Russia and Ukraine are set to hold their first direct peace talks in three years, but hopes for a breakthrough remained dim after Russian President Vladimir Putin spurned an offer by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to meet face-to-face in Turkey.

Ukrainian and Russian representatives will meet in Istanbul, Turkey, on Thursday, for their first meeting since the opening weeks of Moscow's 3-year-old invasion.

A meeting between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin is the “only way” to move forward with talks on ending the war in Ukraine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday.

European shares reversed early declines to close higher on Thursday, with industrial stocks getting the biggest boost, while corporate earnings remained in the spotlight.

For days, President Donald Trump repeatedly floated the possibility of scrapping his Middle East travel schedule — one his team meticulously crafted for weeks — and adding a stop to personally mediate Ukraine-Russia peace talks in Turkey.

On May 5, Ukraine's National Guard released a clip it said showed how it used drones to rebuff a Russian motorcycle onslaught of troops trying to plant their flag on the ruins of a building. The video ends with the bodies of wounded or dead Russian soldiers lying next to their motorcycles.

Eastern Ukraine has been contested territory since 2014, when Russian-backed fighters seized large swathes of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Russia had already seized the southern peninsula of Crimea in February 2014 before annexing it soon afterwards.