Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 842

The peace summit comes at a perilous moment for Ukraine on the battlefield, with Russian forces advancing against outmanned and outgunned Ukrainian units.

Near Ukraine’s embattled eastern front, hopes for a diplomatic breakthrough are nearly nil. “I’d like to hope that it will bring some changes in the future. But, as experience shows, nothing comes of it,” Maksym, a tank commander in the Donetsk region, told the AFP news agency.

Outside the peace summit venue in Switzerland, the wife of a Ukrainian soldier captured by Russia said she hoped the leaders could agree to “some exchange process for the prisoners of war”. “I want to see my husband,” Hanna, who fled her home in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol and now lives in Sweden, told AFP.

Meanwhile, Russian army defectors live in fear of reprisal from Moscow after abandoning their posts in the ongoing war with Ukraine. Many also feel abandoned by the West, as they do not have the necessary passports and only have documents allowing them to reach neighbouring Kazakhstan or Armenia.