CNN
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Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday he is open to the possibility of bilateral talks with Ukraine for the first time in years, as pressure from the United States builds on both sides to agree to a quick peace deal.

US, European and Ukrainian officials are set to meet this week in London after Washington warned that it could abandon its efforts on ending the conflict if there were no signs of progress.

Speaking to reporters, Putin said it could be possible to discuss the halting of strikes against civilian infrastructure directly with Kyiv.

“We have a positive attitude towards a ceasefire,” Putin also said, referencing Russia’s decision to implement a surprise 30-hour Easter truce – which both sides accused each other of violating.

“That is why we have always said that we take a positive attitude to any peace initiatives,” Putin said. “We hope that the representatives of the Kyiv regime will feel the same way.”

Ukraine, which called for the extension of the truce before it expired Sunday, has repeatedly accused Russia of deliberately targeting civilians with air and drone strikes, and President Volodymyr Zelensky has called for Moscow to halt such attacks.

Putin acknowledged that recent Russian strikes had hit civilian facilities in Ukraine, but claimed that they were being used for military purposes.

“That’s what we need to look into,” he said. “It’s all a subject to be thoroughly investigated. Maybe bilaterally, as a result of dialogue. We don’t rule that out.”

“So we will analyze all of this and make appropriate decisions for the future,” he said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed Putin’s remarks to journalists, Reuters reported citing Russia’s Interfax news agency.

“When the president said that it was possible to discuss the issue of not striking civilian targets, including bilaterally, the president had in mind negotiations and discussions with the Ukrainian side,” the news agency quoted Peskov as saying.

Ukraine and Russia have not held direct talks since the early weeks of Moscow’s invasion in 2022.

Last Friday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that the US could walk away from its efforts to end the Ukrainian conflict within “days” if there were no signs of progress. Trump later confirmed the sentiment, but did not provide a timeline.

Asked what progress he would need to see to continue negotiations, Trump said he would “have to see an enthusiasm to want to end it” from both sides, predicting he would know “soon.”

The remarks came after a broad framework was presented by the US to both sides, Rubio and the State Department have said, to determine whether differences between Kyiv and Moscow can be narrowed.

The proposal would see Washington ready to recognize Russian control of Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014, an official familiar with the framework told CNN. The proposal would also put a ceasefire in place along the frontlines of the war, the official said.

There are still pieces of the framework to be filled out and the US plans to work with the Europeans and the Ukrainians during talks this week in London, the person said. The Trump administration is simultaneously planning another meeting between Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Russia to get Moscow on board with the framework, the source said.

Moscow has previously stalled on negotiations and rejected an earlier US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire agreed to by Kyiv.

Zelensky has not publicly commented on the latest US proposal. On Tuesday, he said Ukraine will send a delegation to the follow up talks in London.

“Ukraine, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States — we are ready to move forward as constructively as possible… to achieve an unconditional ceasefire, followed by the establishment of a real and lasting peace,” he wrote in a statement on X.

“An unconditional ceasefire must be the first step toward peace,” he said.

Zelensky has expressed willingness to agree to a peace deal with Moscow but said last month that his government would not recognize any occupied territories as Russian, calling that a “red line.”

Trump has declined to say whether he is prepared to walk away completely from the talks or whether the US would support Ukraine militarily if talks fall through.

Kosta Gak and Kylie Atwood contributed reporting

These words, delivered by Pope Francis to Canadian Indigenous leaders during their historic visit to Rome in 2022, were decades in the making.

Francis apologized for the Catholic Church’s role in what he said were “deplorable” abuses at Canada’s residential schools, which forcibly assimilated Indigenous children into Canadian society, stripping them of their language and culture.

More than 4,000 Indigenous children died from either neglect or abuse in residential schools, most of which were run by the church, according to Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The last residential school closed in 1998.

The discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves on the grounds of former residential schools in British Columbia and Saskatchewan in 2021 further laid bare the extent of the horrors.

Indigenous leaders had fought for decades for a papal apology for the harm inflicted on First Nations, Inuit and Métis children.

Francis will be remembered in Canada as the pope who finally delivered that apology — first at the Vatican, then again during an emotional six-day “pilgrimage of penance” in Alberta, Quebec and Nunavut.

The pontiff’s visit was bittersweet for survivors, some of whom said it triggered more pain.

But Francis’ public recognition of the Church’s wrongdoing — abuses for which he said he felt “sorrow and shame” — were a crucial step toward reconciliation, according to many Indigenous leaders.

“We’ve lost an ally,” Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak, told CNN affiliate CBC News. “He wanted to right the wrongs of the past.

CNN
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In 1964, 23-year-old Ramon Martinez Martinez left his job as a struggling painter in Madrid, Spain, and journeyed south to Benidorm in search of new opportunities. In the first half of the 20th century, Benidorm was a small seaside town best known for its tuna fish and orange groves, but by the time Martinez arrived, a budding tourism scene was about to take off, providing him and his family with a ticket to a better life.

Martinez bet on a boom, but even he could not have predicted what the formerly quiet fishing town would become. Today, Benidorm is known as the “New York of the Mediterranean,” a tourist metropolis distinctive for its high density of skyscrapers. Gone are the fruit farmers and the fishermen, replaced by millions of visitors from across Spain and Europe.

In 2023, 2.7 million tourists visited Benidorm — 36 times the size of its permanent population. As notorious as it is popular, Benidorm is seen as both an incredible economic success and a symbol of the uncontrolled juggernaut that is Spain’s tourism industry. It’s also the subject of a new book, “Benidorm,” by British photographer Rob Ball.

Speaking to CNN over Zoom, Ball explained that he travelled to the Spanish coast “with an open mind,” aiming to depict its “totally unique” landscape and architecture. Having photographed coastal landscapes for 15 years, Ball sees his latest work as “a prequel” to those images — a way of understanding the decline of local tourism as international travel became more affordable to the general public in the 1960s.

Close to a third of visitors to Benidorm are from the United Kingdom. So ubiquitous is the British tourist in Benidorm that the town has become known for its abundance of British pubs, availability of full English breakfasts, and broadcasting of British sports on outdoor screens. Every March, thousands of Brits flock to Benidorm to watch the Cheltenham Festival — a popular horse racing event that takes place in England — on TV.

Consequently, Benidorm divides opinion in the UK, as it does in Spain. For some, it is the perfect holiday destination — hot weather, familiar faces and bars open until the early hours. For others, the town provides the most inauthentic travel experience possible, Benidorm a byword for debauchery and sleaze. Ball chose to focus on the positive aspects of this controversial town — its natural beauty and groups of happy tourists relaxing on the sand.

Benidorm is known by many in the UK as “Blackpool with sun,” referring to a British seaside town popular with domestic tourists, although regarded by some as past its heyday. Depending on who uses it, the moniker can be either complimentary or disparaging.

“I’ve always felt that it’s very easy to demonize the working class for going on holiday and getting (drunk),” said Ball, “but I think actually when you work hard for 50 weeks of the year and you want to go and get (drunk) for two weeks in the summer, then you should be able to.”

But all this was still to come when Martinez moved from the Spanish capital of Madrid to the humble coastal town of Benidorm.

“Everyone came, as my mother and father did, looking for new opportunities,” said Jaime Martinez Gallinar, Martinez’s son and CEO of the Hoteles Benidorm Group of three four-star hotels, recounting his parents’ story from an office high in the Benidorm sky. “It was pretty much the story of the pioneers of the American West,” he added.

Martinez first found employment painting the hotels that had begun popping up along Benidorm’s coastline. The owners of the new buildings often didn’t have the cash to pay him, so would offer him shares in their businesses, or a couple of apartments in their buildings. As Martinez’s portfolio grew, so did the ambition of the city’s new mayor, Pedro Zaragoza.

Zaragoza, who was a personal friend of Martinez, is a legendary figure in the history of Benidorm. The city as it stands today is built according to Zaragoza’s vision — all high-rises, wide boulevards and pristine swimming pools, as out of place on the Spanish coast in the ‘60s as orange groves and fishing nets would have been in downtown Manhattan. “He was a lover of the area, the natural environment and the tourist industry,” said Gallinar, recalling his father’s relationship with the former mayor. “He is like a god for every hotelier here.”

Zaragoza, appointed to his position in 1950, saw the untapped economic potential of Benidorm when others did not. He toured Europe promoting his town’s desirable sun and sea, and made the radical decision in 1959 to legalize the wearing of bikinis on his beaches. Faced with excommunication by the Catholic Church, Zaragoza rode his Vespa nine hours to Madrid for an audience with Spanish general Francisco Franco. He returned to Benidorm with the dictator’s full support.

Zaragoza’s persistence, and Martinez’s gamble to uproot his family, were massively rewarded in the years that followed. After a major expansion of “package” vacations in the 1960s — all-inclusive trips abroad that made foreign travel, largely within Europe, available to more people — international tourists began to flock to Benidorm in the hundreds of thousands. Other than a blip during the pandemic, which prompted global travel restrictions, tourist numbers have continued to grow, creating new opportunities in Benidorm, its skyscrapers pushing further and further towards the clouds.

The early days of Benidorm’s architectural development were characterised by, as Ball described, a “total free-for-all approach.” Sandwiched between the mountains and the sea, the only way to house the growing number of tourists was to build upwards. The 21st century brought the two tallest buildings in Spain outside of Madrid: the Gran Hotel Bali, built in 2002, and the Residencial Intempo, completed in 2021 — both located in Benidorm.

One might expect this continuous development — or the notorious rambunctiousness of its tourist center — to be met with resistance from locals. Yet, while protests against mass-tourism (and the growing issue of rising rents and house prices that come with it) have taken place in recent months across Spain, they’ve not been in Benidorm.

“We love tourists,” Gallinar explained. “During Covid, it was like a ghost town, it was so sad. We discovered how much we depend on the people who come here. It’s not like Barcelona; here, everyone is welcome.”

Gallinar is proud of the Benidorm pubs that open until 3 a.m. and seeing the melting pot of Spaniards, Brits, and others from around the world, happily drinking and enjoying the atmosphere of a town unlike any other.

“People think Benidorm is for old people, for British people, for hooligans,” he said. “There is a stereotype that Benidorm is a cheap place. (But) there is a Benidorm that nobody talks about.”

However, Gallinar is aware that tourism in Benidorm is threatening to become too big for the landscape, acknowledging that “the challenge now is how to grow with the natural environment. The land is almost used up. Benidorm is almost full all year round. If we keep growing, maybe we will find that we begin to destroy the environment.”

It’s a concern that will eventually need to be addressed, given that demand for the Benidorm experience shows no sign of waning. If the pristine sea, radiant sunshine and pubs full of British revelers in Ball’s photographs are anything to go by, Benidorm is set to remain a holiday destination that people either love, or love to hate.

“Benidorm,” published by Hoxton Mini Press, is available in the UK now and the US on May 22.