{"id":170831,"date":"2025-11-06T08:55:34","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T08:55:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/ukraine-war-latest-bulgaria-eyes-russian-refinery-after-putins-nuclear-test-order-the-independent\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T08:55:34","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T08:55:34","slug":"ukraine-war-latest-bulgaria-eyes-russian-refinery-after-putins-nuclear-test-order-the-independent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/ukraine-war-latest-bulgaria-eyes-russian-refinery-after-putins-nuclear-test-order-the-independent\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine war latest: Bulgaria eyes Russian refinery after Putin\u2019s nuclear test order – The Independent"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Trump says US will break 30-year moratorium on testing, sparking fears of a new global arms race
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Bulgaria is drafting new legislation that will allow it to seize control of an important oil refinery belonging to Russia’s sanctioned oil giant Lukoil.
The Burgas refinery is the only one of its kind in Bulgaria and was a vital party of Lukoil’s foreign business empire. The company is now facing US sanctions over Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Earlier, Russian president Vladimir Putin<\/a> ordered preparations for nuclear weapons testing<\/a> after president Donald Trump<\/a> announced last week that the US would be running its first tests in over three decades.
Trump announced last week<\/a> that the US would breach a global moratorium<\/a> on testing nuclear weapons, claiming rivals such as China and Russia were already doing the same in secret, but did not offer more details.
At the same meeting on Wednesday, Putin ordered the heightened defence of Russia’s oil refineries<\/a> from Ukrainian drone attacks, signing a new law deploying millions of reservists to the task.
And on the battlefield, Russia claimed its troops were advancing inside the key city of Pokrovsk<\/a>, where the Ukrainian army said its units were battling hard to avoid being encircled by Moscow’s forces.
Energy ministers from the United States and European countries are holding talks today in Greece on how to use a newly upgraded regional pipeline network to better supply war-torn Ukraine as the Trump administration seeks to further ramp up gas exports to Europe.
US energy secretary Chris Wright and interior secretary Doug Burgum were attending the meeting in Athens, hosted by the Atlantic Council, the Washington-based think tank.
They were joined by more than 80 US officials, European Union energy ministers, and executives from leading American liquified natural gas companies.
President Donald Trump is seeking to use America\u2019s position as the world\u2019s top LNG exporter to press the EU to buy more US gas, linking energy exports to broader trade negotiations.
South Africa’s government said it had received distress calls from 17 citizens who had joined mercenary forces in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
The men are between the ages of 20 and 39 years and are trapped in Ukraine’s war-torn Donbas region.
“President Cyril Ramaphosa has ordered an investigation into the circumstances that led to the recruitment of these young men into these seemingly mercenary activities,” South Africa’s government said in a statement.
American actor Angelina Jolie has visited Ukraine\u2019s southern regions to meet children impacted by the Russian invasion, local media reported.
Jolie was seen playing with Ukrainian children in Kherson, a region that is hit by Russian drones and missiles on a daily basis.
The Tomb Raider star was visiting the war-hit country in her role as a UNICEF ambassador.
The actor was seen wearing a bulletproof vest with a patch from the Legacy of War Foundation, a British non-profit organisation helping civilians during the war.
The visit by Jolie faced an incident with local military recruiters, reported Politico, citing a top Ukrainian official. The official said Jolie had not informed the Ukrainian government about her intention to visit the country, and that she entered on foot.
Vladimir Putin has ordered the heightened defence of Russia’s oil refineries from Ukrainian drone attacks in a new law.
In a law signed on Tuesday, Putin called on around two million reservists to protect Russian oil facilities from increasing Ukrainian drone attacks.
In recent weeks, Ukraine’s daring strikes deep inside Russia using domestically produced drones have embarrassed Moscow, with officials being unforthcoming about any damage, and unnerved Russians.
Ukraine has taken aim at manufacturing plants, oil refineries and military logistics hubs in a bid to disrupt Russia’s war effort almost four years after Moscow launched an all-out invasion.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian long-range drones attacked an industrial plant around 1,300km (800 miles) inside Russia, local officials said.
Russia said its forces were advancing north inside Pokrovsk in a drive to take full control of the Ukrainian city, but the Ukrainian army said its units were battling hard to try to stop the Russians from gaining new ground.
Ukraine has acknowledged that its troops face a difficult position in the strategic eastern city, once an important transport and logistics hub for the Ukrainian army, which Russia has been trying to capture for more than a year.
The Russian defence ministry said two assault groups were destroying Ukrainian troops that were surrounded in several districts of the city and continuing an offensive pushing north through it. Russian forces were clearing Ukrainian troops from settlements on Pokrovsk’s southeastern flank and had repelled Ukrainian attempts to break out of encirclement.
The Ukrainian military denied that its troops were surrounded in Pokrovsk. It said they were trying to stop Russian soldiers from digging in while seeking to secure and protect logistics routes in the wider area.
\u201cMeasures are being taken to block the enemy, which is attempting to infiltrate and accumulate in the city of Pokrovsk,” the Ukrainian General Staff said in a statement.
\u201cActive countermeasures are being taken against attempts by enemy infantry groups to gain a foothold.\u201d
Russia sees the city as the gateway to its capture of the remaining 10 per cent, or 5,000 square km (1,930 square miles) of Ukraine’s eastern industrial Donbas region, one of its key aims in the almost four-year-old war.
The UK government is reportedly considering transferring some of the Army\u2019s controversial Ajax armoured vehicles to Ukraine as part of a peacekeeping force.
Ministry of Defence figures show that the Army has at least 128 Ajax armoured fighting vehicles, though an update from defence minister Lord Coaker suggests that only 91 of these are already in service after years of delays.
Around 50 of these vehicles are now ready to be deployed, reported The Telegraph<\/em>.
The armoured vehicles have been deemed unfit over several problems, most notably the loudness of the noise it produces, which has been harmful to soldiers testing them.
More than 300 British soldiers have had to undergo hearing assessments and around 17 of those involved in the trials have been undergoing treatment for hearing loss, the report added.
At least one person was killed after Ukraine struck Russia with at least 75 drones overnight, officials said.
The attack sparked a fire in an industrial area of the southern city of Volgograd, killing at least one and halting dozens of flights across the country, according to regional officials said.
Volgograd Governor Andrei Bocharov said a 48-year-old man was killed by shrapnel and that a fire was sparked in an industrial zone in the Krasnoarmeysk district of the city, which was formerly known as Stalingrad.
The district is home to Lukoil’s major Volgograd refinery which has been repeatedly targetted by Ukraine. In 2024 the Volgograd refinery processed 13.7 million metric tons of oil, or 5.1 per cent of the total volume at Russian refineries.
Ukraine has for several months been striking Russian oil refineries, depots and pipelines in a bid to undermine the Russian economy as Russian forces advance in eastern Ukraine.
Bulgaria is drafting legal changes that will allow it to seize control of sanctioned Russian oil giant Lukoil’s Burgas refinery and sell it to a new owner to protect the plant from US sanctions, local media reported.
Burgas is Bulgaria’s only oil refinery, and was a key part of Lukoil’s foreign business empire, which is being threatened after the US joined Britain last month in imposing sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies over Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
The draft legislation, first reported by Bulgarian outlet Mediapool yesterday, would permit a special manager to oversee the sale of the Burgas oil refinery, which owner Lukoil would have no right to vote on or appeal against, the reports said.
“There is a lot of logic in this, which is why today we will submit a draft law on the special governor,” public broadcaster BNT quoted Boyko Borissov, former prime minister and leader of the GERB party \u2013 which heads Bulgaria’s coalition government \u2013 as saying.
Russian defence minister Andrei Belousov told Vladimir Putin that recent US remarks and actions meant it was “advisable to prepare for full-scale nuclear tests” immediately.
Russia’s Arctic testing site at Novaya Zemlya could host such tests at short notice, Belousov added.
The comments were made at a meeting between Putin and his Security Council, where parliamentary speaker Vyacheslav Volodin departed from the official agenda of transport safety to ask how Moscow should respond to Donald Trump’s threat to carry out the first US nuclear weapons testing in 33 years.
Trump announced last week that the US would breach a global moratorium on testing nuclear weapons, claiming rivals such as China, Russia and North Korea were already doing the same in secret, but did not offer more details.
General Valery Gerasimov, head of the General Staff, told Putin: “If we do not take appropriate measures now, time and opportunities for a timely response to the actions of the United States will be lost, since the time required to prepare for nuclear tests, depending on their type, ranges from several months to several years.\u201d
No country apart from North Korea \u2013 most recently in 2017 \u2013 has carried out explosive tests of nuclear weapons in the 21st century.
Security analysts say a resumption of testing by any of the world’s nuclear powers would be destabilising, as it would likely trigger a similar response by the others.
\u201cAction-reaction cycle at its best. No one needs this, but we might get there regardless,” Andrey Baklitskiy, senior researcher at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research, posted on X.
Russia and the US are by far the biggest nuclear powers by numbers of warheads, followed by China, France, Britain, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
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