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Moscow’s deputy foreign minister Ryabkov also warned the US against sending Tomahawk missiles to Kyiv
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The momentum to find a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine has been exhausted since the Donald Trump–Vladimir Putin summit in Alaska, Moscow’s deputy foreign minister has said.
Growing relations between Washington and Moscow culminated in the August meeting, the second between the two presidents, which some hoped would see progress towards a peace deal in Ukraine.
“Unfortunately, we have to admit that Anchorage’s powerful momentum in favour of agreements has been largely exhausted by the efforts of opponents and supporters of the war,” Sergei Ryabkov said according to Interfax.
“This is the result of destructive activities, primarily by the Europeans,” he said.
The deputy foreign minister also warned Washington against sending Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, echoing repeated warnings from the past week.
The potential appearance of US Tomahawk missiles in Ukraine would mean a ‘qualitative’ change in the situation, he was quoted as Interfax by saying, calling on Washington to take what he described as a sober and responsible approach.
Trump had said he wants to know what Ukraine plans to do with Tomahawks before agreeing to provide them, because he did not want to escalate the war.
Recent drone incidents and other airspace violations show Europe is facing hybrid warfare to which it must respond with measures that go beyond traditional defence, EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday.
“This is not random harassment,” Ms von der Leyen said in a speech in European Parliament in Strasbourg.
“It is a coherent and escalating campaign to unsettle our citizens, test our resolve, divide our Union, and weaken our support for Ukraine. And it is time to call it by its name. This is hybrid warfare.”
Ms Von der Leyen did not say Russia was responsible for all the incidents but said it was clear Russia’s aim is to “sow division” in Europe.
European officials have already attributed some of the recent incidents to Moscow.
“Tackling Russia’s hybrid war is not only about traditional defence,” Ms von der Leyen said. “This requires a new mind-set for all of us. We can either shy away and watch Russian threats escalate, or we meet them with unity, deterrence and resolve.”
Russia has launched an attack on a thermal power plant injuring two power engineers, according to Ukraine’s largest private energy company, DTEK.
“The power plant equipment was seriously damaged. We are working to eliminate the consequences,” the company said in a post on Telegram.
The two power workers are being provided with “all necessary assistance”, it said.
DTEK says that since the Russian invasion began in 2022, its power plants have suffered more than 200 attacks by Russian forces.
Three people were killed and one injured by Ukrainian shelling in Russia’s Belgorod region, the local governor said on Wednesday.
Ukrainian rocket fire struck the Maslova Pristan area of the Shebekinski District, with the building of a social facility partially destroyed, Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
“Emergency Ministry personnel and self-defense forces are already at the scene, clearing the rubble. There may be people under the rubble,” he added in a post on Telegram.
Russia’s air defence units destroyed 53 Ukrainian drones overnight, its defence ministry said this morning.
Nearly half of these were downed in the regions on the border between Russia and Ukraine, the defence ministry said.
The drones did not appear to target Moscow, according to the preliminary reports from the Russian defence ministry.
Volodymyr Zelensky has said Ukraine’s partners should respond to Russia’s use of its shadow fleet to destabilise Europe.
“The Head of Foreign Intelligence reported in detail on how the Russians are utilising tankers of their “shadow fleet” – not only to finance the war, but also for sabotage and various destabilisation attempts in Europe.
Recent launches of drones from tankers are one such example,” he said.
Zelensky added: “We share the information we have with our partners, and it is crucial that they take tangible steps in response to Russia. We are working toward this at all levels, and there will be further meetings and negotiations with partners, both public and behind closed doors.”
Ukraine is convincing its allies to “not to hold back on determination”, he said.
“The Russians must know that none of their destructive actions – all the vile things they do – will go unanswered by the world,” he said.
Donald Trump has expressed his surprise at how difficult it has been to bring an end to the war in Ukraine.
Speaking during a meeting with Canadian prime minister Mark Carney, the US president called the situation “crazy”, according to European Pravda.
He added: “I thought that would have been one of the easy ones. I get along very well with [Russian president Vladimir] Putin and I thought that would have been… I’m very disappointed in him because I thought this would have been an easy one to settle, but it turned out to be maybe tougher than the Middle East.”
Russian officials in Crimea are checking the phones of school students for content and settings that might give away a pro-Ukrainian stance, officials said.
Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Disinformation said the occupying authorities are doing this to build ideological pressure on students.
“Activists of Ukrainian movements in the temporarily occupied territories report that in schools in Crimea, representatives of the occupation administration together with Russian military personnel are checking children’s mobile phones – searching for banned apps, VPN services, and even the Ukrainian language in the settings,” the centre said on their Telegram channel.
The act of checking schoolchildren’s phones is not “concern for security” but a systematic attempt to intimidate children and impose loyalty to the Russian regime, the centre said.
It added: “Such ‘raids’ are another tool of total control and ideological pressure. The occupiers seek to eradicate any manifestations of Ukrainian identity.
Russia’s central bank has ruled the state violated the rights of minority shareholders in some asset seizures it made in relation to its conflict in Ukraine, sources told Reuters news agency, in a first pushback by the Russian elite on the nationalisation process.
Amid the confrontation with the West over the Ukraine conflict, tens of billions of dollars worth of assets owned by foreign investors and Russian billionaires have changed hands, mostly after being seized by the state.
But within parts of the Russian elite, there are signs of a backlash, especially among market-friendly technocrats who are credited with saving the Russian economy from collapse amid the toughest sanctions ever imposed on a major economy.
Some business executives and central bank and finance ministry officials are questioning what they see as a move to a Soviet-style command structure, with all resources mobilised towards achieving military victory in Ukraine, the sources said.
Three sources close to the central bank and the Moscow Stock Exchange told Reuters that MOEX had officially complained to the central bank over the alleged violation of the law by the government after seizing a majority stake in gold miner UGC.
Andrei Kartapolov, head of the Russian parliament’s defence committee, has joined in Moscow’s warnings against the US sending Tomahawks to Ukraine.
If and when that happened, he said, Russia would use drones and missiles to destroy any launchers.
Kartapolov, a former deputy defence minister, said he did not think Tomahawks would change anything on the battlefield even if they were supplied to Ukraine as he said they could only be given in small numbers – in tens rather than hundreds.
“We know these missiles very well, how they fly, how to shoot them down; we worked with them in Syria, so there is nothing new. The only problems will be for those who supply them and those who use them; that’s where the problems will be,” he told the RIA state news agency.
Kartapolov also said Moscow had so far seen no signs that Ukraine was preparing launch sites for Tomahawks, something he said Kyiv would not be able to hide if it got such missiles.
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