Hello and welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service studios in central London.

I'm Tim Franks. We're beginning with a war in Ukraine and the clear sense of urgency that the Trump administration has injected into trying to end the conflict begun by Russia back in 2014 and then dramatically worsened three years ago

with its full-scale invasion. After weeks of US pressure on Ukraine, the message from Washington

is that it's now for Russia to respond favourably to the latest initiative and quickly.

Note that after those talks in Saudi Arabia between senior American and Ukrainian

diplomats, the joint communique spoke of an immediate 30-day ceasefire and an immediate resumption

of US military aid and intelligence sharing to Ukraine, as well as, and this we're told,

will be as soon as possible, a deal between Washington and Kiev on the extraction of Ukrainian minerals.

Now, the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has been urging Moscow to agree to that month-long cessation of hostilities.

The shooting needs to stop, he said.

And Mr. Rubio raised the possibility that further down the track, that could also mean sanctions relief for Russia, including from those sanctions imposed by European countries, countries which he saw also being part of the diplomatic process.

The Europeans have issued a series of sanctions against the Russian Federation.

And I would imagine that in any negotiation, if we get there, hopefully, with the Russians,

that they will raise these European, the European sanctions that have been imposed upon them.

So I think that the issue of European sanctions are going to be on the table,

not to mention what happens with the frozen assets and the like.

And so I think it's self-evident that for there to be a peace in Ukraine, at the end of

that process, there's going to have to be some decision made by the Europeans about what

they're going to do with these sanctions and so forth.

And so that's why I think they have to be necessarily involved in this regard.

And then obviously there's also all sorts of security promises that

European countries have made to Ukraine, that that will also be, I imagine, a part of this

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