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The highly-anticipated summit was supposed to lead to a potential resolution to the raging conflict
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Russia is refusing to budge on its demands on Ukraine’s territories, resulting in the cancellation of a highly-anticipated summit between US President Donald Trump and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
The meeting was to take place in Budapest, Hungary, but was called off after a tense phone call between the countries’ top diplomats, according to the Financial Times.
It was postponed last week with Trump saying he did not want a “wasted meeting” with Putin.
It comes amid Moscow’s claims that it will resume nuclear weapons testing if the US does, sparking fears of a renewed arms race. The remarks came after Trump said he had ordered the US military to resume testing “immediately”.
Trump made the announcement after Vladimir Putin announced a successful test of a Poseidon nuclear-powered submarine torpedo which experts have warned is capable of causing a “radioactive tsunami”.
There are few confirmed details about the Poseidon in the public domain but experts say it is capable of triggering radioactive ocean swells to render coastal cities uninhabitable, according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
Poland said its jets intercepted a Russian reconnaissance plane for the third time this week.
The army confirmed the aircraft did not violate Polish airspace.
Ukraine’s navy said it has hit a Russian oil plant in Oryol on Friday.
“Both facilities supplied power to military enterprises in the region, so their destruction is a serious blow to the (Russians’) logistics,” the navy said on Telegram.
Ukraine has handed over a captured Russian soldier to Lithuania for trial.
The soldier was accused of torture and illegal detention. It is the first case of its kind involving a third country’s justice system during the bitter and vicious conflict, which has been raging since February 2022.
The man was described as a Russian marine who is suspected of working at a detention centre set up in Melitopol airport in 2022 in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine.
Lithuanian General Prosecutor Nida Grunskiene told reporters that one of the victims there was a Lithuanian citizen.
The suspect was arrested on the frontline in Ukraine in 2023. On Wednesday, he a was handed over and detained by a court for three months and charged with war crimes against civilians and prisoners of war, including their torture and illegal imprisonment, Grunskiene said.
“For the first time since the start of [Russia’s] full-scale aggression, Ukraine has transferred a Russian serviceman to a foreign state – Lithuania – for real criminal prosecution for war crimes,” he wrote on Telegram on Friday.
The ongoing war in Ukraine is creating “significant risks” to the U.S. economy and is costing American firms billions in lost opportunities, a report by influential economists has warned.
The Center for Freedom and Prosperity paper by Daniel J. Mitchell and Robert O’Quinn also claims that the continuation of the conflict threatens the U.S. dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency.
Russia and China want to end this so-called “exorbitant privilege” that sees most countries use the dollar for international trade and are using the war and trade tensions to undermine America’s position, the report argues.
The Independent’s Political Editor David Maddox reports:
President Donald Trump has regularly lamented the delays he has faced in brokering a deal between Russia and Ukraine. However, experts suggest that his luck with the Middle East is unlikely to be replicated with political actors his own size.
“Russia’s ongoing attacks reveal the limits of Trump’s leverage against Putin,” says Dr Bariş Çelik at the University of Sheffield.
“This is in stark contrast to his substantial hold over US allies and structurally weakened actors in the Middle East.
“Trump is very much interested in brokering ceasefires between conflicting parties across the world but with a significantly powerful side like Putin’s Russia, his ability to end hostilities is much more limited.
“War in Ukraine seems to be the most complex test for Trump’s already short-sighted approach to peace.”
Trump’s decision to resume nuclear weapons tests in the US is facing domestic criticism – and a stark warning it could lead to escalation.
Representative Dina Titus, a Democratic member of the US Congress from Nevada, condemned the move, saying on X: “I’ll be introducing legislation to put a stop to this.”
Daryl Kimball, director of the Arms Control Association think tank, said it would take the US at least 36 months to resume contained nuclear tests underground at the former test site in Nevada.
“Trump is misinformed and out of touch. The US has no technical, military or political reason to resume nuclear explosive testing for the first time since 1992,” he said on X.
Trump’s announcement, he added, could “trigger a chain reaction of nuclear testing by US adversaries, and blow apart the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.”
Europe’s NATO allies have been shaken by Russian provocations on the bloc’s eastern frontier in recent months, reporting a string of drone incursions and scrambling jets to shadow aircraft flying over the Baltic.
Concern has mounted since September, when nearly two dozen drones crossed over into Poland amid a large-scale Russian drone attack on Ukraine. Days later, three Russian military jets violated Estonia’s airspace for 12 minutes.
James C Reynolds reports:
At least 160 Russian oil and energy facilities have been hit by Ukraine so far this year, Vasyl Maliuk , the head of the SBU security service said on Friday.
He told reporters that the strikes would continue with the aim of reducing Russia’s ability to fund its invasion of Ukraine, which it started in February 2022.
One of Russia’s intermediate-range Oreshnik missiles was also destroyed in a special operation in summer 2023, he said.
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