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Trump signals ‘second stage’ of sanctions as Russia hits Kyiv government building, killing four, including a three-month-old baby
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Russia has said no amount of sanctions will be enough to force it to back down in its war against Ukraine amid threats of new measures from US President Donald Trump.
“No sanctions will be able to force the Russian Federation to change the consistent position that our president has repeatedly spoken about,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Petrov told reporters on Monday.
It comes after Trump has said he is ready to push ahead with a new round of sanctions after Russia targeted the main government building in Kyiv for the first time since the Ukraine war began in 2022.
The aerial attack was the largest of the war so far, involving a total of at least 805 drones and 13 missiles fired at cities across Ukraine, killing four people, including a three-month-old baby.
He said European leaders are set to visit the United States this week to discuss ways to end the war in Ukraine, adding he would speak with Russian president Vladimir Putin “soon”.
Trump did not specify what he envisions as the “second stage” of sanctions against Russia, the New York Post reported.
It is the second time Putin has launched a mass Russian drone and missile attack targeting the capital in a span of two weeks, despite claiming to want a peaceful end to the war.
The United Nations human rights’ chief warned on Monday that “disturbing trends”, including the glorification of violence, are undermining human rights and the international order worldwide.
“Rules of war are being shredded – with virtually no accountability,” said Volker Turk, who heads the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), in his opening address to the 60th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
He condemned widespread violations in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine as well as the conflicts in Sudan, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Gaza.
Foreign diplomats have visited Ukraine’s damaged government building that was hit by Russian strikes over the weekend.
On Monday, Ukraine’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said diplomats were given a briefing on the “destruction and deaths” caused by the Russian attack.
“We emphasized to our foreign colleagues that with such barbaric attacks, Russia is rejecting peace efforts and diplomacy,” he wrote in a post on X. “Therefore, to achieve peace, it is necessary to increase sanctions on Moscow and strengthen Ukraine.
“I am grateful to all the foreign diplomats who condemned Russian terror and affirmed their governments’ readiness to take concrete steps to support our country and pressure Moscow.”
Ukraine’s foreign minister will visit Hungary this week, Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told a briefing on Monday.
It comes amid tensions between Kyiv and Budapest driven by conflicts over minority rights in Ukraine.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is a vehement critic of Ukraine and its fight to ward off Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Hungary, which gets most of its energy from Russia, has refused to send weapons to Ukraine, and Orban is also strongly opposed to Ukraine joining the EU.
The German government said on Monday that Russia’s latest attacks on Ukraine mark an escalation that shows Putin’s unwillingness to negotiate.
“This ongoing escalation of the war shows that Putin does not want to negotiate – he wants to continue to create facts,” the spokesperson said.
“And this can only be stopped by enabling Ukraine to maintain its defence and not allowing Putin to succeed.”
Ukraine’s energy ministry said the country is experiencing localised blackouts and gas outages on Monday.
“The goal is obvious: to cause even more hardship to the peaceful population of Ukraine, to leave Ukrainian homes, hospitals, kindergartens and schools without light and heat,” the ministry wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
It comes after Russian forces claimed to have hit Ukrainian energy infrastructure, according to Interfax.
The Russian news agency reported the claims on Monday after Ukraine’s energy ministry said Russia attacked a thermal power generation facility in the Kyiv region.
Polish border guards found drone debris in a village near the border with Belarus, a prosecutor said on Monday.
It is the latest in a series of similar incidents in the NATO member country that borders Ukraine.
Poland has been on high alert for objects entering its airspace since two people died after a stray Ukrainian missile struck a southern Polish village in 2022.
“This drone crashed at the border crossing, approximately 300 meters from the border crossing, in the village of Polatycze. The drone is unarmed, and there are Cyrillic inscriptions on it,” said Agnieszka Kepka from the prosecutor’s office in the eastern city of Lublin.
Military police are questioning witnesses and were checking surveillance data to determine the trajectory of the drone, she said in a televised press conference.
No one was injured in the incident, police said.
On Saturday, an object likely to be a smuggling drone rather than a weapon fell in eastern Poland, a defence ministry spokesperson said.
In August, a drone crashed into a cornfield in eastern Poland, scorching crops and shattering windows in nearby homes. A prosecutor investigating the incident said at the time it appeared to have entered Poland from the direction of Belarus, an ally of Russia.
Military drones have also crashed in Romania and the Baltic states.
Ukraine’s Prime Minister has said Russia’s aerial attack on Kyiv has marked a “new stage” in the war.
Posting on X, she said on Monday she had met with sixty heads of diplomatic missions to brief them on the attack.
“For Ukraine, yesterday’s attack marks a new stage of this war,” Yulia Svyrydenk wrote. “Russia has doubled the number of drones aimed at civilians, is deliberately striking energy infrastructure on the eve of winter, systematically hunting down our enterprises, and now targeting state institutions themselves.
“This is not the conduct of a country seeking peace. It is a direct mockery of every diplomatic effort made by the civilized world.”
“No sanctions” will be enough to make Russia change its position, a Kremlin spokesperson has said.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Dmitry Peskov said: “No sanctions will be able to force the Russian Federation to change the consistent position that our president has repeatedly spoken about.”
He added Europe and Ukraine are doing everything they can to draw the United States into their orbit.
He said the Kremlin’s preference was to resolve the conflict through diplomatic means but if that was impossible then what Putin calls the “special military operation” would continue.
It comes just hours after both the United States and European Union indicated they were considering additional sanctions.
The European Union’s preparation of new sanctions against Russia is being closely coordinated with the United States, EU Council President Antonio Costa said on Monday.
US President Donald Trump said on Sunday he is ready to move to a second phase of sanctioning Russia, and that individual European leaders would visit the US on Monday or Tuesday to discuss how to resolve the Russian-Ukraine war.
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