Russia’s foreign minister has given more of his thoughts on any potential meeting between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin – while hopes of a summit appear to fade. Ukrainian drones have also struck an oil pumping station in Russia, according to reports. Follow the latest below.
Friday 22 August 2025 14:44, UK
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By Simone Baglivo, Europe producer
The Ukrainian suspected of coordinating attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines had served in Ukraine’s Secret Service and in the Ukrainian Army’s special forces, Sky News understands.
The 49-year-old man named Serhii K was arrested yesterday in northern Italy following a European arrest warrant by German prosecutors.
It is not known whether he was still serving at the time of the pipeline attack in 2022 and Ukraine’s government has always denied any involvement in the explosions.
According to sources close to the case, the suspect had been found in a three-star bungalow hotel named La Pescaccia in San Clemente, in the province of Rimini.
When military officers from Italy’s Carabinieri investigative and operational units raided his bedroom, he didn’t try to resist the arrest.
His bungalow was then searched and the hotel’s employees have been questioned, but no further evidence or any weapons was found, the sources added.
He arrived on Italy’s Adriatic coast earlier this week and the purpose of his trip was a holiday.
He was found with his two children and his wife.
At least one of the four people within his family had a travel ticket issued in Poland.
Serhii crossed the Italian border with his car with a Ukrainian licence plate last Tuesday.
He was travelling with his passport and he used his real identity to check in to the hotel, triggering an emergency alert on a police server, we are told.
Charges
After the arrest, he was taken to the Rimini police station and today has been moved to a prison in Bologna, the regional capital, pending a ruling on his extradition by the appeal court.
In Germany, he will face charges of collusion to cause an explosion, anti-constitutional sabotage and the destruction of structures.
German prosecutors believe he was part of a group of people who planted devices on the pipelines near the Danish island of Bornholm in September 2022.
Serhii and his accomplices had allegedly set off from Rostock on Germany’s north-eastern coast in a sailing yacht to carry out the attack.
The explosions severely damaged three pipelines transporting gas from Russia to Europe.
Escalation
It represented a significant escalation in the Ukraine conflict and worsening of the continent’s energy supply crisis.
According to a US intelligence report leaked in 2023, a pro-Ukraine group was behind the attack.
Yet no group has ever claimed responsibility.
Sky News understands Genoa’s Prosecutor Office in northern Italy has requested their colleagues in Bologna share the information related to Serhii.
Liguria anti-terrorism prosecutors are investigating another alleged sabotage linked to the Russian shadow fleet oil tanker Seajewel, which sank off the port of Savona last February.
Yesterday, they asked an investigative police unit to understand if there is a link between that episode and the Nord Stream attacks.
Here’s a look at the latest battlefield maps in Ukraine.
Scroll through the maps to view different parts of Ukraine, including the situation in key regions such as Luhansk, Donetsk, Kursk and Belgorod.
Russia occupies around 19% of Ukraine, including Crimea and the parts of the Donbas region it seized before the full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Vladimir Putin reportedly wants control of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine – known as the Donbas – as a condition for ending the war.
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 block a summit.
“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 confirmed 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.
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