What happened
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has publicly appealed to Vladimir Putin to meet with him in person, arguing that direct talks between the two leaders offer the best chance of ending more than four years of conflict.

In a lengthy letter sent to the Kremlin, the Ukrainian president proposed leader-to-leader negotiations in a neutral country such as Switzerland or Turkey, and urged a complete halt in fighting while discussions take place.

Who said what
Zelenskyy wrote that peace could only be achieved “through direct engagement between us” and urged Putin not to “be afraid to take the path out of this war”.

Putin, speaking in St Petersburg, said he was “certainly prepared and willing to reach an agreement with Ukraine”, but stressed that concessions would be necessary. He also questioned Zelenskyy’s political legitimacy. Yet for all the Russian president’s bluster, “inside Russia there are signs of a growing public discourse on whether it is time to end the war”, said Steve Rosenberg on the BBC.

What next?
Donald Trump has welcomed the prospect of a summit, saying: “I think it would be great if they met. They should. Get it done.”

The Kremlin confirmed receipt of the message, but as yet there is no indication that Moscow has accepted the proposal.

What happened
Modelling by the main body armour supplier to the UK armed forces has found that female troops are at greater risk of being wounded than their male counterparts because the protective gear is designed specifically for men, according to The Times. NP Aerospace’s solution is a new range of curved armour that it claims improves the safety of female troops by up to 40% when compared to the flat plates they are currently given.

Who said what
The Ministry of Defence “has known for years that body armour designed around the male physique does not adequately meet the needs of many servicewomen”, Sarah Atherton, a former Tory defence minister who led an inquiry into the military’s treatment of women, told the masthead. “Five years on, we have the evidence, we have seen trials, yet frontline women are still waiting. That is a failure of procurement and a failure of duty of care. If we can identify the problem, test solutions and acknowledge the risk, there is no excuse for not delivering equipment that properly protects our own personnel.”

What next?
The MoD has signed a £3.9 million contract with NP Aerospace to provide curved body armour to Ukraine’s female soldiers and is currently in the process of considering the armour for the UK’s female fighting personnel.

Spinal cord injuries are “notoriously difficult to treat”, said Rhys Blakely, science editor of The Times. But Zurich-based researchers think a solution may be in sight: injectable microrobots.

When the spinal cord is damaged, recovery is often limited: nerve fibre regrowth can be hampered by scarring, and the cells usually cannot regenerate on their own. But studies by a team at the Multi-Scale Robotics Lab at ETH Zurich suggest that microrobots – made from stem cells with magnetic nano-particles – could “coax” these nerve cells to repair and regenerate.

The studies were carried out in a lab on zebrafish and mice, so there is “still a long way to go” before the microrobots can be tested on humans. But the results are promising, and scientists the world over are intrigued by the idea of  “microscopic repair crews, guided by magnets”.

Further research is needed before these microrobots can be tested on humans, but the Zurich team is already thinking about ways that they can be used in other medical settings. “The reproducible and scalable production of microrobots using our lab-on-a-chip system demonstrates” that there is a great deal of “application potential”, said study leader Professor Salvador Pané i Vidal. With adaptations, the microrobots could be used in wound healing and to make cardiology and oncology treatments “safer, more controllable and more effective”.

Different microrobots have already been shown to be successful in other areas of medicine, according to medical news site Healthcare in Europe. Formed in droplets, they are effective at “precision-targeted drug delivery”, outperforming IV-delivery on the amount of drug that reaches the target tissue.