Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned on Thursday night that Russian President Vladimir Putin would likely delay any ceasefire agreement because he is not genuinely interested in peace. This comes as President Donald Trump expressed optimism about the ongoing negotiations.
In his evening address to the Ukrainian people, Zelenskyy said that Putin’s reaction to the ceasefire proposal was “very predictable,” according to a report by The New York Times on Friday. He further explained that Putin had set so many conditions that it seemed “nothing will work out at all, or that it will not work out for as long as possible.”

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum has expressed outrage at Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu following a statement from his office that the Israeli delegation negotiating the release of hostages in Doha will be arriving later today. However, the prime minister and his senior team will not meet with them until Motzoei Shabbos.
“The families of the hostages apologize for disturbing you on Shabbos, but their loved ones do not have time to wait!” the forum declared.
The forum stressed the urgency of the situation, emphasizing, “Twenty-four hours in captivity is 24 hours of hell, torment and abuse, it is 24 hours of danger of death and disappearance,” and called on the government to expedite their meeting with the delegation.

A soldier from the Golani Brigade, who had been injured during the fierce combat in Gaza, experienced an unexpected and emotional moment while vacationing in Sri Lanka. While attending a local shul, he was reading from a Megillah and discovered that it was dedicated in memory of three soldiers who had fallen in the war, including Major Moshe Avram Bar On, who died in a battle in which the soldier himself had also been wounded.
“This was the first time the Megillah was opened and read. It was great closure for Purim. The connection between the holiday of Purim, the reading of the Megillah, and the memory of the fallen soldiers made the moment particularly emotional and shocking.”

Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu participated in the reading of Megillas Esther at the National Police Academy in Beit Shemesh on Thursday evening.
Addressing the police officers, the prime minister drew a comparison to the story of Purim, in which the Jewish people were saved from annihilation in Persia, now present-day Iran, to the modern Jewish state’s conflict with the Islamic Republic.
“Two thousand five hundred years later an enemy of the Jewish people arose in that land. He, too, wants to destroy and annihilate the seed of the Jews from the face of the earth,” Netanyahu said.

In a dramatic halachic ruling, Hagaon Rav Moshe Sternbuch, the senior posek and raavad of the Badatz of the Eidah Hachareidis, has declared that anyone who was in Yerushalayim at dawn on Purim morning must not leave the city during the day.
The psak, which has significant halachic implications, was delivered by Rav Sternbuch during his shiur to members of the Teshuvos Vehanhagos Kollel, and has sparked widespread discussion.

Mahmoud Abbas may be the final Palestinian leader to advocate for a two-state solution and to oppose violence as a means of achieving it, according to a potential successor of the Palestinian Authority president in a recent conversation with The Times of Israel.
Jibril Rajoub, the secretary-general of Abbas’s Fatah party and former head of the PA’s security forces, explained that Abbas is “the last founding pillar of the Palestinian national movement who believes in two things: making historic reconciliation [with Israel] based on the two-state solution [and] that blood-shedding should not be a choice to achieve [that goal].”

Healthcare professionals fear that a soldier who was seriously injured in Gaza about a year ago infected many people, including other soldiers, with tuberculosis, Kan News reported on Wednesday evening. The soldier is believed to have contracted tuberculosis before he entered Gaza over a year ago but wasn’t diagnosed until three weeks ago. Meanwhile, following his injury, he was treated in hospitals and community clinics, exposing doctors and nurses to the infection. Medical professionals who treated him are being tested, but not all test results have been received yet. According to what is known so far, at least one doctor required treatment due to his exposure to the infection. There are also concerns that he infected fellow soldiers in Gaza.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Hamas said on Friday it has accepted a proposal from mediators to release one living American-Israeli hostage and the bodies of four dual-nationals, hostages who had died in captivity. The announcement came talks continue in Qatar to try to broker the next stage of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire. The group in the Gaza […]