Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday urged "joint pressure" on Moscow after it launched a "massive" overnight aerial attack, firing 214 drones and several guided bombs at cities across Ukraine.

"It is joint pressure on Russia, along with tougher sanctions and stronger defense support for our country, that paves the way to ending this kind of terror and Russia's prolongation of the war," Zelensky said in a post on social media.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered immigration officials not to deport a Georgetown scholar who was detained by the Trump Administration and accused of spreading Hamas propaganda in the latest battle over speech on U.S. college campuses.

U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles in Alexandria, Virginia, ordered that Indian national Badar Khan Suri "shall not be removed from the United States unless and until the Court issues a contrary order."

Senior officers from countries across Europe and beyond will meet Thursday at a military headquarters on the outskirts of London to flesh out plans for an international peacekeeping force for Ukraine as details of a partial ceasefire are worked out.

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the "coalition of the willing" plan, led by Britain and France, is moving into an "operational phase." But it's unclear how many countries are willing to send troops, or whether there will be any ceasefire to protect.

Iran's foreign ministry has summoned the British and German envoys over their calls to extend the mandate of a U.N. fact-finding mission investigating mass protests in 2022, local media reported Thursday.

A French citizen imprisoned in Iran for over 880 days has been freed and is back home, as was another French citizen held under house arrest in Tehran, French officials said Thursday. Their liberation came as France and the rest of Europe are trying to jumpstart talks with Iran over its rapidly advancing nuclear program.

U.S. President Donald Trump has sent a letter to Iran's 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei seeking negotiations. Trump is also pressuring Tehran over its support of Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels as the American military carries out an intense new campaign of airstrikes targeting the group.

Finland is named the happiest country in the world for the eighth year in a row, according to the World Happiness Report 2025 published Thursday.

Other Nordic countries are also once again at the top of the happiness rankings in the annual report published by the Wellbeing Research Center at the University of Oxford. Besides Finland, Denmark, Iceland and Sweden remain the top four and in the same order.

The Kremlin said Thursday that the next U.S.-Russia talks could take place on Sunday or early next week, as Washington is also due to hold talks with Kyiv in the coming days.

"It may not be Sunday itself, the nuances are being agreed. It could be the start, the very start, of next week," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Thursday that a recent letter sent by U.S. President Donald Trump urging new nuclear talks was "actually more of a threat", and that Tehran would respond soon.

Araghchi told Iranian state television that while the letter purported to present "opportunities", it was "actually more of a threat", adding that Iran was now studying its contents and would respond "in the coming days".

Russia's illegal seizure of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine exactly 11 years ago on March 18, 2014, was quick and bloodless, but it sent Moscow's relations with the West into a downward spiral unseen since the Cold War.

It also paved the way for Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, during which Moscow annexed more land from the war-torn country.

President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky discussed the path to a ceasefire between Kyiv and Moscow on Wednesday, a day after the U.S. leader held similar talks with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

Trump's call with Zelensky was about half the length of his call Tuesday, during which Putin agreed not to target Ukraine's energy infrastructure but refused to back a full 30-day ceasefire.