Ukraine-Russia war latest: Putin ‘won’t accept any Trump peace deal’ as he is ‘obsessed’ with crushing Ukraine
Trump risks collapsing Ukraine’s front lines if he decides to starve Kyiv of military aid, Dmytro Kuleba warns
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Your support makes all the difference.Vladimir Putin will not accept a peace deal pushed by US president-elect Donald Trump, because the Russian president is “obsessed” with “crushing” Ukraine and exposing the weakness of the West, Ukraine’s former foreign minister has warned.
Dmytro Kuleba – who resigned in September – warned that Mr Trump instead risks collapsing Ukraine’s front lines if his administration decides to starve Kyiv of military aid.
Warning that Mr Putin still believes he “can snuff out Ukrainian statehood”, he told Politico: “Ukraine is a personal obsession for Putin, but crushing Ukraine is also a means to accomplish his grand goal – to show to the world how the West is incapable of defending itself or what it stands for.”
It came as Ukrainian officials said an experimental new ballistic missile fired by Russia at Dnipro last week carried multiple dummy warheads but no explosives. Mr Putin has called the Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile strike a successful test and claimed it reached its target – a missile and defence facility.
Russia says it will respond if US places missiles in Japan
Russia has said that a move by the United States to station missiles in Japan would threaten Russian security and prompt Moscow to retaliate.
Japan’s Kyodo news agency reported on Sunday that Japan and the US aim to compile a joint military plan for a possible Taiwan emergency that includes deploying missiles.
It cited unnamed US and Japanese sources as saying that under the plan, Washington would deploy missile units to the Nansei Islands of Japan’s southwestern Kagoshima and Okinawa prefectures, and to the Philippines.
Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova accused Japan of escalating the situation around Taiwan to justify the expansion of military ties with Washington.
“We have repeatedly warned the Japanese side that if, as a result of such cooperation, American medium-range missiles appear on its territory, this will pose a real threat to the security of our country and we will be forced to take the necessary, adequate steps to strengthen our own defense capability,” she said.
Russia says it would be ‘insane’ for West to give Ukraine nuclear weapons
The Russian foreign ministry has warned that an idea reportedly being floated in the West that the United States should give Ukraine nuclear weapons is “insane” and could bring the world to “the brink of catastrophe”.
The New York Times reported last week that some unidentified Western officials had suggested US president Joe Biden could give Ukraine nuclear weapons before he leaves office.
Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry, said it was in the interests of all responsible governments to ensure that such a scenario, which she called “suicidal”, did not unfold.
“We regard this as insanity,” Ms Zakharova told reporters. “This is absolute insanity being foisted upon a certain part of the political establishment in Ukraine by Westerners.”
“Irresponsible actions” by Ukraine and its Western backers could bring the world to “the brink of catastrophe”, she warned.
Listen | Starmer denies UK at war after Ukraine fires British Storm Shadow missiles into Russia
South Korea calls for joint response to North Korean threat
South Korea’s president has called for a joint response to the threat posed by North Korea’s recent dispatch of more than 10,000 soldiers to support Russia’s war against Ukraine, as he met with a Kyiv delegation pushing Seoul to provide military aid.
During the meeting with the delegation led by defence minister Rustem Umerov, president Yoon Suk Yeol said he hoped that Seoul and Kiev will work out effective ways to cope with the security threat posed by the North Korean-Russian military cooperation, Mr Yoon’s office said.
The two nations agreed to continue to share information on the North Korean troops in Russia and North Korean-Russian weapons and technology transfers while closely coordinating with the United States, a statement said – but did not mention whether the possible supply of weapons was discussed.
Russia is still working to deploy Sarmat intercontinental missile, TASS says
Russia is continuing work to put its Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile – part of its strategic nuclear arsenal – on combat duty, state news agency Tass has said.
The RS-28 Sarmat missile is designed to deliver nuclear warheads to strike targets thousands of miles away in the United States or Europe, but its development has been dogged by delays and testing setbacks.
In September, arms experts said Russia appeared to have suffered a catastrophic failure in the missile's latest test, leaving a deep crater at the launch silo.
Russian minister claims Oreshnik missile launch needed to make Moscow’s voice heard
Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov has said that the use of the new Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile against Ukraine was needed to make Moscow’s voice heard.
State news agency RIA quoted Mr Ryabkov as saying that Russia did not believe that the time for negotiations with the West had passed, but that it now needed to use stronger methods in order to get its point heard clearly.
Signing a peace deal ceding Ukrainian land to Russia ‘would be the end of Zelensky politically’
Any move by Volodymyr Zelensky to sign a peace deal which cedes territory to Russia would “be the end of” him politically, his former foreign minister has said.
With Donald Trump expected to push a deal upon Kyiv potentially freezing the current conflict, Dymtro Kuleba told Politico: “The Russians keep the Donbas, they keep Crimea, no Nato membership.
“Can Zelensky sign? He cannot because of the Constitution. And because it will be the end of Zelensky politically.”
Jailed Moscow politician urges end to Ukraine war at start of new terrorism trial
A Moscow district councillor serving a seven-year sentence for criticising Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has staged an anti-war protest from a courtroom cage at the start of a new trial against him on charges of justifying terrorism.
In summer 2022, Alexei Gorinov became the first person in Russia to be jailed under a new wartime censorship law which punished the dissemination of “deliberately false information” about the Russian army.
He is now further charged by Russian prosecutors with “justifying terrorism” for alleged conversations he had with cellmates about Ukraine’s Azov battalion, which Moscow considers a terrorist group, and the bombing of a bridge in Russian-annexed Crimea, independent outlet Mediazona reported.
Mr Gorinov, 63, risks up to five more years in prison if found guilty. His lawyers and supporters have voiced concerns about his health in prison, where they say he regularly suffers from bronchitis and is sometimes forced to shovel snow while ill.
From behind the bars of the defendants’ cage in the city of Vladimir, east of Moscow, Mr Gorinov held up a sign on Wednesday reading “Stop killing” and “Let’s stop the war”, accompanied by a drawing of a peace sign.
Mediazona reported that Mr Gorinov denied the terrorism charge on Wednesday, and told the court: “I have nothing to do with your terrorism and never have in my entire life. I was imprisoned for seven years only for speaking out ... about the fact that civilians are suffering and children are dying during the war.
“Life has shown that I was right.”
Republican claims Biden could be trying to start nuclear war to sabotage Trump
US Republican politician Marjorie Taylor Greene has baselessly suggested that outgoing president Joe Biden may be trying to start a nuclear war in Europe before he leaves office in order to sabotage Donald Trump’s incoming administration.
The Georgia populist, who is never short of a wild conspiracy theory, took to X on Monday to respond to a thinly-sourced post by conservative influencer Mario Nawfal on the Russia-Ukraine war that read: “WTF: U.S WANTS TO ARM UKRAINE WITH NUKES BEFORE BIDEN LEAVES?!
However, there is no evidence at all to suggest he is seeking to escalate the war for domestic political gain or has any intention of returning nuclear weapons to the former Soviet satellite state for the first time in three decades – a move that Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev has warned would invite a direct retaliation from Moscow.
My colleague Joe Sommerlad reports:
Marjorie Taylor Greene suggests Biden ‘trying to start a nuclear war’ to thwart Trump
MAGA Republican baselessly claimed the president is seeking to sabotage his successor’s incoming administration by dramatically escalating conflict in Europe
Slovakia’s Fico and Trump discuss Ukraine war
Slovakia’s prime minister Robert Fico has held a phone call with Donald Trump in which he and the US president-elect’s discussions focused mainly on the war in Ukraine, the Slovakian government has said.
After taking office more than a year ago, Fico’s leftist-nationalist government immediately halted military supplies to Kyiv, while allowing commercial sales to continue, and it has argued that weapons deliveries are prolonging the war there.
Mr Fico’s stance, which echoes that of Hungary’s Viktor Orban – viewed as the European Union leader closest to Mr Putin – contrasts with the official position of the EU, which has mostly looked to isolate Moscow.
The Slovakian leader drew criticism from the country’s opposition last month when he appeared in an interview on Russia’s state-run Rossiya-1 television channel, in which he criticised the EU’s approach to the Ukraine war.
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