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Ukraine has visibly widened its campaign against Russian energy facilities in recent weeks
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Ukraine claimed to have struck a Russian warship and drilling facilities in the Caspian Sea during Kyiv’s latest maritime blitz against Putin’s ailing war machine.
The nighttime drone attack hit the Okhotnik-class patrol ship and an offshore drilling platform in the Filanovsky oil and gas field, owned by sanctioned energy giant Lukoil, according to Ukraine’s SOFCOM.
Damage was still being assessed on Saturday, Ukraine’s general staff said. Drones separately struck a radar system in annexed Crimea.
The reports emerged after Ukraine claimed its first attack on a Russian ‘shadow fleet’ oil tanker in the Mediterranean on Friday.
The Qendil tanker sustained critical damage from the strikes in neutral waters off the coast of Libya, more than 2,000km from Ukraine, an official from Ukraine’s SBU security service said.
Russia’s “shadow fleet” of unregulated ships has been a thorn in the side of Kyiv, allowing Russia to export large quantities of oil and fund its invasion despite Western sanctions.
The strikes come as Europe announced a €90bn (£79bn) loan for Ukraine over two years – a boon for Kyiv’s economy, but less than hoped as leaders failed to agree on the use of frozen Russian assets.
Editorial: Vladimir Putin must be brought to the point where he no longer has an interest in prolonging the war.
US negotiators met Russian officials in Florida for the latest talks aimed at ending Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The Miami meeting followed US talks on Friday with Ukrainian and European officials, the latest discussions of a peace plan that has sparked some hope of a resolution to the conflict that began.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy Kirill Dmitriev told Reuters reporters after meeting US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner that the talks were constructive and would continue on Sunday.
A White House official said the talks had concluded for the day.
“The discussions are proceeding constructively. They began earlier and will continue today, and will also continue tomorrow,” Dmitriev said.
Marco Rubio, Trump’s top diplomat and national security advisor, had said he might also join the talks.
Aiden Aslin, a British volunteer who joined Ukraine’s marines, was captured and tortured by Putin’s forces in 2022 and is now back fighting the Kremlin.
He tells his story to the ‘World of Trouble’ podcast with world affairs editor Sam Kiley in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine claimed to have struck a Russian warship and drilling facilities in the Caspian Sea during Kyiv’s latest maritime blitz against Putin’s ailing war machine.
The nighttime drone attack hit the Okhotnik-class patrol ship and an offshore drilling platform in the Filanovsky oil and gas field, owned by sanctioned energy giant Lukoil, according to Ukraine’s SOFCOM.
Damage was still being assessed on Saturday, Ukraine’s general staff said. Drones separately struck a radar system in annexed Crimea.
EU taxpayers will pay €3 billion per year in interest on the new loan for Ukraine after leaders failed to agree on how to use frozen Russian assets, senior Commission officials told Politico.
Leaders came together this week with the aim of securing a loan against some of Russia’s €210bn in frozen assets held within the EU.
They emerged without consensus and instead agreed to raise €90bn (£79bn) for the next two years in common debt, backed by the EU budget.
Read more:
Two Indian men who had travelled to Russia on student visas were killed after being forcibly recruited to fight in the Ukraine war, their families alleged.
The bodies of Ajay Godara, 22, from Bikaner in Rajasthan state, and Rakesh Kumar Maurya, 30, from Uttarakhand, have since been returned and handed over to their relatives.
They had gone to Russia separately on student visas but later claimed in videos sent to their families that they had been recruited into the military and deployed to the frontline in Ukraine.
Read the full story:
Zelensky had previously ruled out holding elections while the war is ongoing – a measure backed even by many opponents in Ukraine.
Earlier this month, and again under pressure from Trump, he said that he would be open to holding elections within 60-90 days if security guarantees are in place.
On Saturday, he told Putin to keep out of Ukraine’s affairs after the Russian president backed Trump’s call.
Zelensky also reiterated that elections can only be held when security is guaranteed.
Any election in Ukraine can not be held in Russia-occupied parts of the country, either, he said.
He added that Ukraine’s foreign minister had started the initial work on the infrastructure needed to make voting possible for Ukrainians living abroad.
Ukraine would support a US proposal for three-sided talks with the United States and Russia if they yield clear results, Zelensky said on Saturday.
“America is now proposing a trilateral meeting with national security advisers — America Ukraine, Russia,” the president told local journalists in Kyiv.
“If such a meeting could be held now to allow for swaps of prisoners of war or an agreement on a three-sided meeting of leaders, we would support such proposals. Let’s see how things go.”
The United States has offered a potential new format for peace talks between Ukraine and Russia with American and possibly European envoys participating, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday.
Kyiv will decide on the format once it is clear whether bilateral discussions with US negotiators that resumed on Friday are positive, Zelensky said today.
Speaking to reporters in Kyiv, he did not go into specifics as to what kind of format President Donald Trump’s administration had proposed.
“The U.S. said they would have a separate meeting with representatives of Russia. And they proposed the following format, as far as I understand: Ukraine, America, Russia, and, since there are representatives of Europe there, probably Europe as well,” Zelenskiy said.
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