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Russia warned it will retaliate to hurt Washington if Tomahawks are sent to Ukraine
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Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv will nominate Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize if he sends Tomahawk missiles to his country and helps negotiate a ceasefire with Russia.
“During our most recent meeting, I didn’t hear a ‘no’. What I did hear was that work will continue at the technical level and that this possibility will be considered,” Zelensky told reporters on Thursday about a meeting he held with the US president during the US General Assembly in New York last month.
Zelensky added that if Trump can offer the world, and “above all, the Ukrainian people”, a chance for a ceasefire, then he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize nomination.
“We will nominate him on behalf of Ukraine.” he said.
His comments followed a warning by Russia that it will create “problems” for Europe if Trump allows Tomahawk missiles to be sent to Ukraine.
“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,” said Andrei Kartapolov, head of the Russian parliament’s defence committee.
This week the US president said he had “sort of” decided whether to allow Ukraine’s European allies to provide Kyiv with the subsonic long-range cruise missiles.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv will nominate Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize if he sends Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine and helps negotiate a ceasefire with Russia.
Speaking on Thursday to reporters about his recent meeting with Trump at the UN General Assembly last month, Zelensky said: “I didn’t hear a ‘no’. What I did hear was that work will continue at the technical level and that this possibility will be considered.”
He added: “The plan for ending the war won’t be easy, but it is certainly the way forward. And if Trump gives the world – above all, the Ukrainian people – the chance for such a ceasefire, then yes, he should be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
“We will nominate him on behalf of Ukraine.”
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said that efforts by Russia and the US to end the conflict in Ukraine were not exhausted, state news agency TASS reported.
His comments appeared to contradict remarks from a top Russian diplomat, Dmitry Peskov, a day earlier.
EU sanctions chief David O’Sullivan said sanctions are clearly damaging Russia’s economy, but he warned that US commitment to further measures remains uncertain.
He called the US decision not to join other G7 members in lowering the Russian oil price cap “regrettable” and said it is an “open question” whether US president Donald Trump will back more sanctions, despite signs he is “losing patience” with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
He stressed the need to close loopholes as Russia keeps finding ways to circumvent sanctions, and urged more US pressure on EU countries like Slovakia and Hungary to stop Russian energy imports.
He also warned that China is a key hub for sanctions evasion.
“We do see evidence that China is a platform for the import and re-export to Russia of quite significant numbers of battlefield goods,” he told Reuters.
Strikes on Russian oil facilities by Ukraine’s newly developed long-range missiles and drones are causing significant gas shortages in Russia, Volodymyr Zelensky has said.
The Ukrainian president also said that a recent counter-offensive has derailed Russia’s plans to capture parts of the eastern Donetsk region.
Ukraine’s new Palianytsia missile has hit dozens of Russian military depots, Mr Zelensky said.
The Ruta missile drone, meanwhile, recently struck a Russian offshore oil platform more than 150 miles away in what Mr Zelensky called “a major success” for the new weapon.
Vladimir Putin is “personally afraid” of a ceasefire in the war in Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky has said.
“The head of Russia is personally afraid of a ceasefire, because once a ceasefire is in place, returning to the war would be difficult for him. To move from full-scale war to a ceasefire and then later restart a full-scale war – that’s not easy for them,” Zelensky said on X today.
“It’s not easy economically, it’s not easy with the society, and it’s not easy with the world. And certainly not easy with those countries that are still shaking Putin’s hand today. That’s why, for now, he chooses war,” he said.
Zelensky said Ukraine’s long-range strikes, strong sanctions, holding the battlefield, defending itself in the conflict at the moment but “also, undoubtedly, supporting peaceful initiatives, because that’s the right thing to do – this will work”.
Russian president Vladimir Putin arrived in Tajikistan yesterday to attend meetings with leaders of other ex-Soviet republics likely to focus on regional development and their relations with Moscow.
Ukraine’s long-range strikes on Russian energy facilities may have reduced gasoline supplies in Russia by up to 20 per cent, Volodymyr Zelensky has said.
Reuters calculations in August showed that Ukrainian attacks had reduced Russian oil refining by almost a fifth on certain days. Zelensky’s comments implied that level of shortage was now ongoing.
“This still needs to be verified, but we believe that they’ve lost up to 20% of their gasoline supply – directly as a result of our strikes,” Zelensky said in remarks to journalists today.
The Kremlin has said that Russia’s domestic fuel market is fully supplied.
In the recent weeks, as diplomatic efforts to end the war ground to a halt, Ukraine has been targeting Russia’s oil refining capacity and Russian forces have focused on crippling Ukrainian gas production.
Ukrainian forces were inflicting heavy losses in a counteroffensive in eastern Donetsk region, Volodymyr Zelensky said, contrasting Vladimir Putin’s claims that Russia holds the initiative in the region.
Speaking in his nightly video address, Zelensky said he spoke for almost an hour to top commander Oleksandr Syrskyi, with “particular attention on the Dobropillia operation, our counteroffensive”.
He described heavy casualties in the area.Ukraine has pointed to successes in Dobropillia, just north of the logistics hub of Pokrovsk, one of the key targets in Russia’s slow advance westward through Donetsk region.
Ukrainian forces, Zelensky said, were “defending ourselves along all other directions,” referring specifically to Kupiansk, a largely destroyed town in northeastern Ukraine under heavy Russian assaults for months.
He also described conditions as “difficult” around Novopavlivka, farther south in Zaporizhzhia region, but said “our active defensive actions there are showing good results”.
The region has been the main theatre of the more than three and a half years of war in Ukraine.
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