Ukraine-Russia warfare newest: US to restart navy dialogue with Moscow after nearly five-year suspension | EUROtoday

The most divisive points are Moscow’s calls for that Kyiv hand over land it nonetheless controls and the destiny of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear energy plant, Europe’s largest, which sits in a Russian-occupied space.

Russia needs Ukraine to tug its troops out of all of the Donetsk area, together with closely fortified cities considered certainly one of Ukraine’s strongest defences, as a precondition for any deal.

Ukraine says the battle ought to be frozen alongside present entrance traces and rejects any unilateral pullback of its forces.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov mentioned Russian troops would maintain preventing till Kyiv made “decisions” that would deliver the warfare to an finish.

Russia occupies about 20 per cent of Ukraine’s nationwide territory, together with Crimea and elements of the jap Donbas area seized earlier than the 2022 invasion.

Analysts say Russia has gained about 1.5 per cent of Ukrainian territory since early 2024.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent mentioned additional US sanctions in opposition to Russia depend upon peace talks aimed toward ending the practically four-year-old Ukraine warfare.

Bessent, who participated in talks with Russian officers and president Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner in Miami on Saturday, mentioned he would take into account new sanctions in opposition to Russia’s shadow fleet – a step Trump has not taken since returning to workplace in January 2025.

“I will take it under consideration. We will see where the peace talks go,” Bessent mentioned at a Senate Banking Committee listening to.

He mentioned the Trump administration’s US sanctions in opposition to Russian oil majors Rosneft and Lukoil had helped deliver Russia to the negotiating desk within the peace talks.

Nato defence ministers will doubtless talk about measures to bolster the safety of Greenland in a gathering subsequent week, defence secretary John Healey mentioned, after US president Donald Trump practically upended the alliance over his need to amass it.

Trump has repeatedly asserted that he needs Greenland, saying European allies have did not correctly safe it. His feedback sparked a dispute with Nato member Denmark over its abroad territory and strained the defence alliance.

Those tensions eased after Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte mentioned he had mentioned how Nato allies may work collectively to make sure Arctic safety with Trump, however particulars of these plans stay scarce.

Nighttime shelling by Ukraine inflicted “serious damage” within the Russian metropolis of Belgorod, close to the border, the area’s governor mentioned within the early hours at this time.

Vyacheslav Gladkov, in a solemn video posted on Telegram after midnight, mentioned metropolis officers have been holding an emergency assembly to plan a plan of motion.

“I cannot say good evening, unfortunately, my dear friends,” Gladkov mentioned within the video, recorded in near-darkness.

“The enemy has shelled the civilian city of Belgorod. Everyone knows we have no military targets. There has been serious damage. I have been out to look around,” he said.

A post on the unofficial Russian Telegram channel Mash, which has sources in the security services, said missiles had hit the city that lies about 40km (25 miles) from the Ukrainian border and power had been cut in some districts.

Ukrainian forces have regularly attacked Belgorod and nearby parts of the region since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of its smaller neighbour.

A new wargame simulating a Russian incursion into Lithuania, carried out by ex-Nato and German officials, concluded that Moscow would “achieve most of its goals” within days.

The exercise envisaged a scenario where the Kremlin used bogus claims of a “humanitarian crisis” in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad to seize the Lithuanian city of Marijampole to its east, a key conurbation through which the road linking Russia and Belarus runs.

The scenario, which plays out in October 2026, suggests that an absence of US leadership and hesitancy from Nato countries could allow Moscow to gain total control over the Baltic within days, using an initial force of only 15,000 troops.

“The Russians achieved most of their goals without moving many of their own units,” Bartłomiej Kot, a Polish security analyst who acted as the Polish prime minister, told The Wall Street Journal. “What this showed to me is that once we are confronted by the escalatory narrative from the Russian side, we have it embedded in our thinking that we are the ones who should be de-escalating.”

Poland is preparing a new 200m zloty ($55.91m, £41.18m) aid package for Ukraine mainly made up of armoured equipment, prime minister Donald Tusk announced on his visit to Kyiv yesterday.

He said that Poland could give Ukraine MiG-29 fighter jets at any time, but that Volodymyr Zelensky had told him Kyiv may need other air-defence equipment as a higher priority, and that he would discuss this with Polish officials and get back to the Ukrainian president about it on Monday.

The Kremlin said it regretted the expiration of the last remaining nuclear arms pact between Russia and the United States, while US president Donald Trump declared he was against keeping its limits and wants a better deal.

The pact’s termination left no caps on the two largest atomic arsenals for the first time in more than a half-century, fueling fears of an unconstrained nuclear arms race.

Russian president Vladimir Putin last year declared his readiness to stick to the treaty’s limits for another year if Washington followed suit, but Trump has ignored the offer and argued that he wants China to be a part of a new pact — something Beijing has rebuffed.

“Rather than extend ‘NEW START’ (A badly negotiated deal by the United States that, aside from everything else, is being grossly violated), we should have our Nuclear Experts work on a new, improved, and modernized Treaty that can last long into the future,” Trump posted on his Truth Social community.

Putin mentioned the pact’s expiration with Chinese chief Xi Jinping on Wednesday, noting the US failure to reply to his proposal to increase its limits and saying that Russia “will act in a balanced and responsible manner based on thorough analysis of the security situation,” Kremlin adviser Yuri Ushakov mentioned.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov mentioned Moscow views the treaty’s expiration Thursday “negatively” and regrets it. He mentioned Russia will keep its “responsible, thorough approach to stability when it comes to nuclear weapons,” including that “of course, it will be guided primarily by its national interests.”

The US and Russia have agreed to reestablish excessive stage dialogue between their militaries, the US European Command mentioned in a press release printed yesterday.

“Following the productive and constructive progress towards President (Donald) Trump’s goal of peace in Ukraine made by Jared Kushner and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff over the past week, the US and Russian Federation agreed today in Abu Dhabi to reestablish high level military-to-military dialogue,” the assertion mentioned.

“This channel of communication was suspended in the fall of 2021, just prior to the onset of the conflict,” the United States European Command mentioned in a press release, referring to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.