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The sanctions against Rosneft and Lukoil, as well as dozens of subsidiaries, followed months of bipartisan pressure on President Donald Trump to hit Russia with harder sanctions
The exercise tested the skills of military command structures, the Kremlin said in a statement
Updated On: Oct 22 2025 | 10:46 PM ISTUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy supports Trump's idea to freeze current war lines, but doubts Russian President Vladimir Putin will agree
Updated On: Oct 22 2025 | 4:57 PM ISTUkraine's energy minister said a massive combined overnight attack on Ukraine's energy infrastructure was still underway early Wednesday
Updated On: Oct 22 2025 | 2:06 PM ISTUS President Donald Trump said Thursday he has asked Russian President Vladimir Putin not to target the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv for one week as the region experiences frigid temperatures. The call for a pause in attacks on Ukraine's capital comes as Russia has been pounding the country's critical infrastructure, leaving many around the country without heat in the dead of winter. "I personally asked President Putin not to fire on Kyiv and the cities and towns for a week during this ... extraordinary cold," Trump said during a Cabinet meeting at the White House. Trump added that Putin has "agreed to that," but there was no confirmation of that from Russia. Meanwhile, a Russian drone attack killed three people in Ukraine's southern Zaporizhzhia region overnight, authorities said Thursday, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that Moscow is planning another large-scale barrage despite plans for further US-brokered peace talks at the weekend. The Zaporizhzhia strike caus
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that a US security guarantees document for Ukraine is "100% ready" after two days of talks involving representatives from Ukraine, the US and Russia. Speaking to journalists in Vilnius during a visit to Lithuania, Zelenskyy said Ukraine is waiting for its partners to set a signing date, after which the document would go to the U.S. Congress and Ukrainian parliament for ratification. Zelenskyy also emphasized Ukraine's push for European Union membership by 2027, calling it an "economic security guarantee." The Ukrainian leader described the talks in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, as likely the first trilateral format in "quite a long while" that included not only diplomats but military representatives from all three sides. The talks, which began on Friday and continued Saturday, were the latest aiming to end Russia's nearly four-year full-scale invasion. Zelenskyy acknowledged fundamental differences between Ukrainian an
Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the settlement in Ukraine with US President Donald Trump's envoys during marathon overnight talks, and the Kremlin insisted that the territorial issue needs to be resolved to reach a peace deal. The Kremlin meeting, which lasted past 3 a.m. Friday, came hours after Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sharply criticized his European allies Thursday for what he cast as their slow and fragmented response to Russia's nearly four-year full-scale invasion that he said has left Ukraine at the mercy of Putin amid an ongoing U.S. push for a peace settlement. Kremlin foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov, who participated in Putin's meeting with Trump's envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, said "it was reaffirmed that reaching a long-term settlement can't be expected without solving the territorial issue," a reference to Moscow's demand that Kyiv withdraws its troops from the areas in the east that Russia illegally annexed but never fully ...
Wide-scale desertions and 2 million draft-dodgers are among a raft of challenges facing Ukraine's military as Russia presses on with its invasion of its neighbour after almost four years of fighting, the new defence minister said Wednesday. Mykhailo Fedorov told Ukraine's parliament that other problems facing Ukraine's armed forces include excessive bureaucracy, a Soviet-style approach to management, and disruptions in the supply of equipment to troops along the about 1,000-kilometre front line. We cannot fight a war with new technologies but an old organisational structure, Fedorov said. He said the military had faced some 200,000 troop desertions and draft-dodging by around 2 million people. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appointed 34-year-old Fedorov at the start of the year. The former head of Ukraine's digital transformation policies is credited with spearheading the the army's drone technology and introducing several successful e-government platforms. His appointment was part
The United States has accused Russia of a dangerous and inexplicable escalation of its nearly four-year war in Ukraine at a time when the Trump administration is trying to advance negotiations toward peace. US deputy ambassador to the United Nations Tammy Bruce on Monday singled out Russia's launch of a nuclear-capable Oreshnik ballistic missile last week close to Ukraine's border with Poland, a NATO ally. She told an emergency meeting of the Security Council that the United States deplores the staggering number of casualties in the conflict and condemns Russia's intensifying attacks on energy and other infrastructure. Ukraine called for the meeting after last Thursday's overnight Russian bombardment with hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles, including the powerful, new hypersonic Oreshnik missile, which Moscow used for only the second time in what was a clear warning to Kyiv's NATO allies. The large-scale attack came days after Ukraine and its allies reported major progress .
A Ukrainian drone strike sparked a fire at an oil depot in Russia's southern Volgograd region, regional authorities said on Saturday. There were no immediate reports of casualties, the regional governor was quoted as saying in a Telegram post published on the channel of the local administration. The post did not specify the damage, but said that people living near the depot may have to be evacuated. Ukraine's long-range drone strikes on Russian energy sites aim to deprive Moscow of the oil export revenue it needs to pursue its full-scale invasion. Russia wants to cripple the Ukrainian power grid, seeking to deny civilians access to heat, light and running water in what Kyiv officials say is an attempt to weaponise winter. Saturday's attack came the day after Russia bombarded Ukraine with hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles overnight into Friday, according to Ukrainian officials, killing at least four people in the capital. For only the second time in the nearly 4-year-old wa
Russia attacked Ukraine with drones and missiles, killing three and injuring at least 16 in the capital overnight into Friday, Ukrainian authorities said. Russia also struck critical infrastructure in the western city of Lviv using an unidentified ballistic missile, said Mayor Andriy Sadoviy. The Western Command of Ukraine's Air Force later said the missile travelled at a speed of 13,000 kilometres per hour, and that the specific type of rocket was being investigated. Several districts in Kyiv were hit in the attack, said Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko. In the Desnyanskyi district, a drone crashed onto the roof of a multi-storey building. At another address in the same district, the first two floors of a residential building were damaged as a result of the attack. In Dnipro district, parts of a drone damaged a multi-storey building and a fire broke out. Running water and electricity were disrupted in parts of the capital as a result of the attack, Kyiv's May
Russia has strongly condemned the US seizure of an oil tanker, heralding a new chill in relations between Moscow and Washington that could spread to other areas and affect President Donald Trump's efforts to persuade Russia to end its nearly four-year war in Ukraine. The seizure Wednesday of the Russian-flagged tanker in the North Atlantic "can only lead to a further escalation of military and political tensions in the Euro-Atlantic region, as well as a visible lowering of the threshold for the use of force' against peaceful shipping, the Russian Foreign Ministry said. Russian President Vladimir Putin hasn't yet commented on the seizure of the tanker and has remained silent about the US capture of Venezuelan leader Nicols Maduro, which his diplomats have denounced as a blatant act of aggression. But while the Russian president has avoided any criticism of Trump, the seizure of the tanker by the US military represents a new challenge for the Kremlin. Hawkish commentators in Moscow .