Days after Ukrainian troops seized part of Russia’s Kursk region in a surprise attack, President Vladimir Putin told defense officials their “main objective” was to repel the invasion. Six months later,

That will take some doing. Putin remains uninterested in peace talks as long as Russian troops continue to gain ground in Ukraine’s east, albeit at a slow pace, and while Ukrainian forces hold seized territory in the Kursk region inside Russia, according to John Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and other former officials.

In an interview published on Tuesday, the Ukrainian president said that he would be willing to sit at the negotiating table with his Russian counterpart, if that was the only to "bring peace to the citizens of Ukraine and not lose people.

President Vladimir Putin has dismissed Roscosmos chief Yury Borisov, according to a decree published on the Kremlin’s website.

The Kremlin on Thursday removed the head of Russia's space agency after a tenure of less than three years that was scarred by the spectacular failure of Russia's first mission to the moon in 47 years.

Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed the chief of Roscosmos and replaced him with another official in a surprise shake up at one of the world’s biggest space agencies.