Ukraine-Russia war latest: Trump envoys fail to secure peace deal after Putin tells Europe he’s ready for war

A drone attack by Ukraine sparked a fire at an oil depot in Russia’s Tambov region, governor Yevgeny Pervyshov said this morning.

“Firefighters and law enforcement officers arrived at the scene promptly. All necessary forces and resources have been mobilised,” he said.

The Russian defence ministry said that 102 Ukrainian drones had been intercepted and destroyed over Russian regions overnight.

Moscow typically only confirms how many Ukrainian drones it has downed, and does not provide the total number fired.

Tensions between Lithuania and Belarus have escalated after meteorological balloons from Belarus forced Lithuania to repeatedly shut down its main airport in the past weeks, leaving thousands of people stranded.

While the balloons are used to smuggle cigarettes into Lithuania, officials in Vilnius see their numbers and trajectories as deliberate acts of disruption orchestrated by Belarus, a close Russian ally, as Europe remains on high alert after drone intrusions into Nato’s airspace reached an unprecedented scale in September and the Russian invasion of Ukraine nears its fourth year.

After days of anticipation, the peace talks between Russian and American officials in Moscow began late on Tuesday and ran past midnight, taking over five hours in total.

Steve Witkoff, a billionaire US real estate developer who has known Trump since the 1980s, and Jared Kushner, the husband of Trump’s daughter Ivanka, represented America at the meeting.

They entered the venue after a stroll across Red Square past the mausoleum of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin to the towers of the Kremlin.

There, Witkoff and Kushner met Vladimir Putin, his foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov and special envoy Kirill Dmitriev, speaking via interpreters.

Ushakov said at a briefing afterwards that Putin had sent a series of important signals and his greetings to Trump, but that the sides had agreed otherwise not to disclose details to the media.

He and Dmitriev both described the talks as constructive, but said the two sides were “no closer to peace” and had failed to agree a compromise on the thorniest issues.

He confirmed they had discussed the “territorial problem”, Kremlin shorthand for Russian claims to the whole of the Donbas. Ukraine still controls at least 5,000 square km (1,900 square miles) of the eastern region which Russia now claims as its own.

Almost all countries recognise Donbas as part of Ukraine.”Some American draft proposals look more or less acceptable, but they need to be discussed,” Ushakov said.

“Some of the formulations that have been proposed to us are not suitable for us, that is – the work will continue.”

Emmanuel Macron heads to China today for a three-day state visit focusing on trade and diplomatic talks.

And while the visit will cover wide-reaching issues, the French president is set to try and convince Beijing to pressure Russia into ending its war with Ukraine.

Macron will advocate for an agenda of cooperation in economic and trade matters aimed at achieving a balance that ensures “sustainable, solid growth that benefits everyone,” his office said.

Macron’s talks with president Xi Jinping will include a discussion of Russia’s war in Ukraine, particularly following a meeting on Monday in Paris with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss potential terms for a ceasefire.

“What we want… is that China can convince and influence Russia to move toward a ceasefire as quickly as possible and consolidate that ceasefire through negotiations which, in our view, should lead to solid security guarantees for Ukraine,” a French top diplomatic official said.

An aircraft thought to be carrying US special envoy Steve Witkoff flew out of Moscow in the early hours today after talks at the Kremlin on a settlement of the war in Ukraine, Russian news agencies reported.

The agencies, quoting aviation sources, said a Bombardier jet which had arrived the previous day with Witkoff on board had left the capital’s Vnukovo airport.

Witkoff and US president Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner held five hours of talks in the Kremlin with Russian President Vladimir Putin. TASS news agency said the plane took off at about 2.02am (2302 GMT).

Russia and the US have failed to agree terms on a peace deal in Ukraine after five hours of talks in Moscow, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

He said peace in Ukraine was “no closer” but also no further away.He noted that the two sides failed to reach a compromise on one of the most difficult issues – territorial disputes.

Ushakov described the discussions as constructive but acknowledged that differences remain over Ukraine.

The comments came after Russian president Vladimir Putin met in the Kremlin with US president Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday he was afraid the United States could lose interest in the Ukrainian peace process and that Russia’s goal was to bring this about.

“Yes, I am afraid. If somebody from our allies is tired, I’m afraid,” Zelensky told an event in Dublin when asked if he was concerned the US could lose interest in the peace process.

“It’s the goal of Russia to withdraw the interest of America from this situation,” he said.

President Vladimir Putin has warned European powers that if they started a war with Russia then Moscow was ready to fight and that the defeat of European powers would be so absolute that there would be no one left to even negotiate a peace deal.

Asked by a reporter about remarks in the Russian media that Hungarian foreign minister Peter Szijjarto had cautioned that Europe was preparing a war against Russia, Putin said that Russia did not want a war with Europe.

“If Europe suddenly wants to start a war with us and starts it,” Putin said, then it would end so swiftly for Europe that Russia would have no one left to negotiate with. Putin used the Russian word for “war”.

He also suggested that the war in Ukraine was not a full-blown war and that Russia was acting in a “surgical” manner which would not be repeated in a direct confrontation with European powers.

Ukraine’s foreign minister said on Tuesday that recent comments by Russian president Vladimir Putin show Russia is threatening freedom of navigation in the Black Sea and is not ready to end its war on Ukraine.

“For the second day in a row, Putin makes statements that demonstrate that he does not plan to end the war,” Andrii Sybiha wrote on X.

“Yesterday he said he was prepared to fight through the winter. Today, he threatens sea ports and freedom of navigation.”