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Trump said that Russia’s recent test of a nuclear cruise missile was ‘inappropriate’ and urged him to ‘get the war ended’
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Donald Trump warned Vladimir Putin that the US “has a nuclear submarine off your shore” as he condemned a Russian nuclear-capable cruise missile test as “inappropriate”.
Putin said Russia had successfully tested its Burevestnik cruise missile, a weapon Moscow says can pierce any defence shield, in a move that has infuriated Washington. Moscow said the Burevestnik had flown for 14,000km.
Responding to Putin’s announcement, Trump fired back that the US did not need to fly so far as it already had a nuclear submarine off the coast of Russia.
“They know we have a nuclear submarine, the greatest in the world, right off their shores, so I mean, it doesn’t have to go 8,000 miles,” Trump told reporters, according to an audio file posted by the White House.
“I don’t think it’s an appropriate thing for Putin to be saying, either, by the way: You ought to get the war ended, the war that should have taken one week is now in … its fourth year, that’s what you ought to do instead of testing missiles.”
A Russian drone attack overnight has damaged gas facilities in Ukraine’s Poltava region, the head of state energy company Naftogaz has said.
Russia has been hitting the Ukrainian power sector during consecutive winters of the war, but this year Moscow has focused its attacks on gas facilities.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Ukraine is ready for peace talks anywhere besides Russia and Belarus if those talks help to end the war – but that his forces will “take no steps back” on the battlefield to cede territory.
In comments to reporters released on Tuesday, the Ukrainian President also urged US lawmakers to pass tougher sanctions on Russia.
He added that Kyiv would need stable financing from its European allies for another two or three years.
Kazakhstan’s authorities are weighing how to deal with Lukoil’s stakes in projects after the US hit Russian oil companies with harsh sanctions last week.
Samruk Kazyna, chair of the country’s sovereign wealth fund, said on Tuesday that Kazakhstan was determining how to respond after Lukoil said it would sell its international assets.
“The sanctions are being studied and their impact on companies and the economy remains to be fully assessed,” the fund’s chairman, Aidar Ryskulov, told reporters in Astana.
“I think we will take (a decision) in the near future, by the end of this week,” he added.
Russia has been chasing civilians who live near the front line in Ukraine with drones, hounding them out of their homes and hunting them down, forcing thousands to flee whole areas in what amounts to a crime against humanity, a U.N. inquiry found.
The report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine described civilians who were chased over long distances by drones with mounted cameras, and sometimes then attacked with fire bombs or explosives while seeking shelter.
“These attacks were committed as part of a coordinated policy to drive out civilians from those territories and amount to the crime against humanity of forcible transfer of population,” said the 17-page report to be presented to the United Nations General Assembly this week.
Its findings were based on interviews with 226 people including victims, witnesses, aid workers and local authorities as well as hundreds of verified online videos.
Ukraine targeted Moscow as part of a wider drone attack for the second night in a row, the Russian defence ministry and Moscow’s mayor said this morning.
The Russian defence ministry said its air defence units destroyed 17 Ukrainian drones overnight, including one flying towards Moscow and 13 over the Kaluga region which borders the Moscow region to its northeast.
Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Telegram that emergency services were dispatched to the site where the drone heading towards Moscow fell.
There were no reports of damage, but Russia rarely discloses the full-scale impact of Ukrainian strikes inside its territory unless civilians or civilian objects are involved.
Russia’s air defence units destroyed the remaining three drones over the Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine to its west and Kaluga region to its northeast.
Alexander Bogomaz, governor of the Bryansk region, said on Telegram that one civilian was hospitalised as a result of the attack.
Yesterday, Russia said it had downed 34 Ukrainian drones that were targeting Moscow.
Volodymyr Zelensky says Ukraine will work on a plan for a ceasefire with Russia “in the coming 10 days” – as Donald Trump rebuked Vladimir Putin over the test-firing of a nuclear-powered missile.
The Ukrainian president urged Trump to go further in his support for Kyiv after Washington imposed tough sanctions on major Russian oil companies last week.
Zelensky said he welcomed the decision to hit Rosneft and Lukoil with sanctions, but said Putin would not be moved to the negotiating table without even more “pressure”.
“President Trump is concerned about escalation,” Zelensky told Axios. “But I think that if there are no negotiations, there will be an escalation anyway. I think that if Putin doesn’t stop, we need something to stop him. Sanctions is one such weapon, but we also need long-range missiles.”
Volodymyr Zelensky has argued that Vladimir Putin is not approaching peace talks in Ukraine in good faith, as he criticised Moscow’s refusal to budge on its maximalist demands for a ceasefire deal.
Speaking to Axios, he suggested that Putin had not taken Trump’s peacemaking efforts seriously – something the US president appeared to recognise on 19 October when he said he might be being “played” by Putin.
“They did the same after Alaska,” Zelensky told Axios, referencing the August summit between Trump and Putin.
“This is the third or fourth time when Putin and his people reject what Trump says.”
Since the disastrous summit between Zelensky and Trump in February, the Ukrainian president has been careful to align with Trump’s messaging, while highlighting where Russia has gone back on its word.
For a quarter of a century, Russian president Vladimir Putin has grappled with his country’s declining and ageing population. The demographic crisis pre-dates his ascent to power, with the nation recording its lowest birth rate in 1999, the year before he officially became president.
In 2005, Putin acknowledged the issue, stating that it was necessary to maintain “social and economic stability” in order to address the challenge of a falling population. He reiterated his concerns in 2019, admitting that Russia was still “haunted” by the problem.
Most recently, on Thursday (23 October), he addressed a demographic conference at the Kremlin, where he emphasised that increasing the birth rate was “crucial” for Russia’s future.
To combat this trend, Putin has introduced various initiatives, ranging from providing free school meals for large families to reinstating Soviet-era “hero mother” medals for women who bear 10 or more children.
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