Ukrainian drones have struck the Unecha oil pumping station in Russia’s Bryansk region, according to reports. Meanwhile, Kim Jong Un has awarded North Korean troops who fought for Russia in the war against Ukraine. Follow the latest below.
Friday 22 August 2025 13:45, UK
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More now on the seemingly fading hopes of a meeting between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin.
Speaking at a news conference a short while ago, the Ukrainian leader said Russia is doing all it can to prevent a summit with Putin.
“The Russians are doing everything they can to prevent the meeting from taking place,” he said.
“Unlike Russia, Ukraine is not afraid of any meeting with leaders.”
And, if Moscow doesn’t show any desire for peace, he said Ukraine’s allies should apply fresh sanctions on Russia.
As we break down in our 12.41 post, Russia has continued to put forward reasons against a meeting with Zelenskyy – which experts believe may be a part of Moscow’s wider strategy.
NATO chief Mark Rutte has said the military alliance and the US will be involved in security guarantees for Ukraine – which he described as the second layer on top of building the country’s armed forces.
During a joint press conference between with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the latter suggested security guarantees should be structured in a way that’s similar to NATO’s Article 5.
Under Article 5, an attack on one member is considered an attack on all.
Rutte stressed the importance of collaborating on security guarantees so they reach a level which ensures Russia never attacks again.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has said President Vladimir Putin is prepared to meet his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy when a summit agenda is ready.
Lavrov told our US partner network NBC News no meeting between the two warring leaders has so far been planned.
Putin and Zelenskyy have not met in person since 2019.
Proposals for the two presidents to meet have been put forward numerous times in recent years, in order to try and get both sides to negotiate some form of a ceasefire.
Donald Trump said on Monday he was working on arranging a meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders.
That came after he met with Putin for a summit in Alaska last Friday in what was the first US-Russia meeting in more than four years.
Speaking on the ‘Meet the Press with Kristen Welker’ programme, Lavrov said Russia had agreed to be flexible on a number of points raised by Trump in Alaska.
But the Russian foreign minister added Zelenskyy, when presented with several principles necessary for peace progress, said “no to everything”.
Is Russia just delaying?
But what’s really going on here? A week ago, after Trump and Putin’s meeting in Alaska, there was some optimism over a potential meeting.
At the start of the week, Trump claimed the two sides were “setting it up”, but Moscow still has its caveats.
And Lavrov repeated another just now.
Our military analyst Michael Clarke says Russia’s demands in peace talks – such as asking for the entire Donbas region of eastern Ukraine – are “designed to be rejected”.
“The object is to get America out of the war,” Clarke says. “They want to create a situation in which the whole process fails, but Zelenskyy and Ukraine take the blame as far as Trump is concerned.
“And then Trump turns around and says: ‘at least I tried’.”
The leaders of France, Germany and Poland will be visiting Moldova next week to celebrate its independence day, the French president’s office has said.
Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Merz and Donald Tusk will visit the former Soviet republic on 27 August to reaffirm their “full support” for Moldova’s sovereignty.
“The leaders will reaffirm their full support for Moldova’s security, sovereignty and European path,” the Elysee said in a statement about the trip.
Moldova will hold parliamentary elections on 28 September.
The country’s ruling party is seeking to maintain its majority and keep its pro-European trajectory intact.
‘Most vulnerable to Putin after Ukraine’
During our regular Q&A session this week, Sky News’ military analyst Michael Clarke said beyond Ukraine, Moldova is the most vulnerable to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ambitions.
Moldova is home to the Transnistria Republic, a self-declared breakaway state to the east of the country.
“A lot of the Russian speakers and nationalists there [Transnistria Republic] are the families of the old Russian officers that used to be based there,” Clarke explained.
“Moldova is in a very perilous position and is constantly being leant over by the Russians.
“If the Russians had got as far as Odesa in the west of Ukraine, then almost certainly they would have carried on and taken Moldova – they certainly intend to at some point.”
Georgia is returning 65 Ukrainian citizens deported by Russia to Ukraine on two charter flights from Tiblisi airport via Moldova, Georgian deputy interior minister Alexander Darajvelidze announced in a statement today.
They spent two and a half months at a border crossing after Georgian authorities denied them entry for security reasons.
Russian troops have taken control of the settlements of Rusyn Yar, Volodymyrivka and Katerynivka in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, the country’s defence ministry has said.
Sky News has not independently confirm the battlefield report.
Why this region is so important
Our military analyst Michael Clarke said seizure of the Donbas – the region Donetsk is part of – would allow Vladimir Putin to tell his domestic audience there has been an achievement.
But it’s also important economically.
“The Donbas was always part of the important manufacturing area of Ukraine, and that was part of the old Soviet Union, lots of heavy weapons were produced there,” he said.
“It’s a very industrial area, about one million people live there, and there are minerals.”
It is also has a strategic importance.
“There are a belt of cities from north to south, even the Russians call them the fortress cities,” Clarke added.
“They are pretty heavily fortified, and have been since 2014. The Russians cannot take them, and so if the Ukrainians gave up that defensive belt, they’d find it very hard to create a comparable defensive belt anywhere to the west of that.
“If the Russians walk into it, it would be a jumping off point for the next round of fighting… they would jump off that to go further west.”
Russia has captured the eastern Ukrainian village of Katerynivka in Donetsk, Russian state news agency RIA quoted the defence ministry as saying.
Donetsk is one of the two areas – the other being Luhansk – making up the eastern region of Donbas, which Russia has demanded in any peace agreement.
Russian forces occupy almost all of Luhansk and about 70% of Donetsk.
Oil supplies via the Druzhba pipeline targeted by Ukraine could be suspended for at least five days, Hungary and Slovakia have said.
The countries called on the European Commission to guarantee security of supplies.
“The physical and geographical reality is that without this pipeline, the safe supply of our countries is simply not possible,” foreign ministers Peter Szijjarto and Juraj Blanar said in a letter.
Russia has now confirmed a Ukrainian attack on an oil facility connected to the Druzhba pipeline, one of the biggest crude oil pipeline networks in the world.
As a result of Ukrainian missiles and drones, a fire broke out at the facility at Unecha in Russia’s Bryansk region, regional governor Alexander Bogomaz has said.
He added the blaze has now been extinguished. Footage showed a huge fire at the station overnight.
As we reported earlier (see post 8.00am), Hungarian foreign minister Peter Szijjarto said crude oil deliveries from Russia to Hungary via the Druzhba pipeline had been halted as a result of the attack.
What do we know about the pipeline?
The Druzhba pipeline delivers oil from Russia to central Europe through Ukraine and Belarus.
Hungary and Slovakia are the only EU member states still receiving large amounts of Russian oil.
By Siobhan Robbins, Europe correspondent
A Danish military commander has warned the closer we get to end of the war in Ukraine, the greater the risk to Europe of attack from Russia.
Naval officer Anders Puck Nielsen, who is also an analyst at the Royal Danish Defence College, said Russian forces would be more dangerous if they felt defeat was near.
“I would expect to see an escalation in hybrid attacks in this scenario but wouldn’t rule out a limited challenge of NATOs Article 5 with an attack on the Baltic states,” he explained.
“It would be a wake-up call, an effort to try to deter Europeans from sending weapons to Ukraine.”
Article 5 is the collective defence clause which views an attack against one NATO member as an attack against all.
The NATO chief has repeatedly warned that Russia could be capable of attacking a member state in the next five years.
Some predict an attack on one of the Baltic States could be possible in as little as three years.
Many of Ukraine’s allies believe the result in the war in Ukraine will directly impact the future security of the whole of Europe.
To help lower the risk, they’re currently in discussions about what security guarantees they could offer Kyiv as part of any peace agreement.
“Adding ground forces is not necessarily what they need but providing an air force would be very helpful,” says Puck Nielsen.
He believes a so-called tripwire force involving strategically placed foreign troops could also be a useful consideration.
The idea is the troops help to deter aggression with the understanding an attack on them could trigger larger military response from Ukraine’s allies.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has consistently underlined that Moscow would never accept a peace plan which involved stationing European or NATO troops in Ukraine.
“The presence of foreign troops in Ukraine is completely unacceptable for Russia,” he said.
Aside from security guarantees, Puck Nielsen argues the best way to help Ukraine is to bring Russia to a point where it can’t continue to fight by providing it with weapons and enforcing extra sanctions on Russia.
“Before the war can end, one side has to be close to losing but at the moment both Russia and Ukraine still think time is on their side,” he says.
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