Several recent pieces of footage have emerged from Kharkiv oblast, confirming hat Hlyboke and Vovchansk are both still contested. Some Russian milbloggers have claimed that a contingent of Russian forces are trapped in the center of Vovchansk, suggesting that except for a small part in the center, that Russian forces have been mostly pushed towards the edge of the city.
The peace summit in Switzerland is now well underway. One of the biggest takeaways so far is that a large portion of the countries present have publicly expressed wishes for Russia to be there, recognizing the futility of holding a peace conference without the aggressor state. Colombia's president also pulled out of attending the summit, largely for this reason. Despite this, Ukraine still managed to win some international support so far. The United States announced a new aid package, geared towards helping Ukraine's infrastructure. The total sum is around $1.5 billion, but much of it was either previously announced or is being redirected. Still, about $500 million of it is entirely new funding for Ukraine. While a full statement has yet to be released, a draft version expressed solidarity with Ukraine and support for maintaining its internationally recognized borders.
Relatedly, the New York Times today dropped the full text of one of the proposals from talks in early 2022, the only direct talks to have taken place between Russia and Ukraine about a full peace deal since Russia's full scale invasion. These talks, and reports of a deal having been agreed upon combined with spurious assertions that Ukraine was encouraged to reject the deal, have been the basis for a significant amount of conversations since. Ultimately, the document showed that a sizable portion of the reporting was accurate. Ukraine for instance had agreed to declare themselves permanently neutral. However, Russia would allow them to join the EU. Ukraine was willing to agree to "accept" Russian control over Crimea, the Donbas, and a to be decided portion of the other territory that Russia was claiming, without officially ceding the territory, a compromise that Russia would have been okay with. But there were many sticking points which the two sides could not come to an agreement on; in short, Ukraine didn't need to be encouraged to reject the deal. For instance, Russia was making significant demands with regards to legislation to be opposed in Ukraine. Some of this went as far as banning Ukraine from using the names of certain Ukrainians historical figures for place names, a gross breach of Ukrainian sovereignty. Ukraine was willing to accept some restrictions on their military, but they still wanted the capability to defend themselves. Russia demanded that Ukraine's missile arsenal only have extremely short range, ones which could barely hit beyond the front. But perhaps the biggest nonstarter for Ukraine was that Russia unilaterally changed part of the draft proposal regarding the obligations of guarantor states. Ukraine was wanting ironclad guarantees from states ranging from the United States to China to Turkey, which would obligate them to impose a no fly zone and send troops into Ukraine were it to be attacked, and understandably refused to go back to the prior security arrangements Ukraine had which Russia had violated (despite being a guarantor state itself). Russia added in a clause that all guarantor states of Ukrainians security under this treaty (which would include Russia) would have to agree to defend Ukraine for it to go into effect. In other words, Russia was giving itself veto power in the event that they would invade Ukraine again. This was an arrangement which Ukraine was never going to agree to, particularly as this was taking place when Russia's offensive to take Kyiv was stalling and beginning to falter.