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Sir Keir Starmer said allies had agreed a ‘clear plan for the rest of the year’ on supporting Ukraine
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More than 20 countries supporting Ukraine have vowed to remove Russian oil and gas from global markets in a coordinated effort to increase pressure on Russia’s Vladimir Putin to end the war.
“We’re choking off funding for Russia’s war machine,” said prime minister Keir Starmer after the “Coalition of the Willing” summit in London on Friday. Sir Keir added that the UK’s missile plan is “accelerating” in a bid to support Ukraine.
The pledge comes just days after the UK and the US sanctioned Russia’s two biggest oil companies, while the EU targeted Moscow’s liquefied natural gas exports to bring Mr Putin to the negotiating table.
Volodymyr Zelensky met with world leaders at the summit in an effort to push for long-range missiles that can strike deep inside Russia. Sir Keir said the group also discussed ways of helping protect Ukraine’s power grid from Russia’s almost daily drone and missiles attacks as winter approaches.
Mr Zelensky added Russia would aim to use the cold winter as a tool to pressure Kyiv as he urged allies to introduce sanctions against all Russian oil companies, its shadow fleet and oil terminals to disrupt Moscow’s ability to fund its war.
The intended summit between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin was put on hold on Wednesday after Moscow refused to budge on its red lines for ending the war in Ukraine.
Trump said on Tuesday that he did not want to have a “wasted meeting” with Putin after officials concluded that the gap between the two sides was two big to begin negotiations.
A senior White House official told Reuters that there are “no plans for President Trump to meet with President Putin in the immediate future”. It comes after Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held a “productive call” but opted against an in-person meeting.
Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban, a key ally of Moscow in the EU, insisted that preparations for a meeting in Budapest were still ongoing on Wednesday. The date and time of this summit is still unconfirmed according to Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto.
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Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukraine overnight into Saturday killed at least four people and wounded 16 others, local officials said.
In the capital, Kyiv, two people were killed and nine were wounded in a ballistic missile attack in the early hours of Saturday, Timur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s city military administration, said.
A fire broke out in a non-residential building in one location, while debris from intercepted missiles fell in an open area at another site, damaging windows in nearby buildings, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service wrote on the message app Telegram.
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Field Marshal Lord Richards tells The Independent’s Sam Kiley that Ukraine has been given false hope by its Western allies and cannot triumph against Russia unless Nato forces join fight:
The death toll from the Russian missile and drone attack on Ukraine rose to four this morning.
Two people were killed and nine wounded in a ballistic missile attack on the capital Kyiv in the early hours of Saturday, said Timur Tkachenko, head of the city military administration.
Three of the wounded were taken to hospital, according to Ukraine’s State Emergency Service.
A fire broke out in a non-residential building in one location, while debris from intercepted missiles fell in an open area at another site, damaging windows in nearby buildings, the emergency service added.
“Explosions in the capital. The city is under ballistic attack,” mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote during the onslaught.
Allied nations have pledged to act to take Russian oil and gas off the global market, Sir Keir Starmer said, after leaders gathered with Volodymyr Zelensky in London.
The prime minister urged other nations to follow the US and impose sanctions, and said allies had agreed on a “clear plan for the rest of the year” in supporting Kyiv.
Among the further pledges were plans to “push on with the progress” on Russian assets and “keep up the military pressure on Putin” as the conflict heads towards its fourth winter. The UK also said it would “accelerate” its missile production programme to get more weapons to Ukraine.
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Hundreds of starving and marooned Russian troops are being killed by Ukrainian drones in the “death zone” of the Dnipro delta, according to a report.
The river, surrounded by low-lying marshy islands, is split between Russian control on the left bank and Ukrainian control on the right.
At least 5,100 Russians have died in the area since January this year, some from starvation, according to Ukrainian intelligence.
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Ukrainian forces operating behind enemy lines derailed Russia’s hopes of reconnecting the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station before Vladimir Putin’s birthday earlier this month, sources have claimed.
Ukrainian sources told The Guardian that they believed Russia was trying to bring power back to the plant in time for the president’s birthday on 7 October, after it lost external power in late September.
Europe’s largest power station, which has been in Russian control since early in the invasion, was forced to operate on diesel backup generators after its last remaining external power line was severed on 23 September. Russia and Ukraine blamed each other.
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A court in Russia has sentenced a 21-year-old Ukrainian woman who ran a Telegram called “Melitopol is Ukraine” to 14 years in prison.
Yana Suvorova was detained on 20 August 2023 in Melitopol in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, along with six other RIA Melitopol journalists.
She has been accused of “organising and participating in a terrorist group,” “terrorist acts,” “espionage” among others.
Japan scrambled fighter jets to monitor nuclear-capable Russian warplanes that flew over international waters along the edge of Japanese airspace off its coast.
Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said Japan’s air force launched the jets in response to Russian bombers approaching the Sea of Japan.
The defence ministry said the two Tu-95 bombers, accompanied by two Su-35 fighters, had initially flown toward Japan’s Sado Island before turning northward. The ministry also released a map showing the flight path of the Russian aircraft off Japan’s west coast over the Sea of Japan.
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The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region said that Ukraine had struck a dam on a local reservoir, causing damage.
Vyacheslav Gladkov said that repeated strikes on the dam could risk flooding, and advised residents of parts of two border settlements, Shebekino and Bezlyudovka, to leave their homes for temporary accommodation.
Belgorod region borders Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region, and has come under attack by Kyiv’s forces since the outbreak of full-scale conflict between the two sides in 2022.
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