issues. At this point, there is no consensus on it yet,” Zelenskyy said after the Berlin talks.
The US negotiation team, led by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, has proposed a compromise solution whereby Ukraine would withdraw, but Russia would not advance and the demilitarised area would become “a free economic zone”. Russia has suggested that they could use police and national guard formations rather than the military, implying they would still expect to control the territory.
“I want to stress once again: a ‘free economic zone’ does not mean under the control of Russia. Neither de jure nor de facto will we recognise Donbas – its temporarily occupied part – as Russian. Absolutely,” said Zelenskyy.
It is not clear how the two sides will proceed on the territorial issue, with Zelenskyy previously suggesting that a compromise solution such as a free economic zone could be theoretically possible if the Ukrainian people voted for it in a referendum. The critical stumbling block is likely to be when the plans are put to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who has given no sign he is willing to compromise on his war aims.
“If Putin rejects everything, we will end up with exactly what we are experiencing on our plane right now – turbulence,” said Zelenskyy, recording the comments after his plane took off from Berlin for the Netherlands for a series of meetings on Tuesday.
“I believe the United States will apply sanctions pressure and provide us with more weapons if he rejects everything. I think that would be a fair request from us to the Americans,” he said.
The maker of Canvas, the software used by thousands of schools and universities around the world, said on Monday that it had reached a deal with the hackers that recently breached its systems for the return of stolen data and the destruction of any copies.
ShinyHunters, a hacking group, had claimed responsibility for the attack on Instructure, the Salt Lake City-based company that provides Canvas to about half of all colleges and universities in North America.
The hackers said they had accessed the data of more than 275 million users at nearly 9,000 schools worldwide, including private conversations between students and teachers as well as personal identifying information such as names and email addresses. Canvas was shut down for hours after the cyberattack on Thursday.
The agreement, Instructure said in a statement, involved the return of the stolen data and confirmation that the data had been destroyed at the hackers’ end. Instructure added that it had been informed that none of its customers would face extortion as a result of the theft.
“While there is never complete certainty when dealing with cybercriminals, we believe it was important to take every step within our control to give customers additional peace of mind, to the extent possible,” the company said.
Instructure did not say what it had given the hackers in exchange for the return of the data. The company did not immediately respond to questions about the deal.
Canvas has more than 30 million active users around the world, according to Instructure. The platform is used by teachers and students for coursework management and communications. Instructure said the data compromised in the hack included usernames, email addresses, course names, enrollment information and messages.
ShinyHunters on Thursday claimed the attack in a message that appeared on students’ Canvas pages and was obtained by The New York Times. The group warned that it would leak an unspecified amount of data on May 12 if it did not receive a response from Instructure. In its May 3 ransom note, the group had threatened to leak “several billions of private messages among students and teachers.”
Not much is known about ShinyHunters, which is believed to have been formed around 2020. Its goal appears to be to obtain personal records and sell them. One of its high-profile attacks was against Ticketmaster in 2024, when the hackers said they had stolen the user information of more than 500 million customers.
Instructure said it first detected unauthorized activity in Canvas on Apr. 29, and again on May 7. The company said it took Canvas offline to investigate the breach, and also informed the F.B.I., the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and other international law enforcement partners.
Instructure did not immediately respond to questions about whether any law enforcement agencies were involved in its dealings with the hackers. The F.B.I. advises against paying ransom to hackers, saying it does not guarantee data security and encourages attackers to target more victims.
The National Quarantine Center is located at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.
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Nebraska Medicine
Sixteen of the 18 passengers transferred to the U.S. from a cruise ship where there was an outbreak of hantavirus arrived in Omaha, Neb., on Monday for evaluation after disembarking the vessel in Spain’s Canary Islands over the weekend.
Of the 15 U.S. citizens and one dual U.S.-British citizen who arrived in Nebraska, all but one are currently being housed in the National Quarantine Unit. That patient tested positive for the virus and was being housed in the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit, officials said at a Monday news conference. The 15 people in the quarantine unit will continue to be monitored for signs of the illness.
Passengers carry their belongings in plastic bags after being evacuated from the MV Hondius after docking in the Granadilla Port on Sunday in Tenerife, part of the Canary Islands, Spain.
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Nebraska may seem an unlikely location to process these individuals, but it is home to the National Quarantine Unit — the only federally funded quarantine unit in the U.S. — and the separate Nebraska Biocontainment Unit. They are highly specialized facilities located at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) and widely considered among the best in the world.
The $1 million, five-room biocontainment unit was dedicated in 2005. It was a joint project with Nebraska Health and Human Services and the UNMC. It is set up to safely provide medical care for patients with highly hazardous and infectious diseases and was used in 2014 to treat two doctors infected with Ebola. The National Quarantine Unit was completed in late 2019. It cost nearly $20 million, according to the Associated Press. Both facilities were used during the COVID-19 epidemic.
“We are prepared for situations exactly like this,” Dr. Michael Ash, CEO of Nebraska Medicine, said in a statement. “Our teams have trained for decades alongside federal and state partners to make sure we can safely provide care while protecting our staff and the broader community. We are proud to support this national effort.”
Two additional U.S. passengers on the cruise ship — a couple, with one showing symptoms of hantavirus — were transferred for monitoring to Emory University Hospital, where another advanced biocontainment facility is located.
When the biocontainment unit was first dedicated more than 20 years ago, the biggest concerns were anthrax attacks and severe acute respiratory syndrome, more commonly known as SARS, Dr. Phil Smith, who spearheaded the efforts at Nebraska Medical Center to create the biocontainment unit, told the AP in 2020. Smith died last year.
A hallway leading to rooms at the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
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The quarantine unit features 20 negative-pressure rooms designed to keep potentially harmful particles from escaping by maintaining lower air pressure inside than outside the rooms. The single-occupancy rooms provide patients with attached bathrooms, exercise equipment and Wi-Fi, according to the medical center.
“We have protocols in the quarantine unit that provide for safe care of these of these persons, including just all the activities of daily living so that they can … have a comfortable stay but also have it in an area that’s protected and limits spread of the pathogen,” Dr. Michael Wadman, the medical director of the National Quarantine Unit, said at a Friday news conference.
The biocontainment unit, by contrast, is a patient-care space where people are able to receive medical treatment, Dr. Angela Hewlett, medical director of the biocontainment unit, told reporters Monday.
She emphasized that the facility — which has a 10-bed capacity — operates independently from the quarantine unit and has its own dedicated air-handling system. “We don’t share [it] with any of the rest of the facility,” she said, noting that the unit uses rooftop HEPA filtration and is designed “very differently” from what most people typically imagine in a hospital setting.
One of the rooms in the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit.
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Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen, speaking at Monday’s news conference, welcomed the recently arrived patients, who are among nearly 150 people from 23 different countries who were aboard the MV Hondius when the illness most commonly transmitted to humans through contact with infected rodents broke out. As of Monday, the World Health Organization has reported at least nine cases of hantavirus, including three deaths.
“We’re glad that you’re here,” Pillen said. “We’re going to ensure that you have the best world-class care possible.”
Pillen also sought to reassure Nebraskans that the facilities are safe and secure: “We’re working diligently to ensure no one leaves the security in an unsecured way at an inappropriate time,” he said. “No one poses a risk to public health, just walking out the front door of the streets of Omaha.”
The hantavirus outbreak on the cruise ship has been identified as the Andes strain of the illness, one that can be spread, though rarely, from person-to-person, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It can cause severe respiratory disease, with early flu-like symptoms.
“The Andes variant of this virus does not spread easily, and it requires prolonged, close contact with someone who is already symptomatic,” according to Adm. Brian Christine, the assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, who spoke at Monday’s news conference. “Even so, we have taken this situation very seriously from the very start.”
“The risk of hantavirus to the general public remains very, very low,” he said.
The full quarantine period for hantavirus is 42 days, Christine said, but he added that the patients would be allowed to go home if they remained asymptomatic.
“Right now, the passengers that are all in the assessment phase — they’re going to be here for at least a few days while we do assessments and the coordination on what happens next,” he said, adding that they had the option to remain in the quarantine facility for the full period, for “the safest and most effective option for them.”
new video loaded: Americans Exposed to Hantavirus on Cruise Ship Arrive in United States
transcript
transcript
Americans Exposed to Hantavirus on Cruise Ship Arrive in United States
Eighteen passengers who were aboard the MV Hondius, a cruise ship with a deadly hantavirus outbreak, landed in Omaha on a U.S. government medical flight. The passengers were being monitored at medical facilities in Nebraska and Georgia.
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We’re working diligently to ensure no one leaves the security in an unsecured way at an inappropriate time. No one who poses a risk to public health is walking out the front door of the streets of Omaha or beyond.
By Axel Boada
May 11, 2026
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