Hello, welcome to Newsar from the BBC World Service.

Coming to you live from our studios in central London, I'm Julian Marshall.

President Trump is still in a rush to conclude a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine.

Maybe he's mindful that he'll soon reach 100 days in office.

His envoy, Steve Whitkoff, has been in Moscow again today for talks with President Putin.

It's his fourth such encounter with the Russian leader,

and afterwards, Yuri Ushakov, a key aid to President Putin who attended the talks, gave his assessment.

This conversation allowed Russia and the United States to further bring their positions closer together,

not only on Ukraine, but also on a number of other international issues.

As for the Ukrainian crisis itself, the discussion focused in particular on the

possibility of resuming direct negotiations between representatives of Russia and Ukraine.

And before getting on a plane to Rome for the Pope's funeral, President Trump insisted that Russia

and Ukraine are also closer to reaching a deal,

and he mentioned a casualty figure that has not been verified.

We're going to make our country rich, but we're going to try and get out of war so that we can save 5,000 people a week.

And that's what my aim is. I want to save 5,000 young men, they happen to be mostly Ukrainian,

Russian, 5,000 young Ukrainian and Russian men. And that's a big honor if I could do it. I think

we're pretty close. But if that deal involves Ukraine's seeding territory, including Crimea,

to Russia, President Zelenskyy says no, for which he's been berated by Mr. Trump.

However, Mr. Zelensky has also conceded that Ukraine doesn't have the weapons to recapture Crimea from Russia.

I spoke earlier to the BBC's Russia editor, Steve Rosenberg in Moscow, and asked him first about the assassination today of one of the country's top generals just outside the city.

There was a car bomb that exploded earlier today. Not exactly sure where Yaroslav Moskalik was. Some reports suggest he was in the car, other reports

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