Kremlin suggests it has dismissed Trump’s envoy

“Ukraine seeks an end to the war. Putin seeks to continue the war. The rest of his words are just a smokescreen.”

Putin said there were “serious questions” about a US-proposed ceasefire, dashing hope of a quick truce with Ukraine.

A Finnish court has found a Russian man affiliated with the Wagner mercenary group guilty of committing war crimes in Ukraine, sentencing him to life in prison.

Yan Petrovsky, who is also known as Voislav Torden, was arrested in Finland in July 2023 at the request of the Ukrainian government.

The Helsinki district court found Petrovsky guilty of “four different war crimes” committed in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine in 2014 and 2015, while a member of Rusich, a paramilitary sub-unit linked to Wagner.

Petrovsky faced allegations that he co-commanded a group of Rusich fighters that executed wounded soldiers, one of whom was allegedly mutilated.

Petrovsky denied all the charges, his lawyer Heikki Lampela told the Helsinki court last December.

Russian officials have given further details on a Ukrainian attack on an oil complex in the Russian town of Tuapse. Veniamin Kondratyev, the governor of the southern Krasnodar region, said that the refinery supplies China, Malaysia, Singapore and Turkey.

“One of the gasoline tanks caught fire. The area of ​​the fire is more than one thousand square meters, emergency services are working. According to preliminary data, there are no casualties,” He wrote on Telegram.

Gas compressor stations in two other Russian regions, Tambov and Saratov, were hit overnight by Ukrainian drones as well, Reuters reported.

The news agency said Ukrainian drones also struck a missile depot in the Belgorod region, detonating the ammunition.

The Russian defence ministry has published aerial footage of drones attacking a queue of vehicles which it said contained Ukrainian troops fleeing from Russia’s Kursk region into Ukraine.

Ukrainian troops and transport were hit in the strikes using drones developed by the ministry’s Rubicon Centre for Advanced Unmanned Systems, it added.

The undated footage, which could not be independently verified, appeared to show at least six vehicles being hit, including a pick-up and a van. The vehicles appeared to be stationary in a line in the middle of a settlement.

Russia said yesterday that it had retaken Sudzha, the town in the Kursk region which Ukraine seized after an incursion that began in August 2024. President Putin said yesterday that Ukrainian detachments were almost surrounded there and could be obliged to “surrender or die”.

Saudi Arabia’s prime minister told President Putin over the phone that the country supports “all initiatives” to end the war in Ukraine after the US and Kyiv agreed on a 30-day ceasefire in the kingdom earlier this week.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reaffirmed Saudi Arabia’s “commitment to facilitating dialogue and supporting all initiatives aimed at achieving a political resolution” in a phone call with Putin, a foreign ministry statement said.

Putin told the prince that he “noted the importance of resolving the Ukrainian crisis and expressed readiness to continue to contribute in every possible way to the normalisation of Russian-American relations”, according to a Kremlin statement.

Mike Waltz, the US national security adviser, said he was “discussing” with Ukraine it ceding parts of the Donbas region and giving up ambitions to join Nato.

In an interview with Fox News last night, Waltz was asked if the potential terms floated by Moscow were under consideration by Washington.”We’re discussing all of those things with both sides. We are having those discussions with our counterparts, with the Russians,” he replied.

He added that the US has “some cautious optimism” that a ceasefire was imminent. “Of course both sides are going to have their demands, and of course, both sides are going to have to make some compromises,” Waltz said.

Images appeared to show a hospital on fire in the Ukrainian region of Kharkiv after the country’s military said this morning that it had shot down 16 out of 27 drones launched by Russia overnight.

The Kharkiv region’s governor, Oleh Syniehubov, said seven people, including children, had been injured in the overnight attacks.

The roof of a hospital caught on fire in Zolochiv, Syniehubov added, with a member of its emergency team injured. The State Emergency Service of Ukraine said the hospital was hit a second time, adding that all emergency workers were able to evacuate safely beforehand.

In total, 146 clashes between Ukrainian and Russian forces were recorded yesterday, the Ukrainian General Staff said on Facebook this morning.

EU countries should go as far as doubling their military aid to Ukraine and provide up to €40 billion (£34 billion) this year, the bloc’s diplomatic service has suggested in a discussion paper seen by Reuters.

The paper, an updated version of an earlier proposal, adds that each EU country participating in the effort should contribute “in line with its economic weight”.

Russian air defences repelled an attack by four drones flying towards Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, the mayor of the capital, said this morning.

“Emergency services are working at the site where debris came down,” Sobyanin wrote on Telegram.
The governor of the wider Moscow region Andrei Vorobyov said that three of the drones were brought down over his region.

The debris had fallen on a construction site and there had been no casualties, Vorobyov added.

Sobyanin did not mention Ukraine. The drones came a few days after Russia shot down 337 unmanned aircraft across the country in a large overnight attack by Kyiv.

A fire covering more than 1,000 square meters has engulfed an oil refinery in Tuapse, on Russia’s Black Sea coast, after a Ukrainian attack overnight, according to Veniamin Kondratyev, the governor of the Krasnodar region.

“Tonight, the Kiev regime attacked the oil complex in Tuapse. One of the gasoline tanks caught fire,” the governor claimed on Telegram.

Kondratyev added that 121 emergency services personnel were involved in extinguishing the fire.

The Trump administration has toughened sanctions on Russian oil, gas and banks by adding more restrictions on their access to US payments systems.

A 60-day exemption under the Biden administration had allowed certain energy transactions involving sanctioned banks in Russia to continue. President Trump last night let this exemption expire, according to a treasury spokesman.

Letting it expire means the Russian banks now are blocked from accessing US payment systems to conduct major energy transactions.

Putin is preparing to reject the ceasefire proposal, President Zelensky claimed last night.

Zelensky accused Putin of being scared to tell the White House directly and that the Kremlin was setting conditions on the truce to delay it, or make it not happen at all.

“He is in fact preparing a rejection at present because Putin is of course scared to tell President Trump that he wants to continue this war, that he wants to kill Ukrainians,” Zelensky said.

“That’s why in Moscow they are imposing upon the idea of a ceasefire these conditions so that nothing happens at all, or so that it cannot happen for as long as possible.”

President Trump’s special envoy is reported to have left Russia, according to a flight tracking website.

After landing at Moscow around lunchtime local time yesterday, Steve Witkoff’s plane left Vnukovo airport at about 2am today and arrived in Baku, Azerbaijan, two and a half hours later, Russian media reported.

He was said to have left after spending at least an hour at the US embassy in Moscow.

Witkoff was due to hold closed talks with President Putin at the Kremlin that evening, but it has not been confirmed whether the meeting took place.

Trump said last night: “Envoy Witkoff is having serious conversations in Russia. I’ve heard things are going well there. Hopefully, today we’ll have an idea of how things are going for us.”

President Putin yesterday dampened hopes of an immediate 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine, warning that Russia would not back a deal which allowed Kyiv’s forces to rearm and regroup.

Putin suggested that Russia supported the notion of a temporary truce but that “serious questions” remained over any deal.

Read more: Hopes of an immediate ceasefire fade as Putin highlights sticking points

The Kremlin was reported to have said it does not consider the American envoy for the Middle East to be a mediator for the war in Ukraine, in an apparent snub to the Trump administration.

Steve Witkoff landed in Moscow after flying in from Qatar, where he had been involved in indirect talks between Israel and Hamas.

He was expected to have a face-to-face meeting with President Putin, while the Kremlin confirmed only that there would be talks with US officials.

Yuri Ushakov, the Russian leader’s aide, suggested that Moscow did not consider Witkoff the right go-between for discussions about the Ukraine war. Uskakov told the military channel, Zvezda, that the US had identified a mediator in negotiations with Russia, “and this is not Steve Witkoff”.

Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s envoy, arrived in Moscow before a potential meeting with President Putin at the Kremlin’s Senate Palace on Thursday evening but it is not clear if that meeting took place.

Neither the US and Russia have commented on any talks, and some reports suggest the Kremlin snubbed the US envoy soon after he landed.

Yuri Ushakov, a top Kremlin aide, said Witkoff would meet Putin when the president “gives the signal”, Russian news agencies reported.