Zelenskyy also repeated his earlier warning that Starshield restrictions are back on “in the temporary occupied parts of Ukraine,” and “directly affect our ability to intercept Russian jet powered drones” launched from these areas (10:08).
“We are trying to get the details from the American side, but so far we know very little. But some things are already clear. If someone in America is making decisions that basically treat Ukrainian territory as if it is not Ukrainian, then this tells us where things are going.
We need to be clear and never recognise Russia’s occupation of Ukrainian territory in any way.”
On other battlefield issues, Zelenskyy says Ukraine needs more support on air defence, including interceptors and fighter jets.
Vladimir Putin’s comments during his meeting with the two US envoys make it clear that getting a deal with Russia will not be easy.
During his talks with Witkoff and Kushner, the Russian president doubled down on his demand to retain the Russia-occupied Ukrainian territory and opposed any foreign peacekeeping troops in the country – a key part of Europe’s planned security guarantees for Kyiv.
Instead, he continues to push for broader talks on rolling back Europe’s post-1997 Nato security architecture, a move which Zelenskyy called “strange” and urged Europe to watch closely.
Putin’s proposal for “a humanitarian mission” in Kostyantynivka is likely to be seen by Europeans as merely a token gesture designed to distract from his otherwise hardline stance.
As our Russia expert, Pjotr Sauer, said after yesterday’s discussions: “Russia appears to be seeking to revive demands it presented to Nato in 2021,” with maximalist conditions on future enlargement and deployments.
The UK government has announced new sanctions on all of Russia’s top 10 oil producers ramping up pressure on Moscow over the Ukraine war.
The British prime minister Andy Burnham said he was unveiling “a sweep of stinging new sanctions to turn the screws on Russia’s oil revenues and drive forward an end to the Kremlin’s needless war” as European leaders met in Dublin for talks focused on the conflict.
Meanwhile, Finland’s military said on Thursday that its forces had detected “a strike” on a Russian warship in the Baltic Sea a day earlier but the security situation in the area remained stable.
It was not immediately clear if there were any casualties or what had caused the strike. Estonian media reported on Thursday that the vessel was a small Russian navy ship and that it later returned to St Petersburg.
“The Finnish Defence Forces detected… a strike on a Russian warship in the Gulf of Finland area and has monitored the development of the situation,” a spokesperson for the Nordic country’s military said in an emailed statement to Reuters.
Finland is not under any immediate military threat, the spokesperson added. The defence forces declined to provide further details about the location or timing of the incident, or how it was detected.
Putin also reaffirmed Moscow’s opposition to allowing Western troops in Ukraine as part of any potential post-war peacekeeping solution – a key demand from Kyiv in any deal to end the fighting.
Moscow would see any foreign troops deployed in the country as a “legitimate target,” Putin told US envoys in Moscow, adding their deployment would mean “the continuation of war”.
Vladimir Putin has told US envoys that Russia was proposing a joint Russian-Ukrainian humanitarian mission to the city of Kostiantynivka in eastern Ukraine, the Interfax news agency reported.
Putin was cited as saying that the mission could be modelled on a similar initiative that allowed residents to leave the Russian-controlled town of Oleshky in southeastern Ukraine at the end of last month and for aid to be brought in for those who chose to remain.
Russia needs five days to clear the area near Kostiantynivka of mines, Putin was cited as saying.
Transport correspondent
Airlines have been reluctant to speak out about bomb threats for a host of reasons, but some leading figures in aviation have expressed unease at Europe’s response in last week’s flight disruption.
József Váradi, chief executive of Wizz Air, the Hungarian budget airline, said he met officials from the European Commission recently to “urge these people to act together and find ways of getting coordinated… But this is a very hot potato because of the sovereign nation state concept, and no country wants to concede on this matter.”
Among numerous airlines targeted last week, Wizz received hoax bomb alerts for 14 flights, diverting two aircraft after emailed threats.
He told Reuters that, assuming the hoaxes could be due to hybrid warfare, Europe “needs to think about this, how to level up responsibilities against a threat like this,” adding that geographically “we are probably closest to any of these hybrid warfare exposures than any of the western airlines.”
Speaking to an airline industry conference in London on Wednesday, the UK’s aviation regulator suggested that Britain’s industry had, more or less, kept calm and carried on while others had diverted flights.
Chief executive of the UK Civil Aviation Authority Rob Bishton said the UK had given a “proportionate” response to the threats, while parts of Europe showed a “different approach and a potentially different risk appetite .. and more caution taken for whatever reasons they thought were appropriate”.
He said the industry had “well-honed protocols” and the threat analysis by government was “a well-tried and tested model.”
He said:
“What you got from the UK side was a by the book, proportionate response.”
Bishton added: “Were we expecting things like this to happen – yes, it is not a surprise. It was a successfully executed assessment and the decisions made were correct.”
In other news, it’s another day of widespread bomb alarms across Italy, with some 1,800 schools in at least 10 regions of the country targeted with fresh threats, alongside the PM’s office.
Some of the emails accounts used to sent messages were tracked back to data leaks in Taiwan and the Philippines, Italian media reported.
But in sharp contrast to previous days, the government said it had instructed local authorities and school principals to keep classes running unless there were credible grounds for alarm. Several schools chose to evacuate pupils as a precaution, Ansa news agency reported.
A separate email, reported by Corriere della Sera, also demanded the resignation of Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni, along some unsubstantiated threats against her office.
Earlier today, Meloni chaired a meeting with opposition parties to discuss the government’s approach to the latest wave of threats, which is why she missed out on the first part of the Dublin summit. On Wednesday night, she said the campaign of intimidation against Italy was intended to “instil fear,” but insisted it would fail.
Deputy prime minister Antonio Tajani told Italian parliament on Thursday that he saw the hoax alarms as “a dangerous hybrid warfare campaign,” targeting Italy for its continued support of Ukraine. “But I want to reiterate clearly: we will not be intimidated,” he said.
The Rome Prosecutor’s Office’s anti-terrorism team is leading the investigation.
In recent days, authorities in Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland said many schools had received similar threatening emails from abroad, but classified them as hoaxes and allowed classes to continue, Reuters noted.
We are also getting a line from the European Commission on Ukraine’s renewed problems with Elon Musk’s Starshield system, as reported by president Zelenskyy (11:08, 13:07).
EU tech spokesperson Thomas Regnier said:
“So it is not the first time that Ukraine is facing Starshield disruptions. These reports are deeply concerning and if confirmed, unacceptable.
SpaceX must have a consistent approach in sharing its services with Ukraine, Starshield services must be restored urgently for Ukraine to keep its soldiers connected, to protect its citizens, and to defend its territory.”
Meanwhile, president Vladimir Putin told US envoys that Russia was proposing a joint Russian-Ukrainian humanitarian mission to the city of Kostiantynivka in eastern Ukraine, the Interfax news agency reported.
Putin also reportedly claimed that Russia never opposed dialogue with Europe, and said he “would like Americans to work with Europe so that they can decide what they want, peace or war,” Reuters reported via Interfax.
And US envoy Witkoff said, quoted by RIA and Interfax, that he hoped to be able to announce a new round of trilateral talks “in which Europeans would take part” later today.
All we are getting at the moment is short reports via Russian media, so we may have to wait for a proper, longer readout from the meeting.
Over in Moscow, the meeting between Russia’s Putin and the two US peace envoys is now finally getting under way.
In their opening remarks, noted by Russian media, Jared Kushner told Putin that Europe wanted a role in future negotiations, while Steve Witkoff praised a major prisoner exchange agreed earlier this week during talks in Abu Dhabi, saying it was a sign of progress, Reuters reported.
We will no doubt get more lines coming out from that meeting shortly.
European Council president António Costa is up next.
He says that “the security of all European nations, the security of our continent, is inseparable from Ukraine’s security and that our collective security is inseparable from the achievement of a just and lasting peace in Ukraine.”
“Today, as discussions about peace in Ukraine intensify, this is more important than ever,” he said.
He lists some of the principles, saying that Ukraine “like any sovereign nation around this table must be free to choose its partners, its allies, its future.”
“The time of zones of influence in Europe is long gone.”
He joins others in calling for “a European voice at the table” in any peace talks, which he says should be “a team effort between European nations, the EU and Nato.”
On broader security environment, he says:
“There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Europe had a functioning European security architecture until it was first gradually undermined and ultimately destroyed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Any future discussion on this issue must take that fact into account.”
He said the principles of sovereign equality between European nations, territorial integrity and peaceful settlement of disputes “remain as relevant today, as indispensable … as they were 50 years ago.”
Setting out his stall as a potential EU representative (11:58), he said:
“Europe’s priorities is in this process are very clear. We must first reach a ceasefire, obtain concrete, tangible progress in the Black Sea, and work on creating the conditions for a peace agreement.
The main outstanding condition for all of this to be possible is whether Russia is truly interested in peace, and unfortunately, so far, what we have seen is that Russia is focused on escalation and attacks on Ukrainian civilians.
That must change for peace to be possible, and next weeks will be a decisive test for Russian willingness to stop this war.”
His remarks conclude the public session of the meeting, with the discussions continuing behind the closed doors.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
