LONDON, Feb 26 (Reuters) – Images of debris from Russian strikes on Ukraine strongly indicate that Moscow has used a cruise missile whose development led Donald Trump to quit a landmark nuclear pact in his first term, two experts said, confirming earlier Reuters reporting.
The specialists based their analysis on images of fragments of the nuclear-capable missile provided to Reuters by three Ukrainian law enforcement sources, the first visual evidence published to date corroborating Russia’s use of the weapon.
Its deployment dozens of times in Ukraine is a striking example of how the nuclear arms control edifice emerging from the Cold War has crumbled in recent years. This month saw the expiry of New START, the nuclear treaty that imposed limits on U.S. and Russian strategic weapons.
Russia’s development of the 9M729 prompted Trump to quit the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, then a cornerstone of nuclear arms control, in 2019, saying the ground-launched missile could fly far beyond the permitted limit of 500 km (310 miles).
The Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s Office told Reuters in a written statement in November that one of the 9M729 missiles fired by Russia on October 5 last year flew more than 1,200 km.
FRAGMENTS FOUND AT SITES ACROSS WESTERN UKRAINE
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha and sources told Reuters in October that Russia had fired the 9M729 at Ukraine twice in 2022 and 23 times between August and October last year, the first known combat uses of the missile anywhere.
Russia fired at least four more of the missiles at Ukraine on February 17, one of the law enforcement sources said, the first time those cases have been reported. There have been other uses since October too, the source added.
“The images really do appear to show the 9M729. In addition to the markings, the debris are similar to other cruise missiles that are related to the 9M729,” said Jeffrey Lewis, Distinguished Scholar of Global Security at Middlebury College in Vermont.
Analysts at Janes, a UK-based defence intelligence company, told Reuters there was a high likelihood the debris shown in the 10 images had come from the ground-launched 9M729 missile.
The law enforcement sources said the images show fragments recovered in Zhytomyr, Lviv, Khmelnytskyi and Vinnytsia regions, all in western Ukraine.
Reuters could not verify where and when the photographs of the fragments were taken.
One piece bears the serial number 0274, while others bear the marking 9M729. In another case, a Reuters reporter saw a fragment stamped 9M729, but was asked by a Ukrainian law enforcement official not to photograph it for publication.
Russia’s Defence Ministry did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
Russia has acknowledged the existence of the missile, but denied it was in breach of the 1987 treaty and that it could fly as far as the distance permitted.
One of the 9M729 missiles fired by Russia on October 5 struck a home in Lapaiivka village near Lviv, resulting in the death of five civilians, the Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s Office said in its statement – over 1,200 km from the point from which it was fired.
The use of the missiles is being investigated in eight different regions, it added.
The INF specifically outlawed ground-launched missiles with a range of over 500 km because their launchers are easier to conceal, making them a greater potential threat than missile-carrying warplanes or warships that militaries track.
Since November 2024, Russia has also twice attacked Ukraine with the Oreshnik, a new intermediate-range ground-launched ballistic missile that would also have been banned under the INF.
Both the 9M729 and the Oreshnik can carry a nuclear or conventional warhead and their range puts European capitals within reach.
The 9M729 has a range of 2,500 km, according to the Missile Threat website produced at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Several NATO countries in Europe are now trying to buy or develop their own long-range, deep-strike weapons to narrow the gap in their deterrence capabilities with Russia.
Some European governments worry that the U.S. is no longer committed to protecting Europe. Washington has told Europeans they must take over primary responsibility for the conventional defence of the continent.
Russia said last August it would no longer place any limits on where it deploys intermediate-range missiles that can carry nuclear warheads.
WHY DID RUSSIA FIRE IT AT UKRAINE?
Russia has launched many thousands of drones and missiles at Ukraine since its full-scale invasion began four years ago. Most recently it has targeted power and heating infrastructure during Ukraine’s coldest winter of the war.
It was not clear why Russia has been using the 9M729 missile.
Lewis, the missile analyst, said it was surprising Russia was willing to lose sensitive information by using the nuclear-capable missile in Ukraine, which allows military experts to study its combat performance and pore over missile fragments.
“Russia may have a relatively small stockpile of sophisticated cruise missiles and so it’s willing to dip into its longer-range stockpile,” he said.
(Reporting by Tom Balmforth; editing by Mike Collett-White and Gareth Jones)
Google Maps is also different from a paper map; if you annotate the latter, nobody else sees your notes. Google Maps allows us to annotate collectively and to create a new kind of common knowledge about the world. With a few exceptions, we are all using the same Google Maps, regardless of our location. Generally, every review is visible to all.
Most people use reviews to seek out pleasures and avoid annoyances. Is the coffee better at this café or that one? Does the food taste as good as it looks in the pictures? Will this dry cleaner ruin my clothes? This is mostly still the case in Russia, even as certain locales attract digital pleas of desperation. In a review for Dodo’s Pizza, a restaurant just down the road from Military Hospital 1602, a user named Aleksandr has informed the world that the food is “always perfectly prepared,” and that “everything is clean, and the staff is polite.”
In recent years, the Russian government has tightened its control over civilians’ digital lives. A few weeks after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin blocked Russians from accessing Facebook, Instagram, and X. Two years later, his government throttled YouTube, and blocked the encrypted-messaging app Signal; this month, it also blocked WhatsApp. Google has not been banned outright, though Google Maps is sometimes disrupted by government meddling. Banned websites could still be accessed by Russians using V.P.N.s—so the government cracked down on V.P.N.s, most of which are now unreliable. Even searching for information online can be risky. Last fall, a man who looked up a Ukrainian military unit was arrested by federal agents and charged with an “illegal internet search”; reports speculated that his internet provider may have passed the contents of his search to Russia’s security service.
Instead of Western online tools, the Russian government encourages the use of domestic alternatives: VKontakte instead of Facebook, Max instead of Signal, Yandex instead of Google. Yandex, a search engine that was founded at around the same time as Google, in the nineteen-nineties, and offers its own maps service—Yandex Maps—has been a frequent target of Russia’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor, whose job is to “ensure stability in society” by monitoring and censoring media, according to the regulator’s website.
Compliance comes in many forms; Yandex has removed images of bombed-out houses in Mariupol, deleted a pin that marked the grave of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and stopped displaying search results from news sites that have been blacklisted by the government. But censorship can have unintended effects. Last summer, Yandex followed orders from the Defence Ministry to blur the sites of military facilities in Moscow. “At the same time, all these facilities are displayed on Google Maps,” a Ukrainian tech blog reported. “Now, behind the blurred spots, it is perfectly visible where exactly the military-industrial complex enterprises are located.”
On Google Maps, Rostov is easy to find by zooming in to the area where the Russian border meets the Azov Sea. On Yandex, it’s harder to use this method. In 2022, Yandex Maps stopped displaying borders—not just between Russia and its occupied territories in Ukraine but everywhere. “The emphasis will be on natural features, not state borders,” the company said.
Rostov is one of the largest Russian cities near the Ukrainian border, a military town that is home to about a million people. Many of the residents are veterans of Russia’s wars—men who fought in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Georgia, and Ukraine. Its proximity to the border makes it vulnerable to Ukrainian drone attacks, which routinely target Russian military sites and energy infrastructure. Occasionally, a “drone danger” alert pops up on Rostov residents’ screens. One night in January, the Russian military reportedly shot down twenty-five Ukrainian drones over the Rostov region; one civilian was killed, and the debris from a drone crashed into an apartment block, injuring four others.
MOSCOW, Feb 24 (Reuters) – The Kremlin said on Tuesday that Western countries’ decision to intervene in the conflict in Ukraine meant it had become a much wider confrontation with nations that Russia believed want to crush it.
Speaking exactly four years after tens of thousands of Russian troops entered Ukraine on President Vladimir Putin’s orders, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the fighting continued, but that Moscow remained open to achieving its aims through political and diplomatic means.
“Following the direct intervention in this conflict by Western European countries and the United States, the special military operation de facto turned into a much larger confrontation between Russia and Western countries, which had and continue to harbour the goal of destroying our country,” said Peskov.
Asked whether Moscow believed the conflict could be resolved through talks, Peskov said: “We are continuing our efforts to achieve peace, our position is very clear and consistent. Now everything depends on the actions of the Kyiv regime.”
Peskov said he could not say when and where the next round of negotiations with Ukraine would take place as they had yet to be finalised.
“We truly hope that this work will continue,” he said.
(Reporting by Gleb StolyarovWriting by Felix LightEditing by Andrew Osborn)
KYIV, Feb 24 (Reuters) – Ukraine has defended its independence since Russia’s invasion and will not betray the sacrifices made by its people as it seeks peace, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an address marking the fourth anniversary of the start of the war.
“Putin has not achieved his goals. He has not broken the Ukrainian people. He has not won this war,” Zelenskiy said on Tuesday. “We have preserved Ukraine, and we will do everything to achieve peace. And to ensure justice.”
Zelenskiy is due to welcome dignitaries from European allies, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, in Kyiv later in the day for ceremonies four years on from Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022.
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides have died or been wounded in Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War Two. Russian forces have killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians and destroyed Ukrainian cities with years of missiles and drone strikes.
Ongoing peace talks with Russia, brokered by the United States, appear to have stalled over the question of territory.
Moscow, which is advancing slowly on the battlefield, has refused to drop its insistence that Ukraine cede the final 20% of the eastern region of Donetsk – while Kyiv is adamant it will not relinquish land that thousands have died to defend.
“We want peace. Strong, dignified, lasting peace,” Zelenskiy said in his address.
He added that he had told Ukraine’s peace negotiators: “Do not nullify all these years, do not devalue all the struggle, courage, dignity, everything that Ukraine has gone through. We cannot, we must not, give it away, forget it, betray it.”
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Andrew Heavens)
Missed the second half of the show? The latest on…Republican Sen. John Curtis of Utah says Elon Musk needs to bring a “dose of compassion” to his treatment of federal workers who are being fired across the government, Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland faulted President Trump for undermining Ukraine in any eventual peace talks with Russia, saying that taking several Ukrainian demands off the table is “terrible negotiating”, and “I think that this is going to get into the hundreds of cases and could take many months to fully snuff out,” Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the FDA, said about the ongoing measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico.
SEOUL, Feb 23 (Reuters) – South Korea has asked the Russian embassy in Seoul to take down a large banner reading “Victory will be ours”, its foreign ministry said, just ahead of this week’s fourth anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine.
The ministry said in a statement on Sunday that it had conveyed its concerns to the embassy without clarifying whether it had received a response.
The roughly 15-metre (49.21 ft) banner, in the colours of the Russian flag and written in Russian, was hung on the embassy’s outer wall in central Seoul ahead of the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Tuesday.
The banner remained in place on Monday.
In its statement, the ministry reiterated South Korea’s position that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is illegal.
The ministry also said that military cooperation between Russia and North Korea should stop, describing it as a grave threat to South Korea’s security and a violation of the U.N. Charter and U.N. Security Council resolutions.
Earlier this month, Russian Ambassador to South Korea Georgy Zinoviev praised what he described as North Korean troops’ role in fighting in Russia’s Kursk region, according to media reports.
Under a mutual defence pact with Russia in 2024, North Korea sent some 14,000 soldiers to fight alongside Russian troops against Ukraine, where more than 6,000 of them were killed, according to South Korean, Ukrainian and Western sources.
The Russian embassy in Seoul could not immediately be reached for comment by phone. An automated voice message stated the embassy was closed due to a public holiday on Monday.
(Reporting by Kyu-seok ShimEditing by Ed Davies and Saad Sayeed)
Feb 23 (Reuters) – A “massive” Ukrainian missile attack inflicted serious damage on energy infrastructure and disrupted supplies of power, heat and water in Russia’s Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine, the region’s governor said early on Monday.
“There has been, as a result, serious damage to energy infrastructure,” Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram. “In residences, there are interruptions in supplies of electricity, water and heat.”
Gladkov described the attack as “massive”, affecting both the city of Belgorod, 40 km (25 miles) from the border, and the surrouding area. He said the extent of damage would be assessed at first light.
Belgorod has frequently come under attack from Ukrainian forces in the conflict whose fourth anniversary will be marked this week.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by David Gregorio)
KYIV, Feb 22 (Reuters) – One police officer was killed and 24 other people were injured after several explosive devices detonated at midnight in Lviv in western Ukraine, the National Police said on Sunday.
“It has been preliminarily established that homemade explosive devices detonated,” the police said on the Telegram messaging service.
The police said that the first explosion occurred after a patrol crew arrived at the suspected scene of a shop break-in, while the second explosion occurred a little later.
The mayor of Lviv, Andriy Sadovyi, called the incident a terrorist act.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus)
Feb 21 (Reuters) – An Oreo cookie plant in eastern Ukraine was struck by a Russian missile on Saturday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said in a post on X, the second time the factory has been damaged since the war began in 2022.
No one was killed, but a production building was damaged, Sybiha wrote. The facility, located in Trostyanets, is owned by snack giant Mondelez International.
The Chicago-based company, which also makes Ritz crackers, Toblerone chocolate and Trident gum, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday evening. The Kremlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment overnight on Saturday.
“When Russian missiles hit such sites, they are not only targeting Ukraine,” Sybiha wrote. “They are targeting American business interests in Europe.”
The same factory was badly damaged in 2022 during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The plant partially reopened in 2023 to make chocolate and then resumed manufacturing Oreos in 2024.
Mondelez has faced criticism for continuing business operations in Russia during the war.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax and Andrea Shalal;Editing by Noeleen Walder and Paul Simao)
TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Even now, safely in her new home of Estonia, Inna Vnukova says she can’t purge the terrifying memory of living under Russian occupation in eastern Ukraine early in the war and her family’s harrowing escape.
They hid in a damp basement for days in their village of Kudriashivka after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. In the streets, soldiers waving machine guns bullied residents, set up checkpoints and looted homes. There was constant shelling.
“Everyone was very scared and afraid to go outside,” Vnukova told The Associated Press, with troops seeking out Ukrainian sympathizers and civil servants like her and her husband, Oleksii Vnukov.
In mid-March, she decided that she and her 16-year-old son, Zhenya, would flee the village with her brother’s family, even though it meant leaving her husband behind temporarily. They took a risky trip by car to nearby Starobilsk, waving a white sheet amid mortar fire.
“We had already said our goodbyes to life, cursing this Russian world,” said Vnukova, 42. “I’ve been trying to forget this nightmare for four years, but I can’t.”
Many Ukrainians like Vnukova fled the invading forces. Those who stayed risked being detained — or worse — as Russian forces eventually took control of about 20% of the country and its estimated 3 million to 5 million people.
A new, Russian life in the seized regions
After four years of war, life in shattered cities like Mariupol and villages like Kudriashivka remains difficult, with residents facing problems with housing, water, power, heat and health care. Even President Vladimir Putin has acknowledged they have “many truly pressing, urgent problems.”
In the illegally annexed regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, Russian citizenship, language and culture is forced on residents, including in school lessons and textbooks. By spring 2025, some 3.5 million people in the four regions had been given Russian passports — a requirement to receive vital services like health care.
Some in the regions say they live in fear of being accused of sympathizing with Ukraine. Many have been imprisoned, beaten and killed, according to human rights activists.
Oleksii Vnukov, right, his wife, Inna Vnukova, center left, and their children Evhen, left, and Alisa, pose during an interview with The Associated Press in their apartment in Tallinn, Estonia, Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026. (AP Photo)
Oleksii Vnukov, a court security officer, stayed behind in the village for nearly two weeks. Russian soldiers twice threatened to kill him, including an instance where he and a friend were dragged off the street by soldiers. But he survived and soon also escaped the village.
The family traveled through Russia before making it to Estonia, where Inna works in a printing house and Oleksii, 43, is an electrician.
“All life is leaving the occupied territories,” Vnukov said. “The people there aren’t living, they’re just surviving.”
Mykhailo Savva of the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine said the Russian military’s practice of wielding “systemic and total control” in the regions continues today.
“Even though a significant number of socially active people have already been detained, Russian special services continue to identify disloyal Ukrainians, extract confessions, and continue to detain people,” Savva said. “Residents face such practices as document checks, mass searches, and denunciations on a daily basis.”
Human rights groups say Russian authorities used “filtration camps” to identify potentially disloyal individuals, as well as anyone who worked for the government, helped the Ukrainian army or had relatives in the military, along with journalists, teachers, scientists and politicians.
Stanislav Shkuta, 25, who lived in occupied Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region, said he narrowly escaped arrest several times before reaching Ukrainian-controlled territory in 2023. He recalled being on a bus that was stopped by Russian soldiers.
“It was horrific. Men and women were asked to strip to the waist to see if they had Ukrainian tattoos,” said Shkuta, who now lives in Estonia. “I turned white with fear, wondering if I’d cleared everything on my phone.”
He said his friends who stayed in Nova Kakhovka say life has worsened, with suspected Ukrainian sympathizers stopped on the street or in surprise door-to-door inspections.
“Today, my friends complain that life there has become impossible,” he said.
Russia established a “vast network of secret and official detention centers where tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians” are held indefinitely without charge, said Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Center for Civil Liberties.
“Everyone knows that if you end up in the basement, your life is worth nothing,” she said.
Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Center for Civil Liberties, poses in her office in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)
Russian officials have refused to comment on past allegations by U.N. human rights officials that it tortures civilians and prisoners of war.
About 16,000 civilians have been detained illegally, but that number could be much higher because many are held incommunicado. said Ukrainian Human Rights Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets.
A U.N. report released last summer said that between July 2024 and June 2025, it spoke to 57 civilians who were detained in the occupied regions, and that 52 of them told of severe beatings, electric shocks, sexual violence, degradation and threats of violence.
One particularly famous case is that of Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna, 27, who disappeared in 2023 while reporting near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and died in Russian custody. When her body was handed over to Ukraine in 2025, it bore signs of torture, with some of her organs removed, a prosecutor said.
“Russia uses terror in the occupied territories to physically eliminate active people working in certain fields: teachers, children’s writers, musicians, mayors, journalists, environmentalists. It also intimidates the passive majority,” Matviichuk says.
Destruction in Mariupol
At the start of the war, Russian forces besieged Mariupol before the port city fell in May 2022. The Russian bombing of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater on March 16 of that year killed close to 600 people in and around the building, an AP investigation found, in the single deadliest known attack against civilians in the war.
Most of the city’s population of about a half-million fled but many hid in basements, said a former actor who huddled for months with his parents, saying they were nearly killed by the Russian bombing.
The former actor, now in Estonia, spoke on condition of anonymity to not endanger his 76-year-old parents, still in Mariupol. They had to take Russian citizenship to get medical care, as well as a one-time payment equivalent to $1,300 per person as compensation for their destroyed home, he said.
As in other occupied cities, Russification is taking place in Mariupol, changing street names, teaching Moscow-approved curriculum in schools, using Russian phone and TV networks and putting the city in Moscow’s time zone.
“But even today, the threat of death has not gone away. Only those who have Russian passports can survive,″ the former actor said, adding that his parents have asked him not to send postcards in Ukrainian because “it could be dangerous.”
Putin “openly states that there is no Ukrainian language, no Ukrainian culture, no Ukrainian nation. And in the occupied territories, these words are turning into terrible practice,” Matviichuk said.
A view inside Mariupol’s Drama Theater on Monday, April 4, 2022, after the landmark was heavily damaged during fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces that led to Moscow’s takeover of the seaside city. (AP Photo, File)
But not everyone opposes the Russian takeover in Mariupol. The former actor says half of the members of his old troupe now support the Kremlin and believe Kyiv “provoked the war.”
Housing is a sore point in Mariupol, where the population is about half of what it was before 2022. New apartment blocks rose from the ruins, but rather than going to those who lost their homes, they are sold to Russian newcomers.
Some who lost their homes have made video appeals to Putin. “You said we ‘don’t abandon our own.’ Do we not count as your own?” said one resident at a mass rally.
At least 12,191 apartments in Mariupol were added to a list of purportedly “ownerless” and abandoned flats to be expropriated in the first half of 2025. Thousands more are being seized elsewhere.
Moscow is encouraging Russian citizens to move to the occupied regions, offering a range of benefits. Teachers, doctors and cultural workers are promised salary supplements if they commit to living there for five years.
Crumbling infrastructure and a shortage of doctors
Years of war and neglect have saddled many occupied cities in eastern Ukraine with serious problems in supplying heat, electricity and water.
The northeastern city of Sievierodonetsk suffered significant destruction before falling to Russia in June 2022. Once home to 140,000 people, only 45,000 remain, mostly elderly or disabled.
Only one ambulance crew serves the whole city, and doctors and other health workers rotate in from Russian regions like Perm to work at its hospital, said a 67-year-old former engineer who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
But she still supports “the great work Putin is doing,” because she was born and raised in the former Soviet Union.
In Alchevsk, a city in the Luhansk region, over half the homes have been without heat for two bitterly cold months. Five warming stations have been set up and utility companies said over 60% of municipal heating networks are in poor shape, without funds for repairs.
Even a pro-Moscow politician, Oleg Tsaryov, has accused authorities of freezing “an entire city.” When the heating system failed in 2006, he noted on social media that Ukrainian authorities “and the entire country stepped in to help and completely replaced the faulty equipment.” But after the Russian takeover, officials had “contrived to repeat this Armageddon scenario all over again,” he added.
In the Donetsk region, water trucks fill barrels outside apartment blocks — but they freeze solid in winter, said a resident who spoke on condition of anonymity because she feared repercussions.
“There’s constant squabbling over water,” she said, adding that lines to get the precious resource are “insane,” and people who are away at work often miss the trucks’ arrival.
A woman gets drinking water distributed by authorities in the city of Donetsk in the Russian-controlled part of eastern Ukraine, on Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026. (AP Photo)
Donetsk residents wrote an appeal for Putin to intervene in what has become “a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe.”
Putin last year acknowledged the plight in the four regions.
“I know how difficult it is now for the residents of the liberated cities and towns. There are many truly pressing, urgent problems,” he said, marking the third anniversary of incorporating those areas into Russia. He cited the need for reliable water supplies and access to health care, among other issues, and said he has launched a “large-scale socioeconomic development program” for the regions.
Meanwhile, Inna Vnukova is building a new life in Estonia: She and Oleksii now have a 1-year-old daughter, Alisa. Their son is now 20.
Only about 150 people — including the couple’s parents — remain in the village that once was home to 800, Vnukova said, adding that she would like to show her daughter the family’s native Luhansk region someday.
“We’ve been dreaming of returning for four years, but we increasingly wonder — what will we see there?” she asked.
—-
Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England, contributed.
MOSCOW, Feb 20 (Reuters) – American financier Gentry Beach, who has ties to U.S. President Donald Trump’s family, signed an agreement with Russia’s energy giant Novatek last autumn to develop natural gas in Alaska amid Western sanctions against Russia, the New York Times reported on Friday.
In August, Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in Alaska for talks aimed at ending Russia’s war in Ukraine.
U.S. and Russian officials discussed several potential energy deals on the sidelines of the negotiations. Sources familiar with the talks said the business proposals were designed to encourage the Kremlin to agree to a peace deal in Ukraine and for Washington to ease sanctions on Russia.
The war is still raging in Ukraine after four years.
The New York Times, which spoke to the Texas financier, said he had quietly signed an agreement for Novatek to develop natural gas in Alaska.
He told the newspaper that the project was in its early stages and faced significant hurdles, declining to disclose the financial details.
Novatek told the newspaper it was “indeed having negotiations on the potential use” of its technology to liquefy natural gas in remote northern Alaska, but it did not confirm that it was working with Beach.
Novatek did not reply to a request for comment from Reuters. Beach was not immediately available for comment.
Beach is chairman and CEO of investment firm America First Global that holds interests in energy, mining and infrastructure. He helped raise funds for Trump’s election campaign in 2016 and contributed to shaping the administration’s “America First” economic and diplomatic agenda.
Beach is also a college friend of Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., according to the New York Times.
(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin, editing by Andrei Khalip)
U.S. fighter jets were scrambled Thursday to intercept multiple Russian bombers, fighter jets and a spy plane that were spotted flying off the coast of Alaska, U.S. authorities said.
Two Russian Tu-95s bombers, two Su-35s fighter planes and an A-50 spy plane were detected in the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone, the North American Aerospace Defense Command reported in a statement.
NORAD said it launched two F-16s, two F-35s and four KC-135s to escort the Russian aircraft until they had departed the Alaskan ADIZ.
The Russian aircraft did not enter U.S. or Canadian airspace, said NORAD, which described Russia’s activity in the Alaskan ADIZ as a regular occurrence that was not considered a threat.
The Alaskan ADIZ is a stretch of international airspace that begins where U.S. and Canadian sovereign airspace ends. According to NORAD, it is a “defined stretch of international airspace that requires the ready identification of all aircraft in the interest of national security.”
A screen grab from a video shows Russian Tu-95 bomber conducting a planned flight lasting more than 11 hours over neutral waters of the Sea of Japan on Jan. 21, 2026.
Russian Defense Ministry/Anadolu via Getty Images
In September 2025, the U.S. also scrambled fighter jets to intercept Russian Tu-95s and Su-35s in the Alaskan ADIZ. And last August, NORAD intercepted a Russian IL-20 COOT, a Cold War-era reconnaissance aircraft, four times in one week.
In September 2024, a 15-second video posted by NORAD showed a Russian fighter jet flying just feet away from a NORAD aircraft in the Alaskan ADIZ.
In July 2024, both Russian and Chinese bombers were intercepted by the U.S. after entering the Alaskan ADIZ. At the time, a U.S. defense official told CBS News this marked the first time that Russian and Chinese aircraft had ever jointly entered the Alaska ADIZ, and the first time Chinese H-6 bombers had encroached off Alaska.
PARIS, Feb 19 (Reuters) – France said on Thursday it was surprised that the European Commission had sent a commissioner to the Board of Peace in Washington saying it did not have the mandate to represent member states, its foreign ministry spokesperson said.
Pascal Confavreux said as far as Paris was concerned, the Board of Peace needed to recentre to focus on Gaza in line with a United Nations Security Council resolution and that until that ambiguity was lifted, France would not take part.
“Regarding the European Commission and its participation, in reality we are surprised because it does not have a mandate from the Council to go and participate,” he told reporters, referring to the Council of the European Union’s members.
U.S. President Donald Trump is presiding over the first meeting of his Board of Peace on Thursday with the event expected to include representatives from more than 45 nations.
Most European governments have opted to not send top-level representatives to the gathering, but the European Commission has said that its commissioner for the Mediterranean, Dubravka Suica, is attending.
“Our objective is clear: coordinated action, accountable governance, and tangible results for the Palestinian people,” Suica wrote on social media platform X on Thursday ahead of the meeting.
While Suica is attending as an observer, several EU member states have raised concerns about an EU commissioner participating in a meeting of a body many EU governments see as undermining international law.
Some diplomats have also questioned whether the European Commission has a mandate to decide on sending a representative without approval from capitals.
“It is surprising that the Commission has decided to be represented at the event, given that numerous countries have expressed concerns about its potential instrumentalisation and have questioned the credibility of an initiative that appears to seek to supplant the United Nations,” a Belgian diplomat said.
Europeans have also been divided on how to approach the U.S.-led gathering, with some sending officials in an observer capacity. The United Kingdom and Germany have sent ambassadors to the event, while France has opted not to be represented.
The Commission has defended Suica’s attendance as in line with its commitment to the implementation of a ceasefire and part of the institution’s efforts to support Gaza’s recovery and reconstruction.
(Reporting by John Irish and Lili Bayer, Editing by Charlotte Van Campenhout)
KYIV, Feb 18 (Reuters) – Ukraine imposed a package of sanctions against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Wednesday, vowing to “increase countermeasures” against Minsk for its wartime assistance to Russia.
Belarus, one of Russia’s closest allies, served as a staging ground for Moscow to launch its 2022 invasion, allowing Russian forces to get close to the Ukrainian capital before they were pushed back.
“We will significantly intensify countermeasures against all forms of (Lukashenko’s) assistance in the killing of Ukrainians,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on social media.
The press service of the Belarus presidency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Zelenskiy said Belarus, which shares a border of over 1,000 kilometres (621 miles) with Ukraine, had aided Moscow’s extensive drone attacks on Ukraine.
Although there has not been active fighting along the Ukraine-Belarus border, Zelenskiy said Minsk had allowed Russia in the second half of 2025 to deploy a system of relay stations in Belarus to control its drones in attacks on Ukraine.
“The Russians would not have been able to carry out some of the attacks, particularly on energy facilities and railways in our regions, without such assistance from Belarus,” said Zelenskiy, whose order also banned Lukashenko from entering Ukraine.
With Lukashenko already under U.S. and European sanctions, the move is largely symbolic, although Zelenskiy said Ukraine would work with its partners to ensure the new measures have a “global effect”.
U.S. President Donald Trump last December granted limited sanctions relief to three Belarusian companies producing potash – a key component in fertilisers – after the former Soviet state released 123 political prisoners.
One of those former prisoners, Maria Kalesnikava, urged European countries on Tuesday to follow Trump’s lead and engage in a dialogue with Lukashenko on the grounds that failing to do so would only further strengthen Russian influence over Belarus.
Zelenskiy said more than 3,000 Belarusian businesses were providing supplies for Russia’s war effort, including missile components, and also cited Minsk’s plans to host Russia’s Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile.
Russia released video in December of what it said was the deployment of the Oreshnik missile system in Belarus. Lukashenko said at the time that the missile had been deployed to Belarus and entered active combat duty.
(Reporting by Max HunderEditing by Daniel Flynn and Gareth Jones)
MOSCOW, Feb 18 (Reuters) – The Kremlin said on Wednesday that neither China nor Russia havecarried out secret nuclear tests, noting Beijing had denied U.S. accusations that it had done so.
The United States this month accused China of conducting a secret nuclear test in 2020 as it called for a new, broader arms control treaty that would bring in China as well as Russia.
“We’ve heard many references to certain tests. Both the Russian Federation and China have been mentioned in this regard. Neither the Russian Federation nor China has conducted any nuclear tests,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
“We also know that these allegations were categorically denied by a representative of the People’s Republic of China, so that’s the situation,” added Peskov.
U.S. President Donald Trump is pressing China to join the U.S. and Russia to negotiate a replacement pact to New START, the last U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control agreement which expired on February 5.
The treaty’s expiration has fuelled concerns among some experts that the world is on the verge of an accelerated nuclear arms race, though other arms control experts say such fears are exaggerated.
(Reporting by Reuters, Writing by Felix LightEditing by Andrew Osborn)
Prices have risen steadily in Russia since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in Ukraine [BBC]
“Life is becoming more expensive,” complains Alexander, a Moscow-based advertising specialist who works for a big corporation.
In the course of one month his monthly food budget soared by more than 22% – from 35,000 roubles (£330; $450) to 43,000 (£406; $555).
With Russia’s economy hanging somewhere between stagnation and decline, ordinary Russians have begun to feel the pinch from the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine, as it approaches its fourth anniversary.
The cost of almost all essentials has gone up in local supermarkets, from eggs and chicken fillets to seasonal vegetables, Alexander has noticed. We have changed the names of everyone we have spoken to for this piece.
Even his daily treat on the way to work – an Americano from a local cafe – has suddenly surged 26% from 230 to 290 roubles.
Russians have noticed a sharp increase in food prices since the start of the year [Getty Images]
Prices have risen steadily in Russia since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in Ukraine, driven by a federal budget dominated by the war effort and defence industry.
This in turn has led to rapid economic growth and raised living standards across the country.
Until now, high levels of inflation have gone largely unnoticed by the general population, especially in the big cities such as Moscow and St Petersburg. Big spending masked the mounting economic consequences of the war, as well as Western sanctions and the exodus of foreign investment from Russia.
That rapid economic growth slowed sharply in 2025, and as salaries could no longer keep up with inflation, rising prices started to hit people’s pockets.
Then at the start of 2026, supermarket prices jumped by a sharp 2.3% in less than a month, according to data from Russia’s statistics service Rosstat.
Everything became more expensive at the start of the year: meat, milk, salt, flour, potatoes, pasta, bananas, soap, toothpaste, socks, laundry detergent, and many medicines too.
Every other January since 2019, the BBC has bought the same selection of 59 basic goods from the same supermarket chain, Pyaterochka, in Moscow. The basket includes vegetables and fruits, dairy and meat products, canned goods and instant noodles, sweets and beverages, including beer.
In 2024, the basket cost 7,358 roubles (£63; $83). Last month, it cost 8,724 (£83; $112) roubles – an increase of 18.6%.
That tallies with Rosstat’s own 18.1% measure of overall accumulated food inflation from January 2024 to the end of January 2026.
One of the most noticeable price increases in our basket has been a hike of almost 15% in the cost of fruit and vegetables since 2024.
Russia relies on imported fruit and vegetables, so store prices are highly sensitive to fluctuations in the rouble exchange rate and disruptions in the supply chain. Both occurred after the beginning of the war in Ukraine.
At the same time, the price of dairy products – which tend to be locally produced – has soared 41%, the biggest rise in our sample basket in the last two years. This is because Russia’s dairy industry has been hit by rising farm costs, expensive loans and staff shortages.
The most recent factor influencing price rises is a two-point increase in VAT from 20% to 22% since 1 January.
The sales tax hike is directly related to the war in Ukraine, as Russia’s finance ministry said it was needed to finance the country’s “defence and security”.
Dairy products have seen the biggest price surge in BBC’s basket in the last two years [Getty Images]
While Alexander from Moscow told the BBC he was not going to change his eating habits, others say rising food prices have hit their diets and family budgets significantly.
Nadezhda, 68, says she can no longer afford to buy beef and has resorted to cheap varieties of fish.
She and her husband, who are both retired, live in Moscow on their state pensions and his additional income. Nadezhda says her entire monthly pension of almost 32,000 roubles (£302; $413) now goes on food.
That means other expenses have been put on hold.
They had been saving to fix their car, but recently had to rely on savings to pay for food. Similarly, buying a new winter jacket for Nadezhda’s husband, which would have cost about 17,000 roubles (£160; $220), will have to wait until next year.
Kristina, a Moscow marketing specialist in her mid-40s, also had dig into her savings to buy food last month. She lives with her husband, who is a personal trainer, and says she has started paying attention to discounts and has noticed others in supermarkets doing so as well.
“Now I take a very pragmatic approach: not what I want or don’t want to eat, but how much protein is in 100 grams of this product,” Kristina says.
She and her husband can no longer afford to eat out, but even when cooking at home, the price of a dinner for two has more than doubled – from around 1,000 roubles (£9.46; $12.92) to more than 2,000 roubles (£18.91; $25.85).
In summer 2025, Russia’s Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina said that the economy was close to a “scenario of balanced rates of economic growth”.
However, some economists suggest that after slowing down significantly last year, the Russian economy is now at risk of going into the red.
One of the main risks this year will come from the oil market.
The federal budget is based on a high oil price, but market rates have fallen since the start of this year and there is no expectation of any imminent rise.
Russian oil sales have also been hit by latest US sanctions that have cut off supplies to one of Moscow’s main trading partners, India.
As a result, Russian authorities are likely to face a bigger budget deficit than they had planned.
Despite Russian President Vladimir Putin paying a visit to India in December last year, India’s Russian crude imports have fallen since the beginning of 2026 under pressure from US [Getty Images]
Borrowing is difficult due to high interest rates – few are willing to lend to a country currently waging war and with a reputation for being unreliable.
That could mean further unpopular measures – either further tax rises, which would hurt people and businesses, or cutting budget spending, primarily in the public sector. That would slow down the economy and bring down household incomes further.
“Overall, there is a trend towards stagnation and a possible decline in GDP,” Tatiana Mikhailova, an economist and visiting assistant professor at Penn State University, told the BBC.
For the moment nothing indicates the economy is in decline, but she believes there is a high likelihood of it happening.
“Every time oil prices fall, a recession is possible in Russia,” she says, even if she believes the economy can carry on without growth for some time.
That may be of little comfort to ordinary Russians, who will still feel the effects in their pockets.
MOSCOW, Feb 17 (Reuters) – Russia could deploy its navy to prevent European powers from seizing its vessels and may retaliate against European shipping if Russian ships are taken, Nikolai Patrushev, one of Russia’s leading hardliners, was quoted as saying on Tuesday.
Western states have sought to cripple Russia’s economy with sanctions and in recent months have tried to block oil tankers suspected of involvement in Russian oil shipments. In January, the United States seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker as part of efforts to curb Venezuelan oil exports.
Patrushev, a Kremlin aide who is a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, said Russia needed to give a tough response – particularly towards Britain, France and Baltic states.
“If we don’t give them a tough rebuff, then soon the British, French and even the Balts (Baltic nations) will become arrogant to such an extent that they will try to block our country’s access to the seas at least in the Atlantic basin,” Patrushev, who serves as chairman of Russia’s Maritime Board, told the Russian media outlet Argumenty i Fakty.
“In the main maritime areas, including regions far from Russia, substantial forces must be permanently deployed – forces capable of cooling the ardour of Western pirates,” he said.
Patrushev said that the navies of major powers were undergoing radical technological change and modernisation amid what he said was clear “gunboat diplomacy” from Washington over Venezuela and Iran. Russia’s updated naval shipbuilding programme to 2050 will be submitted for approval soon, he said.
He also said that Russia believed the NATO military alliance planned to blockade the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea.
“Any attempt at a naval blockade of our country is completely illegal from the standpoint of international law, and the concept of a ‘shadow fleet’, which EU representatives brandish at every turn, is a legal fiction,” he said.
The shadow fleet refers to a network of vessels that Western nations say are operated by Russia to evade sanctions.
“By implementing their naval blockade plans, the Europeans are deliberately pursuing a scenario of military escalation, testing the limits of our patience and provoking active retaliatory measures,” Patrushev said. “If a peaceful resolution to this situation fails, the blockade will be broken and eliminated by the navy.”
The thorny, unresolved issue of territory will take center stage at a fresh round of U.S.-brokered peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Geneva from Tuesday.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Monday territorial control will be discussed by a high-level, expanded Russian delegation led by Vladimir Medinsky, Moscow’s chief negotiator.
Kyrylo Budanov, the newly-installed head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky‘s office, posted an image of himself alongside other Ukrainian officials boarding a train to the Swiss city overnight into Monday.
“Ukraine’s interests must be protected,” Budanov said.
Territory has been one of the most difficult topics for negotiators because neither Russia nor Ukraine are willing to move from their positions.
“It remains the only major issue which cannot be solved,” Oleksandr Merezhko, the chair of Ukraine’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee and a member of Zelensky’s party, told Newsweek.
Russia has not stepped down from its demands to keep control of vast swathes of southern and eastern Ukraine, while Kyiv says it is barred from ceding territory by its constitution and that it cannot reward Russia for launching its invasion nearly four years ago. Territorial concessions would also be deeply unpopular among Ukrainians.
Moscow claims to have annexed the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine, collectively known as the Donbas, as well as Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the southeast of the country.
In 2014, Russia seized the Crimean Peninsula to the south of mainland Ukraine. Altogether, the Kremlin now controls roughly a fifth of territory internationally recognized as Ukrainian soil.
Russia holds most—but not all—of the Donbas, which was formerly Ukraine’s industrial heartland. The remaining territory in Donetsk still under Ukrainian control is heavily fortified and key to the country’s defenses.
Western analysts say it would take the Kremlin years to take the rest of Donetsk by force, but Russian officials are thought to be demanding parts of the Donbas currently still held by Kyiv.
The discussions in Switzerland this week will be the third round of American-brokered peace negotiations this year. U.S., Ukrainian and Russian officials have broadly described the talks as constructive although Russia’s longtime foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said earlier in February there was “still a long way to go.”
“The good news is that the issues that need to be confronted to end this war have been narrowed,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio remarked during his appearance at the closely-watched Munich Security Conference in Germany on Saturday.
“The bad news is they’ve been narrowed to the hardest questions to answer, and work remains to be done in that front,” Rubio added.
Rubio said the U.S. wasn’t sure whether Russia was prepared to stop the fighting, contrasting with President Donald Trump‘s insistence on Friday Moscow “wants to make a deal.” Ukraine and its European supporters say Russia is dragging out talks to avoid inking an agreement.
Trump has struggled to fulfill his pledge to end the war in Ukraine in just 24 hours, and his apparent reluctance to put serious pressure on Moscow has worried Kyiv. Trump’s remarks on Friday included telling Zelensky to “get moving” on the terms of a deal.
Zelensky told reporters and world leaders on Saturday that American officials “often return to the topic of concessions” before adding: “Too often those concessions are discussed in the context only of Ukraine, not Russia.”
“We truly hope that the trilateral meetings next week will be serious, substantive, helpful for all of us, but honestly, sometimes it feels like the sides are talking about completing different things,” Zelensky said.
The Ukrainian leader has said the U.S. has proposed Ukraine withdraws from the chunks of the Donbas it still controls, which would become a “free economic zone.” Zelensky has said the idea was greeted coolly by Russian and Ukrainian officials.
Zelensky said at the weekend U.S. officials had told him that if Kyiv leaves the Donbas, peace would quickly follow. But the Ukrainian president told The Associated Press it was “a little bit crazy” to suggest Ukraine would pull back from its own territory.
Ukrainian officials have estimated roughly 200,000 Ukrainians still live in the Donbas.
“We will never to agree to withdraw all of our troops—for us, it’s an absolute red line,” Merezhko said.
There’s little clarity on how an agreement would bake in security guarantees, which Ukraine describes as a fundamental part of any deal. Without ironclad U.S. assurances it will act if Russia invades again, Kyiv says it cannot trust Moscow will honor the terms.
Zelensky has said the U.S. has offered a 15-year security guarantee but Kyiv has pushed for a much longer period of protection.
Also still up in the air is whether Europe’s largest nuclear power plant will end up in Russian or Ukrainian hands, or whether the U.S. will be heavily involved. The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in southern Ukraine is currently run by Russia after it captured the plant in March 2022 and international experts have repeatedly warned the fighting close to the site risks a nuclear disaster.
On Sunday, Ukrainian authorities said Russia had attacked Ukrainian energy infrastructure and residential areas in several regions of the country.
BERLIN, Feb 16 (Reuters) – The European Union is at a turning point in which countries should not hide behind national interests, German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil said in Brussels.
“We want to cut through knots, we want to find solutions,” Klingbeil said. “This is a very European moment.”
He added that Germany is ready to make compromises, speaking ahead of the meeting of EU finance ministers.
“I believe what happened at the beginning of the year with Greenland woke up everyone who cares about Europe, and it is leading to the fact that we are not getting bogged down in national interests or hiding behind them, but ready to make compromises,” Klingbeil said.
One of the key topics in the meeting on Monday will be the capital markets union, which would allow some 10 trillion euros ($11.86 trillion) idling in bank deposits across the 27-nation bloc to be invested in promising sectors of the economy that lack capital, such as green energy, digital, defence and security, aerospace, semiconductors or biotechnology.
“This would be a game changer if we make progress this year,” Klingbeil said.
(Reporting by Maria MartinezEditing by Ludwig Burger and Matthias Williams)
