Vladimir Putin

North Korea’s Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui praised the ‘spiritual closeness’ between the two states.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has met North Korea’s Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui in the latest high-level engagement between the two countries, which have strengthened ties during the Ukraine war.

Footage released by Russian state news agencies showed Putin greeting Choe in the Kremlin on Monday. Russia’s top diplomat Sergey Lavrov also appeared at the meeting.

Putin said the countries’ “relations and development prospects” are progressing “according to plan”, and extended regards to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, according to Russia’s Sputnik news agency. Choe, in turn, passed on “warm wishes” from Kim, having earlier praised the “spiritual closeness” of the two nations’ relationship in talks with Lavrov.

Russia and North Korea, both under extensive Western sanctions, have significantly bolstered ties in recent years, including signing a 2024 defence pact committing each country to provide military support to the other in the event of “aggression”.

Since then, North Korea has sent around 10,000 troops to join Russia’s war against Ukraine, at least 600 of whom have died in combat, according to estimates from Seoul and Kyiv.

Pyongyang first acknowledged its soldiers’ involvement in the war in April, saying they helped Russia retake its strategic Kursk region after a Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Several days ago, Kim held a ceremony marking the opening of a museum in Pyongyang to honour the North Korean troops killed in the conflict. He said their deployment “marked the beginning of a new history of militant solidarity” with Russia, with which there is an “invincible” alliance.

Putin last met Kim in person on September 3 in Beijing, where the leaders held official talks after attending a military parade hosted by China’s President  Xi Jinping. At the time, Putin praised North Korean soldiers for fighting “courageously and heroically” in the Ukraine war.

“I would like to note that we will never forget the sacrifices that your armed forces and the families of your servicemen have suffered,” Putin said.

The deepening Russia-North Korea relationship has drawn concern from the United States, which says there is evidence that Russia is increasing technology support for North Korea, including in space and satellite programmes. After Putin and Kim’s September meeting, US President Donald Trump claimed they were conspiring against the US – a statement dismissed by the Kremlin.

Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukraine have killed at least four people and wounded several others, local officials say, as Kyiv’s allies push sweeping measures against Moscow as the war nears its four-year mark.

Two people were killed in a ballistic missile attack on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and nine were wounded in the overnight attacks, Tymur Tkachenko, head of the city’s military administration, said on Saturday.

Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said a blaze erupted in a non-residential building in one location as a result of the attacks, while debris from intercepted missiles fell in an open area at another site, damaging windows in nearby buildings.

“Explosions in the capital. The city is under ballistic attack,” Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a social media post.

In the central-east Dnipropetrovsk region, acting Governor Vladyslav Haivanenko said two people were killed and seven wounded in a Russian attack. He added apartment buildings, private homes, an outbuilding, a shop and at least one vehicle were damaged in the strikes.

One of the victims was an emergency worker, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. “One rescuer was killed and another wounded as a result of a repeated missile strike on the Petropavlivska community in the Dnipropetrovsk region,” the ministry said on social media.

The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia fired nine Iskander-M ballistic missiles and 62 attack drones. Four ballistic missiles and 50 drones were downed, it added.

There was no immediate comment by Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of neighbouring Ukraine in February 2022.

For its part, Russia blamed Ukraine on Saturday for striking a dam on a local reservoir. In a statement on Telegram, Belgorod region Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said repeated strikes on the dam had increased a risk of flooding and advised residents in Shebekino and Bezlyudovka to leave their homes for temporary accommodation.

Belgorod region borders Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region and has previously come under attack by Ukrainian forces.

Overall, Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its air defences had shot down 121 Ukrainian drones over Russia overnight.

Pressuring Putin to end war

The attacks come as Kyiv’s Western allies ratchet up pressure on Russia as the war enters its fourth winter.

The United States and the European Union announced new sweeping sanctions this week on Russian energy aimed at crippling Moscow’s war economy.

US President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on Russia’s top oil firms, Rosneft and Lukoil, on Wednesday in an effort to pressure Moscow to reach a ceasefire. The EU adopted a new round of sanctions against Russian energy exports on Thursday, banning liquefied natural gas imports.

At a joint news conference in London on Friday after a meeting of the so-called “Coalition of the Willing”, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed the sanctions and called for additional pressure on all Russian oil companies, as well as military aid to bolster Ukraine’s long-range missile capabilities.

On Saturday, Zelenskyy said the overnight attacks intensified his country’s need for air defence systems. “It is precisely because of such attacks that we pay special attention to Patriot systems – to be able to protect our cities from this horror. It is critical that partners who possess relevant capability implement what we have discussed in recent days,” he wrote on social media.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would not bend to pressure from the West. “No self-respecting country and no self-respecting people ever decides anything under pressure,” he said, calling the US sanctions an “unfriendly act.”

Putin has called for the complete disarmament of Ukraine and for Russia to keep any territory it has seized during the war. That position seems to be non-negotiable for Ukraine. Trump, who before his return to the White House in January, had boasted of being able to end the war in 24 hours if re-elected – has been unable to make any headway between the two positions.

Plans for an in-person meeting between Trump and Putin fell apart this week after the US president proposed “freezing” the war with a ceasefire along the current front lines.

Despite ongoing disagreements, Putin’s special envoy for investment and economic cooperation, Kirill Dmitriev, on Friday said he believed a diplomatic solution was close.

Prosecutors said the two young defendants planned a ‘sustained campaign of terrorism and sabotage’ backed by Russia’s Wagner Group mercenaries.

A British judge has handed lengthy jail sentences to the two young ringleaders of a group who carried out arson attacks in the United Kingdom on behalf of the Russian state-funded private military firm, the Wagner Group.

Prosecutors said on Friday that Dylan Earl, 21, and Jake Reeves, 24, planned “a sustained campaign of terrorism and sabotage on UK soil” with the backing of Russia’s notorious Wagner mercenary group, which has been accused of war crimes in zones of conflict around the world, including murder, torture and rape.

Judge Bobbie Cheema-Grubb handed Earl a 17-year prison sentence, with a further six years on extended licence, for his “leading role” in planning several attacks, including one in March last year in which a London warehouse storing humanitarian aid and Starlink satellite equipment destined for Ukraine was set on fire.

During the trial, prosecutors said the 21-year-old had discussed with his Wagner handler plans to kidnap the cofounder of finance app Revolut and to torch a warehouse in the Czech Republic.

A police search of Earl’s phone uncovered videos of the east London warehouse fire being started, while he was also found to be in contact with Wagner members on the messaging app Telegram.

17 years in prison.

CCTV, phone data and forensic evidence helped convict Dylan Earl, one of five men involved in a Russian-ordered arson attack on a warehouse in Leyton.

The blaze caused around £1 million of damage, including to aid bound for Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/m96hNx6fO2

— Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) October 24, 2025

Fellow defendant Reeves, 24, was handed 12 years in prison, with an additional year on extended licence, for his role in recruiting other men to take part in the Wagner-backed attacks.

The pair are the first people to be convicted under the UK’s new National Security Act, introduced in 2023 to readapt anti-espionage legislation to counter modern-day threats from foreign powers.

Russian-backed ‘hostile agents’

Earl and Reeves “acted willingly as hostile agents on behalf of the Russian state”, Dominic Murphy, the head of Counter Terrorism Policing London, said in a statement.

“This case is a clear example of an organisation linked to the Russian state using ‘proxies’ – in this case British men – to carry out very serious criminal activity in this country on their behalf,” Murphy said.

“In recent years, we have seen a significant increase in the number of counter-state-threat investigations and the use of ‘proxies’ is a new tactic favoured by hostile states such as Russia,” he added.

In July, three other British men were found guilty of aggravated arson for their role in the warehouse attack in east London, which caused one million pounds ($1.3m) in damage and put dozens of firefighters’ lives at risk.

Nii Mensah, 23, was sentenced to nine years in prison; Jakeem Rose, 23, was jailed for eight years and 10 months; while Ugnius Asmena, 21, was handed seven years.

Ashton Evans, 20, was also jailed for nine years for failing to disclose information about terrorist acts relating to another arson plot targeting two central London businesses owned by a Russian dissident.

British authorities allege that Russia is conducting an increasingly bold espionage and sabotage campaign in the UK, with the head of the MI5 security service, Ken McCallum, saying Moscow is “committed to causing havoc and destruction”.

In a separate case this week, the Metropolitan Police arrested three men from west and central London, also suspected of spying for Russia.

The details of their alleged crimes have not been made public, but they have also been charged under the 2023 National Security Act “on suspicion of assisting a foreign intelligence service”.

United States President Donald Trump sanctions Russia’s two biggest oil companies – after scrapping a summit with President Vladimir Putin on the Ukraine war.

The European Union has also announced new measures targeting Russian oil and assets.

Will they bring an end to the war any closer?

Presenter: Bernard Smith

Guests:

Anatol Lieven – Director of the Eurasia programme at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft

Steven Erlanger – Chief Diplomatic Correspondent for Europe at The New York Times

Chris Weafer – CEO of Macro-Advisory, a strategic consultancy focused on Russia and Eurasia

Washington has announced new sanctions against Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, in an effort to pressure Moscow to agree to a peace deal in Ukraine. This marks the first time the current Trump administration has imposed direct sanctions on Russia.

Speaking alongside Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office on Wednesday, US President Donald Trump said he hoped the sanctions would not need to be in place for long, but expressed growing frustration with stalled truce negotiations.

“Every time I speak to Vladimir [Putin], I have good conversations and then they don’t go anywhere. They just don’t go anywhere,” Trump said, shortly after a planned in-person meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Budapest was cancelled.

Trump’s move is designed to cut off vital oil revenues, which help fund Russia’s ongoing war efforts. Earlier on Wednesday, Russia unleashed a new bombardment on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, killing at least seven people, including children.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the new sanctions were necessary because of “Putin’s refusal to end this senseless war”. He said that Rosneft and Lukoil fund the Kremlin’s “war machine”.

How have Rosneft and Lukoil been sanctioned?

The new measures will freeze assets owned by Rosneft and Lukoil in the US, and bar US entities from engaging in business with them. Thirty subsidiaries owned by Rosneft and Lukoil have also been sanctioned.

Rosneft, which is controlled by the Kremlin, is Russia’s second-largest company in terms of revenue, behind natural gas giant Gazprom. Lukoil is Russia’s third-largest company and its biggest non-state enterprise.

Between them, the two groups export 3.1 million barrels of oil per day, or 70 percent of Russia’s overseas crude oil sales. Rosneft alone is responsible for nearly half of Russia’s oil production, which in all makes up 6 percent of global output.

In recent years, both companies have been hit by rolling European sanctions and reduced oil prices. In September, Rosneft reported a 68 percent year-on-year drop in net income for the first half of 2025. Lukoil posted an almost 27 percent fall in profits for 2024.

Meanwhile, last week, the United Kingdom unveiled sanctions on the two oil majors. Elsewhere, the European Union looks set to announce its 19th package of penalties on Moscow later today, including a ban on imports of Russian liquefied natural gas.

How much impact will these sanctions have?

In 2022, Russian oil groups (including Rosneft and Lukoil) were able to offset some of the effects of sanctions by pivoting exports from Europe to Asia, and also using a “shadow fleet” of hard-to-detect tankers with no ties to Western financial or insurance groups.

China and India quickly replaced the EU as Russia’s biggest oil consumers. Last year, China imported a record 109 million tonnes of Russian crude, representing almost 20 percent of its total energy imports. India imported 88 million tonnes of Russian oil in 2024.

In both cases, these are orders of magnitude higher than before 2022, when Western countries started to tighten their sanctions regime on Russia. At the end of 2021, China imported roughly 79.6 million tonnes of Russian crude. India imported just 0.42 million tonnes.

Trump has repeatedly urged Beijing and New Delhi to halt Russian energy purchases. In August, he levied an additional 25 percent trade tariff on India because of its continued purchase of discounted Russian oil. He has so far demurred from a similar move against China.

However, Trump’s new sanctions are likely to place pressure on foreign financial groups which do business with Rosneft and Lukoil, including the banking intermediaries which facilitate sales of Russian oil in China and India.

“Engaging in certain transactions involving the persons designated today may risk the imposition of secondary sanctions on participating foreign financial institutions,” the US Treasury Department’s press release on Wednesday’s sanctions says.

As a result, the new restrictions may force buyers to shift to alternative suppliers or pay higher prices. Though India and China may not be the direct targets of these latest restrictions, their oil supply chains and trading costs are likely to come under increased pressure.

“The big thing here is the secondary sanctions,” Felipe Pohlmann Gonzaga, a Switzerland-based commodity trader, told Al Jazeera. “Any bank that facilitates Russian oil sales and with exposure to the US financial system could be subject.”

However, he added, “I don’t think this will be the driver in ending the war, as Russia will continue selling oil. There are always people out there willing to take the risk to beat sanctions.

“These latest restrictions will make Chinese and Indian players more reluctant to buy Russian oil – many won’t want to lose access to the American financial system. [But] it won’t stop it completely.”

According to Bloomberg, several senior refinery executives in India – who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue – said the restrictions would make it impossible for oil purchases to continue.

On Wednesday, Trump said that he would raise concerns about China’s continued purchases of Russian oil during his talk with President Xi Jinping at the 2025 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea next week.

Have oil prices been affected?

Oil prices rallied after Trump announced US sanctions. Brent – the international crude oil benchmark – rose nearly 4 percent to $65 a barrel on Thursday. The US Benchmark, West Texas Intermediate, jumped more than 5 percent to nearly $60 per barrel.

Pohlmann Gonzaga, however, predicted that the “market will correct from this 5 percent over-jump. You have to recall that sentiment in energy markets is still negative due to the gloomy [global] economic backdrop.”

Here are the key events from day 1,337 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Thursday, October 23, 2025:

Fighting

• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its forces captured the village of Pavlivka in Ukraine’s southeastern Zaporizhia region, as well as Ivanivka village in the Dnipropetrovsk region. The ministry also said it struck Ukrainian energy infrastructure in what it claimed was a response to Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilian targets.
• Russian attacks throughout Ukraine on Wednesday killed six people, including two children, and forced nationwide power outages, Ukrainian officials said.
• Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 405 drones and 28 missiles at Ukraine in an overnight attack targeting energy infrastructure. Ukraine downed 16 Russian missiles and 333 drones, while other missiles eluded defences and directly hit targets, the air force said.
• Ukrainian Energy Minister Svitlana Hrynchuk said Russia is implementing a methodical campaign to destroy Ukraine’s energy system and is targeting repair teams working at energy facilities with secondary attacks after initial strikes.
• Russian drones attacked Kyiv for a second night on Wednesday, injuring four people, Tymur Tkachenko, head of the city’s military administration, said early on Thursday. Tkachenko said drones damaged several dwellings and other buildings, including a kindergarten.
• Ukraine’s military said it struck a weapons and ammunition plant in the Russian region of Mordovia and an oil refinery in Dagestan in overnight attacks.
• Russian Vice Admiral Vladimir Tsimlyansky said Russia’s army would seek to use reservists to defend civilian infrastructure such as oil refineries after a sharp rise in Ukrainian drone attacks deep into the country over recent months.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin oversaw a test of Russia’s nuclear forces on land, sea and air to rehearse their readiness and command structure, according to reports. The test included the launch of a land-based Yars intercontinental ballistic missile, the launch of a Sineva ballistic missile from a nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea, and the launch of nuclear-capable cruise missiles from strategic bombers.

Sanctions

• United States President Donald Trump imposed Ukraine-related sanctions on Russia for the first time in his second term, targeting oil companies Lukoil and Rosneft as his frustration grows with President Putin over the failure to implement a ceasefire.
• The US Department of the Treasury said it was prepared to take further action and called on Moscow to agree immediately to a ceasefire in its war in Ukraine.
• “Given President Putin’s refusal to end this senseless war, Treasury is sanctioning Russia’s two largest oil companies that fund the Kremlin’s war machine,” US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. “We encourage our allies to join us in and adhere to these sanctions.”
• Trump also said he expected to reach a trade agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping, adding that he would raise concerns about China’s purchases of Russian oil during their meeting in South Korea next week.
• European Union countries also approved a 19th package of sanctions on Moscow that includes a ban on Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports.
• The LNG ban will take effect in two stages: Short-term contracts will end after six months, and long-term contracts from January 1, 2027.
• Britain has issued a special licence allowing businesses to work with two German subsidiaries of the sanctioned Russian oil giant Rosneft, as they are under German state control. Last week, Britain announced new sanctions against Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia’s two largest oil firms, accusing them of helping fund the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.
• Ukraine is urging European countries not to limit its use of a proposed $163bn loan based on frozen Russian state assets, arguing that it needs to be able to buy non-European arms, repair war damage from Russian attacks and compensate victims. Some EU states have suggested the funds be spent mainly on European-made weapons to boost their defence industries.
• Russia has no plans to seize any European assets, including companies and banks, but will consider its position if the EU confiscates frozen Russian sovereign assets, Russian Deputy Finance Minister Alexey Moiseev said.

Ceasefire talks

• President Trump said he cancelled a planned summit with President Putin due to a lack of progress in diplomatic efforts to reach peace in Ukraine and a sense that the timing was off.
• “We cancelled the meeting with President Putin – it just didn’t feel right to me,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get. So I cancelled it, but we’ll do it in the future,” Trump said.
• Trump also expressed frustration with the stalled negotiations, saying, “Every time I speak with Vladimir, I have good conversations, and then they don’t go anywhere. They just don’t go anywhere”.
• Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Trump’s call for Ukraine and Russia to freeze the war at its current front lines was “a good compromise”, but he doubted that Putin would support it.

Military and financial aid

• Trump said a news report on the US giving approval for Ukraine to use long-range missiles deep into Russia was false, adding the US “has nothing to do with those missiles”.
• Sweden has signed a letter of intent that could see it supply up to 150 of its domestically produced Gripen fighter jets to Ukraine, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said after meeting President Zelenskyy.
• Zelenskyy said Ukraine aims to receive and start using Swedish Gripen jets next year. “For our army, Gripens are a priority. It is about money, about manoeuvres,” he said.
• Norway is donating another 1.5 billion Norwegian crowns ($149.4m) to Ukraine for the purchase of natural gas to secure electricity and heating, the Norwegian government said.

US President Donald Trump has explained a decision to postpone plans for a meeting in Hungary with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to discuss the Ukraine war, telling reporters he doesn’t want a ‘wasted meeting’.

Here are the key events from day 1,336 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Wednesday, October 22, 2025:

Fighting

• A “massive” Russian attack killed four people and injured seven in the town of Novhorod-Siverskyi, in Ukraine’s Chernihiv region, Governor Viacheslav Chaus wrote in a post on Telegram.
• Chaus said that Russian forces launched about 20 Shahed drones in the attack and that there was “a lot of destruction in the city”.
• Russian attacks killed two people and injured one person in the city of Kostiantynivka in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, the head of the Kostiantynivka City Military Administration, Serhii Horbunov, wrote in a post on Facebook.
• A Russian drone attack injured nine people in Ukraine’s Sumy region, Governor Oleh Hryhorov said.
• A Ukrainian attack killed one person and injured five in settlements in a Russian-occupied part of the Kherson region in southern Ukraine, the Russian-installed governor, Vladimir Saldo, said.
• A Ukrainian drone attack killed one person in the village of Novostroyevka-Pervaya in Russia’s Belgorod Region, Russia’s state TASS news agency reported, citing regional authorities.
• Russian attacks on energy facilities left hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians without electricity in Ukraine’s Chernihiv region, the Ministry of Energy of Ukraine said on Tuesday.
• More than 1,000 people were left without electricity due to a Ukrainian attack on the Kamianka-Dniprovska area of the Russian-occupied Ukrainian Zaporizhia region, TASS reported, citing local officials.
• Ukrainian forces struck the Bryansk chemical plant in Russia, Ukraine’s General Staff said in a post on Facebook, adding that the “outcome of the strike is being assessed”.

Politics and diplomacy

• A senior White House official told Al Jazeera that “there are no plans for [US President Donald] President Trump to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the immediate future”, days after Trump suggested a meeting could take place in Hungary “within two weeks or so”.
• Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said of developments: “I don’t want to have a wasted meeting… I don’t want to have a waste of time, so I’ll see what happens.”
• Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov also implied that any potential meeting could take time, saying “preparation is needed, serious preparation”.

• However, Putin’s special envoy for investment and economic cooperation, Kirill Dmitriev, said on X late on Tuesday that the “media is twisting comment about the ‘immediate future’ to undercut the upcoming Summit”, adding that “preparations continue” for the meeting between Trump and Putin.

Media is twisting comment about the “immediate future” to undercut the upcoming Summit. Preparations continue. 🕊️🇷🇺🤝🇺🇸

👇https://t.co/lb81a3Tdxo https://t.co/RYrJI6yONs

— Kirill Dmitriev (@kadmitriev) October 21, 2025

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address that Moscow’s dwindling interest in the presidential meeting came after the US appeared to back away from considering supplying long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine.
• “As soon as the issue of long-range mobility became a little further away for us – for Ukraine – Russia almost automatically became less interested in diplomacy,” Zelenskyy said.

Regional Security

• A man who shot and wounded Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico last year has been found guilty of terrorism charges and handed a 21-year jail sentence. The shooter said he opposed the approach taken towards Ukraine by Fico, who ended state military assistance to Ukraine and sought closer ties with Moscow.

Here are the key events from day 1,333 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Sunday, October 19, 2025:

Fighting

• Russia’s Ministry of Defence claimed that its forces captured the village of Pleshchiivka in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. There was no immediate reaction from Ukraine on the latest claim of territorial gain by Moscow.

• The Russian Defence Ministry had earlier announced the capture of one village in the Dnipropetrovsk region and two in the northeastern Kharkiv region, closer to the Russian border.

• Two internally-displaced people were killed in a Ukrainian drone attack on a Russian-occupied part of the Kherson region in southern Ukraine, the Russian-installed regional governor, Vladimir Saldo, said on the Telegram messaging platform.

• Three people were killed and five others injured following an explosion at an industrial plant related to weapons production in the southwest Russian city of Sterlitamak, Radiy Khabirov, the governor of Bashkortostan, said in a statement on Telegram.

• The chief of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, announced on X that repairs have begun on damaged power lines at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Authorities had warned that a four-week outage of power at the plant was endangering the safety of the Russian-controlled facility, which needs power to ensure that reactors are kept cool to avoid a dangerous meltdown.

Politics and diplomacy

• Austria’s Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs announced that it is supporting the European Union’s decision to impose new sanctions against Russia, which require a unanimous vote and have been stymied due to Vienna’s earlier opposition to the plan.

• Ukrainians said they were disappointed that the United States may not provide Kyiv with long-range Tomahawk missiles, the Associated Press news agency reported, after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with US President Donald Trump in Washington, DC, on Friday.

Regional security

• Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya on Saturday urged Trump to step up efforts to support democracy in her country, arguing that a free Belarus was in Washington’s interests.

Here are the key events from day 1,332 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Saturday, October 18, 2025:

Fighting

• Ukrainian shelling killed two adults and a 10-year-old child in Russian-occupied Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-appointed governor of the region, wrote in a post on Telegram.
• Russian attacks on Ukraine’s Sumy region killed a 38-year-old man and injured four others, the regional administration wrote in a post on Telegram.
• Russian attacks also injured at least eight people in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv regions, according to local officials.
• Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces claimed a Ukrainian drone attack destroyed an oil depot and a gas treatment plant in Russian-occupied Crimea on Friday night.
• The Russian-installed governor of Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, said that a Ukrainian drone attack damaged several electrical substations in the Russian-occupied region, according to Russia’s state-run TASS news agency.
• Russian forces shelled Ukraine’s Chernihiv region 68 times in a 24-hour period, causing fires at a logging company and damaging residential areas, Regional Governor Vyacheslav Chaus said.
• Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova called for relevant United Nations bodies to condemn the Ukrainian attack that killed Russian war correspondent Ivan Zuyev and seriously wounded his colleague in southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region on Thursday.

Politics and diplomacy

• United States President Donald Trump met his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House on Friday, telling reporters he was optimistic about ending the war. “I think we have a chance of ending the war quickly if flexibility is shown,” Trump told reporters.
• Zelenskyy congratulated Trump on his “successful ceasefire” in the Middle East, saying that while “Putin is not ready”, he is confident that with Trump’s “help, we can stop this war, and we really need it”.
• Trump did not commit to Zelenskyy’s request for Tomahawk missiles, which are precise, long-range projectiles that Kyiv is seeking in order to strike deep into Russia, saying doing so “could mean big escalation”.
• Trump also told reporters that Zelenskyy will “be in touch” during upcoming negotiations in Hungary, where the US president will meet with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
• Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said his country would allow Putin to attend the planned summit with Trump in Budapest, despite the Russian leader facing an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC), which Hungary is in the process of leaving.
• Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s investment envoy, proposed building a “US-Russia link via the Bering Strait” in a post on X, also suggesting that the undersea tunnel connecting Russia and the US could be built together with billionaire Elon Musk’s The Boring Company.
• Asked about the tunnel proposal on Friday, Trump said it was “interesting”, while Zelenskyy said: “I’m not happy with this idea.”
• United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer held a call with Zelenskyy after his White House meeting, where he “reiterated their unwavering commitment to Ukraine in the face of ongoing Russian aggression”, according to a summary of the call published by Downing Street.

Regional Security

Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to visit Hungary in the very near future, where he will meet United States counterpart Donald Trump for a second summit on ending the war in Ukraine. The first – in Alaska in August – failed to result in any agreement.

But, with an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant issued in 2023 for Putin’s arrest over the alleged illegal deportation of Ukrainian children during Russia’s war with Ukraine, how will the fugitive from justice make it to the negotiating table?

Signatories of the 1998 Rome Statute, which established the Hague-based court in 2002, are required to arrest those subject to warrants as soon as they enter their territory – which theoretically includes airspace, which is also considered sovereign territory under international law.

Hungary, which recently stated its intention to withdraw from the agreement – making it a safe space for Putin – is surrounded by countries which would be bound by this.

However, the ICC, which has 125 member states, has no police force and hence no means of enforcing arrests.

So what awaits Putin on his upcoming jaunt?

Isn’t Hungary technically an ICC member, too?

On paper, yes. But it’s on the way out.

In April, right-wing populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban announced the country would be ditching the ICC’s founding document when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid a visit. Netanyahu is also on the ICC’s most-wanted list for Gaza war crimes – his arrest warrant was issued earlier this year.

The Hungarian parliament approved a bill back in May to trigger the withdrawal process, which becomes official one year after the United Nations Secretary-General receives a written notification of the decision.

Given Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto’s comments on Friday on the “sovereign” country’s intent to host the president with “respect”, ensuring he has “successful negotiations, and then returns home”, Putin seems safe from any arrest on Hungarian soil.

What about airspace? Could he be intercepted mid-air?

As Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday, “many questions” need to be resolved before Putin sets off on his journey. One of those questions is likely to regard the president’s flight path.

Putin will probably want to avoid the Baltic states after recent violations of Estonia’s airspace by Russian jets, which have put the region on high alert for a potential overspill from the Ukraine war. The Baltics could well force a hard landing.

Friendly Belarus might provide a convenient corridor between the Baltics and Ukraine further south, but this would set the president on course for Poland, which has historically strained relations with the Kremlin and recently warned Europe to prepare for a “deep” Russian strike on its territory. Russian drones have also recently breached Polish airspace.

Slovakia, which is led by Moscow-leaning populist Robert Fico, is still guzzling Russian energy in defiance of Trump’s orders to European countries to stop oil and gas imports, and may be more accommodating. Indeed, Fico is on a collision course with fellow EU members over sanctions against Moscow. But Putin would still need to cross Poland before reaching Slovakia.

Putin’s direct route to Budapest, therefore, appears littered with obstacles.

What about a more circuitous route?

Putin may be inspired by fellow ICC fugitive Netanyahu, wanted for crimes including using starvation as a weapon of war against Palestinian civilians in war-ravaged Gaza, who avoided several European countries on his way to the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York last month.

The Israeli Prime Minister’s Wing of Zion plane briefly flew over Greek and Italian territory, but then ducked south, entirely avoiding French and Spanish airspace before heading over the Atlantic, according to FlightRadar24.

Flying south could be an option for Putin as well. Georgia, whose Georgian Dream governing party suspended Tbilisi’s bid to join the European Union, is a signatory to the Rome Statute but could potentially be relied on to turn a blind eye.

And Turkiye, which is not a party to the Rome Statute, but which has long walked a tightrope between Russia and NATO and hosted previous attempts between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators on ending the war, could be amenable to allowing the Russian president to pass.

From there, the main obstacle would be Greece, providing a route through the Balkan states to Orban’s respectful welcome.

Has Putin made other trips since becoming an internationally wanted war criminal?

Putin has clearly limited his travels since the ICC warrant was issued.

Last year, he hopped over the border to ICC member Mongolia, where he was treated to a lavish ceremony featuring soldiers on horseback by Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh.

Mongolia has very friendly relations with Russia, on which it depends for fuel and electricity. The country has refrained from condemning Russia’s offensive in Ukraine and has abstained during votes on the conflict at the UN, so it was little surprise to see the red carpet being rolled out.

Flying to Alaska for a bilateral with Trump last August was easy since the president could completely avoid hostile countries, flying over his country’s huge land mass over the Bering Strait to the US, which is not a signatory to the Rome Statute.

Similarly, this year’s visit to “old friend” and neighbour Xi Jinping for a huge military parade and a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation posed no problems since China is not a party to the ICC.

This month, the Russian president met Central Asian leaders with whom he is eager to bolster ties in Tajikistan, which has signed up to the Rome Statute.

Will Putin ever be arrested?

The arrest warrants mark the first step towards an eventual trial, although the capture of Russia’s president is almost inconceivable.

Only a few national leaders have ended up in The Hague.

The former Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, surrendered to The Hague earlier this year to face charges of crimes against humanity. The charges pertain to extrajudicial killings committed during his widely condemned “war on drugs”, which killed thousands of people.

The former Liberian president and warlord, Charles Taylor, was convicted in 2012 by the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, which held proceedings in The Hague. He was found guilty of 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Would a future Russian leader decide to forcibly hand Putin over, as was the case with Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic, extradited to The Hague after his removal in 2000, for atrocities committed in the former Yugoslavia wars?

That would necessitate a seismic shift in the Kremlin’s power dynamic, which seems unlikely for the time being.

Here are the key events from day 1,331 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Friday, October 17, 2025:

Fighting

• Russian war correspondent Ivan Zuyev has been killed by a Ukrainian drone strike while on assignment on the front line of the war in southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, his publication, state news agency RIA said. Zuyev’s colleague, Yuri Voitkevich, was seriously wounded in the attack.

• Russia launched a large armoured assault with more than 20 armoured vehicles near the eastern Ukrainian town of Dobropillia, Ukraine’s Azov brigade said, adding that its forces repelled the attack.
• Russia’s Defence Ministry said its forces carried out a massive overnight strike on Ukrainian gas infrastructure which supports Kyiv’s military, in retaliation for what it said were Ukrainian attacks on civilian infrastructure.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia launched a barrage of more than 300 drones and 37 missiles in that attack. Ukraine’s state grid operator, Ukrenergo, has also introduced emergency power cuts in every region of the country.
• Ukraine struck Russia’s Saratov oil refinery overnight, the Ukrainian military general staff said in a statement on Telegram.
• Some 84,000 people are still without power in the Russian-held part of Ukraine’s Kherson region after Ukrainian strikes this week on energy infrastructure, according to Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-appointed governor of the region.
• Alexei Likhachev, the head of Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom, said a decision could be taken as early as Friday on a pause in fighting to enable repairs to power lines at the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in Ukraine.
• North Korean troops based in Russia are operating drones across the border into Ukraine on reconnaissance missions, the Ukrainian military said, the first time Kyiv has reported a battlefield role for North Koreans in months.

Ceasefire talks

• In a surprise move, US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have agreed to another summit on the war in Ukraine after the leaders held a more than two-hour phone conversation. Trump and Putin may meet within the next two weeks in Budapest, Hungary, Trump said after the conversation, which he called productive.
• The Kremlin confirmed plans for the meeting, adding that Putin told Trump on the call that supplying US Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine would harm the peace process and damage ties.
• US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will speak in the coming days to prepare the summit, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said, adding that the timing would depend on how preparatory work progressed.
• The development came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was headed to the White House on Friday to push for more military support. Zelenskyy said on the eve of those talks that momentum in the Middle East peace process would help end his country’s more than three-year-old war with Russia.

Europe

• The European Commission has proposed four flagship European defence projects, including a counter-drone system and a plan to fortify the eastern border, as part of a drive to get the continent ready to defend itself by 2030.
• The proposals, in a defence policy “roadmap”, reflect fears fuelled by the war in Ukraine that Russia may attack an EU member in the coming years, and calls by President Trump for Europe to do more for its own security.

Sanctions

• Britain has targeted Russia’s two largest oil companies, Lukoil and Rosneft, and 44 shadow fleet tankers in what it described as a new bid to tighten energy sanctions and choke off Kremlin revenues. Lukoil and Rosneft were designated under Britain’s Russia sanctions laws for their role in supporting the Russian government. They are subject to an asset freeze, director disqualification, transport restrictions, and a ban on British trust services.
• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he would call for the European Union to use Russian assets frozen in the West to provide a large loan to Ukraine to finance its war effort at the upcoming EU summit on October 23.
• Canada and Britain have expressed interest in working on the EU idea of a reparations loan for Ukraine based on immobilised Russian assets, European Economic Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis told the Reuters news agency on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington.
• Dombrovskis said he presented the idea of the EU loan, which could be up to 185bn euros ($216.5bn) over two years, to G7 finance ministers.

Gennadiy Trukhanov is alleged to have Russian citizenship, which is prohibited in Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has stripped the mayor of Odesa, Gennadiy Trukhanov, of Ukrainian citizenship over allegations that he possesses a Russian passport.

The Ukrainian leader has instead appointed a military administration to run the country’s biggest port city on the Black Sea, with a population of about 1 million.

“The Ukrainian citizenship of the mayor of Odesa, Gennadiy Trukhanov, has been suspended,” Ukraine’s SBU security service announced on the Telegram messaging app on Tuesday, citing a decree signed by Zelenskyy.

The SBU accused the mayor of “possessing a valid international passport from the aggressor country”.

Ukraine prohibits its citizens from also holding citizenship in Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the move against Trukhanov could see him deported from the country.

In a post on social media, Zelenskyy said he had held a meeting with the head of the SBU, which had reported on “countering Russian agent networks and collaborators in the front-line and border regions, as well as in the south of our country”.

The SBU chief “confirmed… the fact that certain individuals hold Russian citizenship – relevant decisions regarding them have been prepared. I have signed the decree”, Zelenskyy said.

I held a meeting on the security situation in some of our regions – these are matters of principle.

Head of the Security Service of Ukraine Vasyl Maliuk reported on countering Russian agent networks and collaborators in the frontline and border regions, as well as in the south… pic.twitter.com/MxKyKjPYc9

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) October 14, 2025

“Far too many security issues in Odesa have remained unanswered for far too long,” the president also said, according to reports, without providing specific details.

A former member of parliament, Trukhanov has been the mayor of Odesa since 2014. He has consistently denied accusations of holding Russian citizenship, an allegation that has dogged him throughout his political career.

“I have never received a Russian passport. I am a Ukrainian citizen,” Trukhanov stressed in a video message posted on Telegram following the announcement of his citizenship revocation.

Trukhanov said he would “continue to perform the duties of elected mayor” as long as possible and that he would take the case to court.

Images of a Russian passport allegedly belonging to Trukhanov have been shared widely on social media in Ukraine.

SBU says: pic.twitter.com/fcRe8acOgo

— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) October 14, 2025

Once considered a politician with pro-Russian leanings, Trukhanov pivoted after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and has publicly condemned Moscow while focusing on defending Odesa and aiding the Ukrainian army.

A source familiar with the matter told the Reuters news agency that Zelenskyy had also removed the Ukrainian citizenships of two other people.

Local media outlet The Kyiv Independent identified the two as Ukrainian ballet dancer Sergei Polunin, a vocal supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and former Ukrainian politician and now alleged Russian collaborator Oleg Tsaryov.

Polunin, who sports a large tattoo of Putin on his chest, was born in southern Ukraine but obtained Russian citizenship in 2018. He supported Russia’s 2022 invasion and, earlier in 2014, backed Russia’s annexation of Crimea, where he lived and worked.

In July, Zelenskyy revoked the citizenship of Metropolitan Onufriy, the head of the formerly Moscow-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Here are the key events from day 1,329 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Wednesday, October 15, 2025:

Fighting

• Russian forces launched powerful glide bombs and drones against Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, in overnight attacks, hitting the city’s main hospital, wounding seven people, and forcing the evacuation of 50 patients, Governor Oleh Syniehubov said.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said that its forces have taken control of the village of Balahan in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine.
• A convoy of United Nations vehicles carrying aid supplies came under fire from Russian forces near the town of Bilozerka in the Kherson region, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said, describing the attack as “utterly unacceptable”. There were no injuries in the attack on four UN trucks, two of which were set on fire by remote-controlled drones.
• Local authorities have ordered the evacuation of families from dozens of villages near the all-but-destroyed northeastern Ukrainian city of Kupiansk, citing the “worsening security situation”.
• Oleh Syniehubov, governor of Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, said that a total of 409 families with 601 children were told to leave 27 localities. Another official in the affected area later told public broadcaster Suspilne that the list of localities to be evacuated by families had been expanded to 40.
• Russia will be able to deploy about 2 million military reservists to fight in Ukraine if needed under amendments to a law likely to be backed by the Russian parliament, according to reports.
• Power outages were reported in the Ukrainian capital and other regions late on Tuesday due to a network overload and the aftermath of Russian attacks, the Kyiv City State Administration said. Power was cut in three central Kyiv districts on the west bank of the Dnipro River running through the city. Ukrenergo, which operates Ukraine’s high-voltage lines, said that lingering problems from Russian attacks on the country’s energy system had triggered outages in regions across northern, central and southeastern Ukraine.
• Work is to begin this week to restore external power links to the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, which has been running on emergency diesel generators for three weeks. Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s permanent representative to international organisation based in Vienna, told the Russian state news agency RIA that it was “vital to agree on a local ceasefire in areas where the repair work is to be carried out”.

Military aid

• NATO defence ministers will meet on Wednesday to try to drum up more military support for Ukraine amid a sharp drop in deliveries of weapons and ammunition to the war-ravaged country in recent months.
• European military aid to Ukraine declined sharply this summer, despite a recent NATO initiative in which member countries bought US weapons and transferred them to Kyiv, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy said.
• The United Kingdom has delivered more than 85,000 military drones to Ukraine over the last six months, Secretary of State for Defence John Healey has said, according to the Press Association.
• German Federal Minister of Finance Lars Klingbeil said his country would continue to “financially secure Ukraine’s defence capabilities for the next few years”, while also working with the US to “massively increase pressure on [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to end his brutal war of aggression”.

Politics and diplomacy

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has stripped the mayor of the port city of Odesa, Gennadiy Trukhanov, of his Ukrainian citizenship after it was discovered he held Russian citizenship. Trukhanov could now face deportation. Trukhanov denied the claim, saying, “I am a citizen of Ukraine”, and said he would challenge the decision in Ukraine’s Supreme Court and, if necessary, the European Court of Human Rights.
• Zelenskyy said he would appoint a military administration to govern Odesa, citing unresolved security concerns. Ukraine prohibits dual citizenship with Russia, and Trukhanov has long faced allegations of holding both.
• A Kyiv government source told the AFP news agency that Ukrainian ballet dancer Sergei Polunin had also been stripped of citizenship. Polunin has been a vocal supporter of the Russian president. Pro-Kremlin politician Oleg Tsaryov, who survived an assassination attempt in 2023, was also among those who had their Ukrainian citizenship revoked, according to AFP.
• United States President Donald Trump said he was “very disappointed” with Russian leader Putin in advance of a planned visit by Zelenskyy to Washington, DC, later this week. “I don’t know why he continues with this war,” Trump said of Putin.
• Zelenskyy is set to meet Trump in Washington, DC, on Friday, where the two will discuss Ukraine’s air defence and long-range strike capabilities.
• Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said she was focusing on Russian attacks on her country’s energy grid in talks this week with US officials.
• Svyrydenko described the priorities of her visit to Washington, DC, as “energy, sanctions and the development of cooperation with the USA in new ways that can strengthen both our countries”.
• Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said it had opened a criminal case against exiled Russian businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky and other prominent Kremlin critics, accusing them of plotting to violently seize power. The FSB said it was investigating all 22 members of the Russian Antiwar Committee – a group of Russian politicians, businesspeople, journalists, lawyers, artists and academics all based outside the country, who oppose Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Regional security

• Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Radoslaw Sikorski warned that Europe must be prepared for Russia to strike deep into the region, calling it “irresponsible” not to build defences such as a “drone wall” on its eastern flank.
• German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul has accused China of undermining the international rules-based order through its increasingly aggressive policies in Asia and its support for Russia.
• Wadephul also criticised Russia, saying Moscow is testing NATO’s resolve, violating European Union and NATO airspace, spying on Germany’s critical infrastructure and seeking to influence public discourse with propaganda and disinformation.
• Trump threatened trade penalties, including tariffs, against Spain, saying he was unhappy with its refusal to raise defence spending to 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and calling the move disrespectful to NATO.
• Pro-Russian hackers brought down the German government’s public procurement portal, the Sddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) newspaper reported on Tuesday. The cyberattack rendered this important interface between the state and businesses inaccessible for almost a week, the report said.
• Sweden will set up its first emergency grain stocks in the north of the country, a region that risks being isolated in a conflict, the government said. In its 2026 budget, Stockholm plans to invest 575 million kronor ($60m) to set up the grain reserves. Sweden revived its “total defence” strategy in 2015 following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and more measures were introduced after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Trade

• Russia’s war in Ukraine is bad for US businesses, which have heavily invested in Europe and whose profits are affected by the uncertainty that Moscow’s aggression creates, European Economic Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said. Dombrovskis said that in 2023, US-owned assets in Europe were worth an estimated $19.2 trillion, or roughly 64 percent of all US corporate foreign assets globally.

Allied forces launch joint patrols near Russia after reports of drone incursions into allied airspace.

The United Kingdom has said two Royal Air Force (RAF) aircraft joined a 12-hour NATO patrol earlier this week near Russia’s border, following a series of Russian drone and aircraft incursions into alliance airspace.

“This was a substantial joint mission with our US and NATO allies,” Defence Minister John Healey said on Saturday, as concerns rise that Russia’s war in Ukraine will spill over into Europe.

“Not only does this provide valuable intelligence to boost the operational awareness of our Armed Forces, but sends a powerful message of NATO unity to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and our adversaries,” he added.

The mission involved an RC-135 Rivet Joint surveillance jet and a P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft flying from the Arctic region past Belarus and Ukraine, supported by a US Air Force KC-135 refuelling plane.

British officials said the operation followed several incursions into the airspace of NATO members, including Poland, Romania, and Estonia.

Growing airspace tensions

In recent weeks, Poland and its allies have reinforced air defences amid increasing Russian drone activity. Earlier this month, Warsaw deployed additional systems along its border with Ukraine – which stretches about 530km (330 miles) – after unidentified drones briefly entered Polish airspace.

Poland temporarily closed part of its airspace southeast of Warsaw in late September during a major Russian assault across Ukraine. It was the second such incident this year, with Polish and NATO forces previously intercepting Russian drones that crossed the border – marking their first direct military engagement with Moscow since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022.

Elsewhere, airports in Germany, Denmark, Norway and Poland have at times also temporarily suspended flights due to sightings of unidentified drones. Romania and Estonia have directly accused Russia, which has dismissed the claims as “baseless”.

Putin has pledged a “significant” response to what he called “Europe’s militarisation”, rejecting suggestions that Moscow plans to attack NATO as “nonsense”.

“They can’t believe what they’re saying, that Russia is going to attack NATO,” he said on Thursday at a foreign policy forum in Sochi. “They’re either incredibly incompetent if they truly believe it because it’s impossible to believe this nonsense, or they’re simply dishonest.”

Putin said he was closely monitoring Europe’s military build-up and warned that Russia would not hesitate to respond. “In Germany, for example, it is said that the German army should become the strongest in Europe. Very well. We hear that and are watching to see what is meant by it,” he said. “Russia will never show weakness or indecisiveness. We simply cannot ignore what is happening.”

Relations between Moscow and the European Union have continued to deteriorate since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, driving the bloc to strengthen its collective defences amid fears the war could spill across NATO borders.

Here are the key events from day 1,325 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Saturday, October 11, 2025:

Fighting

• More than 450 Russian drones and 30 missiles targeted Ukrainian energy infrastructure through the early hours of Friday morning in what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called a “cynical and calculated attack” that injured at least 20 people nationwide.
• Throughout Friday, repair crews raced to restore power to more than 725,000 families in Kyiv and other cities amid widespread outages.
• In a video message discussing the attacks, Zelenskyy said Russian President Vladimir Putin was “clearly taking advantage of the moment” as world leaders focus on implementing a ceasefire agreement in Gaza.
• Zelenskyy separately told reporters that Russia deliberately waited for bad weather before launching its assault, with inclement conditions reducing the efficiency of Ukraine’s air defences by 20 to 30 percent.
• Russian forces killed three foreign soldiers fighting on behalf of Ukraine near Otradnoye, a village in northeastern Ukraine, where Russian troops claimed to have taken control earlier this week, Russia’s state TASS news agency reported.
• Ukraine’s military said it struck Russia more than 70 times last month, decreasing oil refining in the country by more than 21 percent.

Peace process

• The “E3” leaders of Germany, France and the United Kingdom condemned Russia’s “escalatory” attacks against Ukraine’s national infrastructure, promising to increase pressure on Russia as Putin “continues his stalling tactics and abhorrent attacks in response to peace talks”.
• The leaders added they were “ready to progress towards using, in a coordinated way, the value of the immobilised Russian sovereign assets to support Ukraine’s armed forces” in order to pressure Russia to negotiate.
• During a three-day visit to Tajikistan, Russia’s Putin told reporters he remained “committed to the discussion that took place in Anchorage”, referring to his Alaska summit with United States President Donald Trump in August.
• Putin’s comments were a sharp reversal from those of Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov earlier this week, who said that “powerful momentum” for peace talks has been lost since August.
• US First Lady Melania Trump said she and Putin are discussing the repatriation of children caught up in the war, with some already returned to their families and more expected to be reunited soon.

Politics and diplomacy

• Zelenskyy said he had spoken with several leaders in light of Russia’s overnight strikes – British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Finnish President Alexander Stubb and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz  – and thanked all three for their support.
• Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president and current deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, visited North Korea for the 80th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea. Russia and North Korea signed a mutual defence treaty last year, and Pyongyang has sent thousands of troops and vast quantities of weapons to support Moscow’s war against Kyiv.
• Putin told reporters that Trump “does a lot for peace” and praised the Gaza ceasefire deal.
• Trump quickly reposted a clip of Putin’s comments about his peace efforts to Truth Social with a note of thanks to the Russian leader.

Regional security

• Ukraine and the Netherlands signed a memorandum of understanding for the co-production of drones. Amsterdam has provided almost $9bn in support to Ukraine throughout the war, according to Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry.
• European Union’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the EU must seek a “common European vision for defence”, and that Russia must be prevented from winning its war against Ukraine.
• Putin said that Russia is developing new weapons of deterrence, and noted that it’s “not a big deal” for Moscow if the US declines to extend the warhead limits set out in a nuclear arms treaty that expires next year.

Here are the key events from day 1,323 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Thursday, October 9, 2025:

Fighting

• Three people were killed and one injured by Ukrainian shelling in Russia’s Belgorod region, the local governor said.
• The Russian Ministry of Defence said its forces had taken control of the settlement of Novohryhorivka in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region.
• Russia’s air defence units destroyed 53 Ukrainian drones overnight, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported, citing Russian Defence Ministry data.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address that his country’s forces had killed thousands of Russian soldiers in the Dobropillia region of eastern Ukraine since August 21, when they launched a counteroffensive against Moscow’s occupying troops. Zelenskyy said this information was based on a report he had received from the Ukrainian army’s Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskii.
• Zelenskyy also said Ukraine’s attacks on Russia’s oil facilities had degraded them to an extent that the country was experiencing energy shortages. Russia, he claimed, had been forced to turn to its diesel reserves, which it had been saving for “a rainy day”.

Regional security

• European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said recent drone incidents and other airspace violations show Europe is facing hybrid warfare to which it must respond with measures that go beyond traditional defences, speaking at the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
• Von der Leyen said it was clear Russia’s aim was to “sow division” and “weaken support for Ukraine”, and that Europe could “either shy away and watch Russian threats escalate, or meet them with unity, deterrence and resolve”. Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, has denied that Moscow was behind the recent drone incursions into the airspaces of multiple European nations.

Military aid

• Russia will respond harshly if the United States supplies Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles, Andrei Kartapolov, head of the Russian parliament’s defence committee, said, emphasising that “those who supply them and those who use them will have problems”.

Diplomacy

• Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said the impetus to find a Ukrainian peace deal, which emerged after the summit between President Putin and US President Donald Trump in August, had proven to be exhausted.
• Ryabkov urged US leadership to take a “sober and responsible approach” to a possible transfer of Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, saying such transactions could lead to a “qualitative change” in the situation.

Here are the key events from day 1,322 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Wednesday, October 8, 2025:

Fighting

• Russian President Vladimir Putin said his forces have captured almost 5,000 square kilometres (1,930sq miles) of Ukrainian territory so far this year, and Moscow retains the strategic initiative on the battlefield.
• Russian troops have captured the Ukrainian villages of Novovasylivka in the southeastern Zaporizhia region and Fedorivka in the eastern Donetsk region, Russia’s defence ministry said.
• Russian air defence units destroyed 184 Ukrainian drones in recent attacks, the RIA Novosti state-owned news agency reports.
• Russia’s air defence units also intercepted and destroyed a drone flying towards Moscow city, said Sergei Sobyanin, mayor of the Russian capital.

• Ukraine’s Energy Minister Svitlana Hrynchuk said Russian air strikes have caused “significant” damage to Ukrainian gas production capacity due to the targeting of regional gas infrastructure and power transmission facilities in front-line regions.
• Hrynchuk said Ukraine wants to increase imports of natural gas by 30 percent after Russian attacks on its gas infrastructure, telling reporters she had discussed additional gas imports with Group of Seven (G7) member states.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of using oil tankers for intelligence gathering and sabotage operations, and he added that Ukraine was cooperating with its allies on the matter.
• Russia’s state nuclear energy company has claimed that a Ukrainian drone attempted to strike a nuclear plant in Russia’s Voronezh region bordering Ukraine, but the unmanned aerial vehicle crashed into a cooling tower and caused no damage at the site.

Military aid

• Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia was waiting for clarity from the United States about the possible supply of Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, saying such weapons could theoretically carry nuclear warheads and reiterated that Moscow would see the provision of such weapons as a serious escalation.
• The Kremlin also said it assumed for now that US President Donald Trump still sought a peace settlement in Ukraine.

Peace talks

• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke by phone with President Putin and said diplomatic initiatives need to gain momentum to achieve a just and lasting peace in the Russia-Ukraine war, Erdogan’s office said.
• The statement cited Erdogan as saying Turkiye will continue to work for peace and said bilateral relations and regional and global issues were also discussed with Putin.
• Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said she believed Trump had come to the conclusion that Russia was not interested in a peace deal with Ukraine, and that the only way forward was to apply pressure, continue to support Ukraine, and impose sanctions on Russia.

Politics and diplomacy

• Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said it is not in Poland’s interest to hand over a Ukrainian man wanted by Germany for suspected involvement in explosions which damaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines three years ago.
• Tusk said the problem with Nord Stream 2 was not that it was blown up but that it was built. He added that Russia built the pipelines “against the vital interests not only of our countries, but of all of Europe”.
• A Polish court ruled on Monday that the Ukrainian diver wanted by Germany over his alleged involvement in the explosions, which damaged the Nord Stream gas pipeline, must remain in custody for another 40 days, his lawyer said.
• European Union governments have agreed to impose limits on the travel of Russian diplomats within the bloc, the Financial Times reported.

Economy

• Ukraine’s foreign currency reserves totalled $46.5bn as of October 1, the National Bank of Ukraine reported on its website.

The US has launched four attacks on the Caribbean region in recent weeks as part of what it says is a war on drugs.

Russia has condemned a US strike on a boat allegedly carrying illegal drugs off the coast of Venezuela that killed four people on Friday and warned of potential escalation in the entire Caribbean region.

In a phone call to his Venezuelan counterpart, Yvan Gil, on Sunday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov condemned the attack, which took place in international waters.

“The ministers expressed serious concern about Washington’s escalating actions in the Caribbean Sea that are fraught with far-reaching consequences for the region,” said a statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry following the conversation.

“The Russian side has confirmed its full support and solidarity with the leadership and people of Venezuela in the current context.”

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told Fox News in an interview on Sunday that he had “every authorisation needed” to conduct military strikes on vessels off the coast of Venezuela. He did not provide more details about what the authorisation granted his office permission to do.

In a post on X following Friday’s strike, Hegseth claimed the vessel was transporting “substantial amounts of narcotics — headed to America to poison our people”.

“These strikes will continue until the attacks on the American people are over!!!!,” he said.

In a nearly 40-second video of the strike shared by Hegseth, a vessel can be seen moving through the water before a web of projectiles falls on the boat and the surrounding water, causing the boat to explode on impact.

He claimed that the intelligence “without a doubt” confirmed that the vessel was carrying drugs and that the people on board were “narco-terrorists”. He disclosed neither the amount nor the type of alleged drugs aboard, and he did not release any evidence to support his assertion that the targets of the strike were drug smugglers.

US war against drug cartels

The latest strike brings the number of such United States attacks to at least four, leaving at least 21 people dead.

US President Donald Trump notified Congress on Thursday that his administration had determined that members of drug cartels are “unlawful combatants” with whom the US is engaged in “non-international armed conflict”.

Trump on Sunday told reporters at the White House that the US military build-up in the Caribbean had halted drug trafficking from South America. “There’s no drugs coming into the water. And we’ll look at what phase two is,” he said, without providing more details on his plans.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has repeatedly alleged that the US is hoping to drive him out of power. Venezuelan Defence Minister General Vladimir Padrino said on Thursday — when the country blasted an “illegal incursion” near its borders by US warplanes — that US attacks were “a vulgarity, a provocation, a threat to the security of the nation”.

Washington has cited the US Constitution, war powers, designation of drug cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations”, the right to self-defence and international law on unlawful combatants as the legal basis for the strikes.

Some legal experts and lawmakers argue that using military force in international waters against alleged criminals bypasses due process, violates law enforcement norms, lacks a clear legal foundation under US and international law, and is not justified by the cartels’ “terrorist” designation.

AT LEAST 30 people have been injured in a Russian drone strike on a Ukrainian passenger train, which left the carriage burning and ripped apart.

Emergency services were rushed to Shotska, in Ukraine’s Sumy region, after the “savage” attack.

1

In a post on X, he said: “A savage Russian drone strike on the railway station in Shostka, Sumy region.

“All emergency services are already on the scene and have begun helping people.

“All information about the injured is being established. So far, we know of at least 30 victims.

“Preliminary reports indicate that both Ukrzaliznytsia staff and passengers were at the site of the strike.

“The Russians could not have been unaware that they were striking civilians. And this is terror the world must not ignore.

“Every day Russia takes people’s lives. And only strength can make them stop.

“We’ve heard resolute statements from Europe and America – and it’s high time to turn them all into reality, together with everyone who refuses to accept murder and terror as normal.

“Lip service is not enough now. Strong action is needed.”