BUDAPEST (Reuters) -Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban will discuss U.S. sanctions on Russian oil companies among other issues when he meets U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington next week, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Monday.
Trump, a close ally of the Hungarian leader, last week imposed sanctions on Russia for the first time in his second term, targeting Lukoil and Rosneft, as he tries to pressure Moscow into agreeing a ceasefire in Ukraine.
Trump’s move has left questions for Hungary and Slovakia, the biggest buyers of Russian oil in the European Union after securing exemptions from EU restrictions.
Orban had already flagged his upcoming visit to Washington in mid-October, when he said the negotiating agenda was almost complete.
“As for our energy supply … in the second half of next week there will be an opportunity in Washington for the prime minister to discuss this issue in person with the US President,” Szijjarto told a briefing.
As the fresh U.S. sanctions do not take effect until late November, they are not currently creating any problems or causing a reduction in Hungary’s oil imports from Russia, Szijjarto said.
Orban on Friday said Hungary was working on finding a way to circumvent U.S. sanctions on Russian oil companies. While he did not provide details, he gave no indication that he planned to defy the restrictions.
Orban said he had spoken to Hungary’s oil and gas company MOL about the sanctions.
The Hungarian leader, who faces an election in 2026, has cultivated a strong personal rapport with Trump over the years. His hardline anti-immigration stance has earned him support among Trump supporters in the United States.
He said earlier this month that he would be discussing economic issues with Trump at the upcoming meeting.
(Reporting by Krisztina Than; Editing by Conor Humphries)
The government of Lithuania, which is a member of the U.S.-led NATO alliance, said Monday that it will start shooting down unidentified balloons that enter the country’s airspace, after a number of them allegedly launched from neighboring Belarus forced the repeated closure of a major airport.
Prime Minister Inga Ruginiene warned Monday that any further balloons detected would be shot down after operations at Vilnius International Airport, which serves the capital city, were halted a total of four times last week.
“Today we have decided to take the strictest measures, there is no other way,” Ruginiene told journalists, according to Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT, calling the incidents “hybrid attacks” and saying her country could discuss invoking the collective defense clause in the founding NATO treaty over the incidents.
Article 4 can be invoked by any NATO member that feels its security is at risk, which would spark talks among the allies to discuss the threat. Article 4 has been invoked nine times in NATO’s history, three of which related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Lithuania believes smugglers use the balloons to transport contraband cigarettes over the border, but it has criticized Belorussian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, for not clamping down.
In this undated photo released by the State Border Guard Service of Lithuania, an officer inspects a balloon used to carry cigarettes into the country by suspected Belorussian smugglers.
State Border Guard Service via AP
“Inaction is also an action,” Ruginiene said after a meeting of her country’s National Security Commission on Monday. “If Belarus does nothing about it and does not fight, we also assess these actions accordingly.”
Ruginiene added that her government would indefinitely close its land border with Belarus, apart from for diplomats and returning European Union nationals, according to LRT.
“This is how we send a signal to Belarus and say that no hybrid attack will be tolerated here, we will take all the strictest measures to stop such attacks,” she said.
“Our response will determine how far autocrats dare to go,” Ruginiene’s office said in a statement sent later Monday to CBS News.
There was no immediate comment on the incident from officials in Belarus.
Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys said Monday in a post on social media that NATO was facing a “deliberate escalation of hybrid warfare from Russia and its proxy, Belarus,” calling the spate of recent airspace incursions, “calculated provocations designed to destabilize, distract and test NATO’s resolve.”
He called for further sanctions against Belarus and stronger NATO security measures to deter the airspace violations.
On October 23, a Russian Sukhoi SU-30 fighter and an IL-78 tanker plane flew just under half of a mile into Lithuanian territory, according to the country’s ministry of foreign affairs, after departing from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. The Baltic Sea coastal territory is separate from the rest of Russia, and bordered on two sides by Lithuania and Poland.
Lithuania borders both Belarus and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.
Encyclopaedia Britannica/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Two days before that, several “meteorological balloons” launched from Belarus were detected by Lithuanian radar systems in the country’s airspace, disrupting travel at Vilnius’ airport, the foreign ministry said.
Lithuania summoned the top Belorussian diplomat in the country on October 22 to voice a “strong protest regarding the repeated and increasingly frequent violations” of its airspace, warning the Russian ally that Vilnius “reserves the right to take appropriate retaliatory measures.”
Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Center said earlier this month that at least 544 balloons had already entered Lithuanian airspace this year, according to CBS News’ partner network BBC News. The center said 966 such balloon incursions were recorded during 2024.
“Last year we were blind chickens and didn’t see many things,” Ruginiene said Monday. “Thank God, there was no catastrophe. We didn’t see certain moving objects, so there were no decisions to close the airspace.”
“Today we have much better equipment, we can see much more information,” she said, according to LRT. “We believe that we need to take action to protect our citizens.”
OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, DeepSeek, and xAI’s Grok are pushing Russian state propaganda from sanctioned entities—including citations from Russian state media, sites tied to Russian intelligence or pro-Kremlin narratives—when asked about the war against Ukraine, according to a new report.
Researchers from the Institute of Strategic Dialogue (ISD) claim that Russian propaganda has targeted and exploited data voids—where searches for real-time data provide few results from legitimate sources—to promote false and misleading information. Almost one-fifth of responses to questions about Russia’s war in Ukraine, across the four chatbots they tested, cited Russian state-attributed sources, the ISD research claims.
“It raises questions regarding how chatbots should deal when referencing these sources, considering many of them are sanctioned in the EU,” says Pablo Maristany de las Casas, an analyst at the ISD who led the research. The findings raise serious questions about the ability of large language models (LLMs) to restrict sanctioned media in the EU, which is a growing concern as more people use AI chatbots as an alternative to search engines to find information in real time, the ISD claims. For the six-month period ending September 30, 2025, ChatGPT search had approximately 120.4 million average monthly active recipients in the European Union according to OpenAI data.
The researchers asked the chatbots 300 neutral, biased, and “malicious” questions relating to the perception of NATO, peace talks, Ukraine’s military recruitment’ Ukrainian refugees, and war crimes committed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The researchers used separate accounts for each query in English, Spanish, French, German, and Italian in an experiment in July. The same propaganda issues are still present in October, Maristany de las Casas says.
Amid widespread sanctions imposed on Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, European officials have sanctioned at least 27 Russian media sourcesfor spreading disinformation and distorting facts as part of its “strategy of destabilizing” Europe and other nations.
OpenAI spokesperson Kate Waters tells WIRED in a statement that the company takes steps “to prevent people from using ChatGPT to spread false or misleading information, including such content linked to state-backed actors,” adding that these are long-standing issues that the company is attempting to address by improving its model and platforms.
VILNIUS (Reuters) -NATO member Lithuania closed Vilnius Airport and Belarus border crossings on Sunday after several objects, identified as likely helium balloons, entered its airspace, the National Crisis Management Centre said, the fourth such incident this week.
Lithuania has said balloons are sent by smugglers transporting contraband cigarettes, but it also blames Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, for not stopping the practice.
Traffic at the capital airport was suspended until 2340 GMT, while the Belarus border will remain shut pending a meeting of Lithuania’s National Security Commission on Monday, officials said.
The Vilnius airport also closed on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday of this week, as well as on October 5, each time due to balloons entering the capital’s airspace, authorities have said.
(Reporting by Andrius Sytas, editing by Terje Solsvik)
(Reuters) -Russian anti-aircraft units downed a second Ukrainian drone headed for Moscow on Sunday, the capital’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
The first drone was downed earlier on Sunday.
Sobyanin said specialist teams were examining fragments of the drones where they had hit the ground.
“I’m going to have to know that we’re going to make a deal,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One after taking off from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, when asked about securing a meeting with Putin. “I’m not going to be wasting my time. I’ve always had a great relationship with Vladimir Putin, but this has been very disappointing.”
He said he thought the war in Ukraine would have been resolved “long before” the peace deal between Israel and Hamas.
“We have Azerbaijan and Armenia. That was very tough,” Trump added, referring to the peace summit he hosted at the White House between the two countries last summer.
President Donald Trump speaks with reporters aboard Air Force One at Al Udeid Air Base in Doha, Qatar, Saturday. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
He continued, “In fact, Putin told me on the phone, he said, ‘Boy, that was amazing,’ because everybody tried to get that done, and they couldn’t. I got it done. You had others. If you look at India and Pakistan, I could say almost any one of the deals that I’ve already done, I thought would have been more difficult than Russia, than Ukraine, but it didn’t work out that way.”
“There’s a lot of hatred between the two, between [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky and Putin, there’s tremendous hatred.”
President Donald Trump, right, shakes the hand of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin during a joint press conference at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, Aug. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
Trump announced the Budapest meeting last week, saying it could happen within the next two weeks.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks with President Donald Trump before a lunch in the Cabinet Room of the White House on Friday, Oct. 17. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
The president also said that in his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping next week he wants a “complete [trade] deal.”
“I want our farmers to be taken care of, and he wants things also,” Trump said. “We’re going to be talking about fentanyl, of course. Fentanyl is killing a lot of people, a lot people. It comes from China, and we’ll be talking a lot about that. We’ll be talking about a lot things. I think we have a really good chance of making a very comprehensive deal.”
Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukraine overnight into Saturday killed at least four people and wounded 20, officials said, and prompted fresh pleas from Ukraine’s president for additional Western air defense systems.
In the capital, Kyiv, two people were killed and 13 were wounded in a ballistic missile attack in the early hours of Saturday, Kyiv’s police said.
A fire broke out in a non-residential building in one location, while debris from intercepted missiles fell in an open area at another site, damaging windows in nearby buildings, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service wrote on the message app Telegram.
“Explosions in the capital. The city is under ballistic attack,” Mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on Telegram during the onslaught.
A firefighter works to extinguish a fire at a warehouse following a Russian attack, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2025, in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson / AP
In the Dnipropetrovsk region, two people were killed and seven wounded, acting regional Gov. Vladyslav Haivanenko said, adding that apartment buildings and private homes were damaged in the strikes.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched nine missiles and 62 drones, of which four missiles and 50 drones were intercepted.
In Russia, the Defense Ministry said its air defenses shot down 121 Ukrainian drones over Russia overnight.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that such attacks underline his country’s need for additional U.S. Patriot defense systems.
“It is precisely because of such attacks that we pay special attention to Patriot systems — to be able to protect our cities from this horror. It is critical that partners who possess relevant capability implement what we have discussed in recent days,” he wrote in English on X.
“America, Europe and the G7 countries can help ensure that such attacks no longer threaten lives,” he said.
Ukraine has received at least seven Patriot systems since Russia’s full-scale invasion began, according to U.S. and European defense sources, and Zelenskyy is hoping to purchase 25 more from the U.S. to fortify its air defenses, particularly in cities.
Smoke bellows from a warehouse that caught fire following a Russian attack, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2025, in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson / AP
Zelenskyy on Friday urged the United States to hit the entire Russian energy industry with sanctions and not just the two oil companies it targeted this week. He also reiterated his appeal for long-range missiles to hit back at Russia.
Zelenskyy was in London for talks with two dozen European leaders who have pledged military help to shield his country from future Russian aggression if a ceasefire stops the more than three-year war.
The meeting hosted by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer aimed to step up pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin, adding momentum to recent measures that have included a new round of new sanctions imposted by both the United States and European countries on Russia’s vital oil and gas export earnings.
The talks also addressed ways of helping protect Ukraine’s power grid from Russia’s almost daily drone and missile attacks as winter approaches, enhancing Ukrainian air defenses, and supplying Kyiv with longer-range missiles that can strike deep inside Russia. Zelenskyy has urged the U.S. to send Tomahawk missiles, an idea U.S. President Donald Trump has considered but not agreed to so far.
Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s envoy for investment and economic cooperation, said Friday he believes Russia, the U.S. and Ukraine were “quite close to a diplomatic solution” to end the three-year war.
Speaking to CNN after arriving in Washington for talks with U.S. officials, Dmitriev said a planned summit in Budapest between Mr. Trump and Putin had not been canceled but would likely occur later.
Mr. Trump said last week his plan for a swift meeting with Putin was put on hold because he didn’t want it to be a “waste of time.” When asked by a reporter on Saturday what Russia has to do to reschedule his meeting with Putin, the president said, “I’m gonna have to know that we’re going to make a deal. I’m not going to be wasting my time.”
“I’ve always had a great relationship with Vladimir Putin, but this has been very disappointing. I thought this would’ve gone long before peace in the Middle East, we have Azerbaijan and Armenia. That was very tough,” Mr. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Asia. “In fact, Putin told me on the phone, he said, ‘Boy, that was amazing, because everybody tried to get that done, and they couldn’t.’ I got it done.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made clear in public comments Tuesday that Russia is opposed to an immediate ceasefire.
A White House official confirmed Friday that Dmitriev, who announced his visit on X, will meet with U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to publicly discuss the private meeting.
BERLIN (Reuters) -A senior lawmaker from Germany’s Social Democrats, a junior partner in Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s coalition government, called on Saturday for a change of China policy after Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul postponed a trip to Beijing.
Wadephul, a member of Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), cancelled the trip on Friday after Beijing confirmed only one of his requested meetings, a move that pointed to rising tensions over trade and security matters.
“The short-term cancellation of the trip to China does not bode well for an improvement in tense German-Chinese relations,” said Adis Ahmetovic, foreign policy spokesperson for the Social Democrats (SPD).
“We need to rethink Germany’s China strategy. More than ever, we need an active, strategic foreign policy that focuses on dialogue, clarity and long-term interests,” he said.
Germany is Europe’s biggest economy. China is Germany’s biggest trading partner and the largest economy in Asia.
The only meeting Beijing had confirmed during Wadephul’s planned trip had been with his direct counterpart, Wang Yi. A German foreign ministry spokesperson, commenting on the trip’s postponement on Friday, also said Germany was concerned about constraints placed on rare earth exports.
WADEPHUL UNDERLINED IMPORTANCE OF FAIR TRADE
Wadephul told Reuters this week he planned to urge China to relax export restrictions on rare earths and semiconductors during his trip, which had been due to start on Sunday, and underlined fair trade as a cornerstone of successful relations.
In a strategy on China agreed in 2023, Berlin urged the “de-risking” of the two countries’ economic relationship, calling Beijing a “partner, competitor and systemic rival”.
China provides Germany with critical components such as rare earths and chips, two areas that have been subject to severe bottlenecks as global trade tensions intensify.
“Direct dialogue with China is particularly important in a phase of global tension,” Ahmetovic said.
Talks should be deepened “especially on issues of peace, security, the economy, trade and human rights,” he said.
Juergen Hardt, foreign policy spokesperson for the CDU, said China was trying to use trade policy as a means of exerting pressure and that Wadephul had been right to postpone the trip.
“The German government is not playing along with this game,” he said, adding that Germany continued to value good and fair relations with Beijing.
(Reporting by Andreas Rinke, Writing by Christoph Steitz, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
KYIV (Reuters) -One person was killed and 10 others were injured in the capital Kyiv after Russian missiles and drones hit sites in Ukraine overnight, the head of the Kyiv city military administration said on Saturday.
“Preliminary reports indicate that the attack resulted in broken windows, damaged cars, and a crater in the courtyard of a residential building,” Tymur Tkachenko said in a post on Telegram about the damage in Kyiv.
The attacks also set off multiple fires and damaged a kindergarten, he added.
Ukraine’s air force downed four of nine missiles and 50 of 62 drones launched in the attacks across Ukraine, it said in a separate statement posted on Telegram.
The air force reported five direct missile hits and 12 drone hits on 11 sites around the country.
(Reporting by Anastasiia Malenko; Editing by Susan Fenton)
Russia’s refusal of a cease-fire and an aborted peace summit in Budapest have raised the grim prospect that the war in Ukraine will rage for years to come—even as the nature of the conflict transforms.
President Vladimir Putin remains convinced that Russia will eventually wear down its smaller neighbor, causing a collapse of the Ukrainian economy and society. An elusive victory would allow him to make the case that the devastating war he unleashed nearly four years ago was worth it, after all.
MOSCOW (Reuters -Kirill Dmitriev, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy for investment and economic cooperation, on Friday confirmed that he was in the United States for a long-planned meeting, proof he said that U.S.-Russia dialogue continued.
“This meeting of mine had been planned quite a while ago, and the American side did not cancel it, despite a number of recent unfriendly steps. We will continue the dialogue,” Dmitriev told Reuters.
U.S. President Donald Trump hit Russia’s two biggest oil companies with sanctions this week to press the Kremlin leader to end Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Trump spoke to Putin last week and said he planned to meet Putin soon, but Trump later cancelled that summit saying it could take place another time.
“The Russia–U.S. dialogue will continue, but it is certainly only possible if Russia’s interests are taken into account and treated with respect,” Dmitriev said.
He declined to say who he was meeting and predicted that the U.S. oil sanctions would backfire.
“They will only lead to gasoline costing more at American gas stations,” said Dmitriev.
Citing sources with knowledge of the visit, CNN reported earlier on Friday that Dmitriev was expected to meet Trump administration officials “to continue discussions about the U.S.-Russia relationship”.
Axios reported that Dmitriev would meet Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff in Miami on Saturday. The state TASS news agency quoted Dmitriev as saying he would also meet other people he did not name.
Dmitriev, who has developed a good working relationship with Witkoff, declined to say whether arrangements for a new Trump-Putin meeting would be on the agenda of his talks.
(Reporting by Gleb BryanskiEditing by Andrew Osborn)
Russia’s central bank on Friday lowered its key interest rate for a fourth straight meeting as an already slowing economy braces for the impact of fresh sanctions from the U.S. and the European Union in response to President Vladimir Putin’s continued war on Ukraine.
The Bank of Russia cut its key rate to 16.5% from 17%, having begun to lower borrowing costs from a recent peak of 21% in June. The move was smaller than previous cuts.
MOSCOW (Reuters) -President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia would never bow to pressure from the United States or any other country, and cautioned that the response to any strikes deep into Russia would be very serious and overwhelming.
U.S. sanctions are an “unfriendly” act and “will have certain consequences, but they will not significantly affect our economic well-being,” Putin said. Russia’s energy sector feels confident, he said.
“This is, of course, an attempt to put pressure on Russia,” Putin said. “But no self-respecting country and no self-respecting people ever decides anything under pressure.”
Putin said breaking the balance in the global energy markets could lead to a hike in prices that would be uncomfortable for countries such as the United States, especially given the internal political calendar in the United States.
Asked about a Wall Street Journal report that the Trump administration has lifted a key restriction on Ukraine’s use of some long-range missiles provided by Western allies, and remarks by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy about domestic missiles with a range of 3,000 km (1,900 miles), Putin said: “This is an attempt at escalation.”
“But if such weapons are used to attack Russian territory, the response will be very serious, if not overwhelming. Let them think about it,” Putin said.
(Reporting by Reuters; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)
BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union leaders on Thursday endorsed a plan to ensure that Europe can defend itself against an outside attack by the end of the decade as concern mounts that Russia is already probing the 27-nation bloc’s defenses.
“Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and its repercussions for European and global security in a changing environment constitute an existential challenge,” the leaders said in a statement during a summit in Brussels.
They called on national governments “to advance on concrete projects to be launched in the first half of 2026” in line with the new plan, dubbed Readiness 2030, which was drawn up by the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch.
A top priority will be to erect drone defenses to detect, track and disable rogue drones, following a series of troubling airspace violations across Europe over the last month – some close to Europe’s borders with Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.
This European Drone Defense Initiative would be a key part of a broader scheme dubbed Eastern Flank Watch to strengthen defenses along Europe’s eastern border on land, in the Baltic and Black seas and in the air, as well as against hybrid attacks.
The leaders said that “to respond to the most immediate needs and threats” the first projects should focus on building anti-drone and air defense capabilities and make full use of EU funds to do so.
The commission estimates that EU defense spending this year will total around 392 billion euros ($457 billion), almost double the amount of four years ago, before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
It believes that some 3.4 trillion euros ($4 trillion) will probably be spent on defense over the next decade. To help, it intends to propose boosting the EU’s long-term budget for defense and space to 131 billion euros ($153 billion).
The overarching aim of the Readiness 2030 plan is to encourage the member countries to decide who among them should take the lead on which projects, and then to launch them within the first six months of next year.
At least 40% of military purchases would have to be done jointly – making them cheaper and encouraging countries to use interoperable weapons and standards – by late 2027.
Projects, contracts and financing on “critical capabilities” – drones or satellites, for example – would need to be settled by the end of 2028, with the whole process finalized two years later.
Another key part of the plan is to provide security guarantees for Ukraine. The leaders underlined “the importance of close cooperation with Ukraine and of its integration with and contribution to the European defense industry.”
Ukraine’s leader welcomed a raft of new economic sanctions against Russia being imposed by the Trump administration and the European Union on Thursday, calling the increased pressure on Moscow “very important.”
CBS News correspondent Ramy Inocencio says the new U.S. sanctions, announced by the Treasury on Wednesday, essentially block Americans from dealing with anyone at the Russian oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil, or with any companies that are more than 50% owned by them.
The sanctions are a win for Zelenskyy. But despite President Trump’s open frustration with Russia’s strongman leader, who has refused to negotiate a truce, American pressure on Moscow has increased only economically so far, not with the provision of long-range additional weapons, or even with overt permission to launch attacks deeper inside Russia.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent encouraged allies to “join in” as he announced the new U.S. sanctions on Wednesday, and the European Union quickly did.
“We waited for this. God bless, it will work. And this is very important,” the Ukrainian leader said in Brussels, where EU countries attending a summit announced the bloc’s latest round of sanctions.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (left) and European Council President Antonio Costa arrive for a European Council meeting gathering the 27 EU leaders to discuss Ukraine and other matters in Brussels, Belgium, Oct. 23, 2025.
MAGALI COHEN/Hans Lucas/AFP/Getty
Posting earlier on social media as he arrived in Brussels, Zelenskyy thanked Mr. Trump for a “resolute and well-targeted decision,” calling the U.S. sanctions a “clear signal that prolonging the war and spreading terror come at a cost.”
“It is a strong and much-needed message that aggression will not go unanswered,” he said, adding a call later for other nations to join in sanctioning Russia.
Russia dismissive, but ex-president calls sanctions an “act of war”
Russia, however, dismissed the sanctions announced by Ukraine’s Western partners as counterproductive, with the country’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency declaring that they would be “painful, as usual, but not deadly. Also as usual.”
“Pressure or no pressure, it won’t make things any sweeter for Zelenskyy. And what’s more, it won’t bring peace any closer,” Komsomolskaya Pravda, a popular pro-Kremlin tabloid, said.
Former president and current chair of the Russian state Security Council Dmitry Medvedev went further, as the outspoken figure often does, declaring the U.S. sanctions “an act of war.”
“The U.S. is our enemy, and their talkative ‘peacemaker’ has now fully embarked on the warpath with Russia,” Medvedev wrote in a message posted on social media. “The decisions taken are an act of war against Russia. And now Trump has fully aligned himself with loony Europe.”
The measures are a long-sought triumph for Zelenskyy, who has campaigned for the international community to punish Russia more comprehensively for attacking his country.
Despite U.S.-led peace efforts in recent months, the war shows no sign of ending after more than three years of fighting, and European leaders are increasingly concerned about the threat from Russia.
Ukrainian forces have largely held Russia’s bigger army at bay in a slow and ruinous war of attrition along a roughly 600-mile front line that snakes along eastern and southern Ukraine.
Almost daily Russian long-range strikes have taken aim at Ukraine’s power grid ahead of the bitter winter, while Ukrainian forces have targeted Russian oil refineries and manufacturing plants.
Trump frustrated with Putin, but so far offering sanctions, not missiles
Energy revenue is the linchpin of Russia’s economy, allowing Putin to pour money into the armed forces without worsening inflation and avoiding a currency collapse.
The EU measures target Russian oil and gas, the Russian shadow fleet of hundreds of aging tankers that are dodging sanctions, and Russia’s financial sector. A new system for limiting the movement of Russian diplomats within the 27-nation EU will also be introduced.
Zelenskyy urged more nations to punish Russia. “This is a good signal to other countries in the world to join the sanctions,” he told reporters in Brussels.
International crude prices jumped more than $2 per barrel Thursday on news of the additional sanctions.
Senior officials in Europe and the United States have debated for months over how best to crank up pressure on the Kremlin.
As the sanctions were announced in Washington on Wednesday, Mr. Trump denied a Wall Street Journal report that he had eased U.S. restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long-range weapons to target deeper inside Russia, calling it “fake news.”
“The U.S. has nothing to do with those missiles, wherever they may come from, or what Ukraine does with them!” Mr. Trump said in a post on his own Truth Social platform.
Mr. Trump has also, so far, disappointed Zelenskyy in his long-running bid to secure American-made Tomahawk long-range missiles to use in his country’s defense.
Zelenskyy also reiterated on Thursday that Ukraine would not agree to cede any land occupied by Russia as part of a ceasefire agreement. Mr. Trump said this week that the fighting should be paused with the battle lines frozen where they stand — with Russia’s invading forces in control of about 78% of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, he said.
Zelenskyy has called that a reasonable starting point for negotiations, but on Thursday he was quoted by the Euronews outlet, after he arrived in Belgium, as saying a ceasefire agreement could include “no territorial concessions” to Russia.
The new EU measures took almost a month to decide. The 27-nation bloc has already slapped 18 packages of sanctions against Russia over the war, but getting final agreement on whom and what to target can take weeks. Moscow has also proved adept at sidestepping sanctions.
The U.S. sanctions came after Mr. Trump said that his plan for a swift meeting with Putin was on hold because he didn’t want it to be a “waste of time.” It was the latest twist in Mr. Trump’s hot-and-cold efforts to end the war as Putin refuses to budge from his demands.
President Trump expressed frustration with Putin at the Oval Office again on Wednesday, telling reporters that “every time I speak to Vladimir, I have good conversations and then they don’t go anywhere. They just don’t go anywhere.”
In what appeared to be a public reminder of Russian atomic arsenals, Putin on Wednesday directed drills of the country’s strategic nuclear forces.
With no peace in sight, Ukraine and Russia keep fighting
The two sides continued to pummel each other with strikes overnight.
In a village in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, Russia conducted a so-called double-tap drone strike, hitting the same place a second time when first responders arrived at the scene of the first strike, regional head Oleh Syniehubov said. One emergency worker was killed and five of his colleagues were injured, Syniehubov said.
Russian drones also attacked three districts of Kyiv, injuring eight people, according to city’s prosecutor’s office.
The Russian Defense Ministry, meanwhile, reported intercepting and destroying 139 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions and the annexed Crimean peninsula overnight.
It did not comment on unconfirmed reports that Ukrainian drones hit another oil refinery and an unspecified energy facility.
MOSCOW (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump hit Russia’s two biggest oil companies with sanctions in his latest sharp policy shift on Moscow’s war in Ukraine, prompting global oil prices to rise by 3% on Thursday and India to consider cutting Russian imports.
The sanctions, unveiled by the U.S. Treasury, target oil companies Rosneft and Lukoil, and mark a dramatic U-turn by Trump, who said only last week that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin would hold a summit in Budapest to try to end the war in Ukraine.
But in his latest turnaround on the conflict, Trump said on Wednesday the planned summit was off because he did not believe it would achieve the outcome he wanted and complained that his many “good conversations” with Putin did not “go anywhere”.
“We cancelled the meeting with President Putin — it just didn’t feel right to me,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get. So I cancelled it, but we’ll do it in the future.”
TARGETING ABILITY TO FUND WAR
Scott Bessent, the U.S. Treasury Secretary, made clear Washington stood ready to take further action and was targeting Russia’s ability to fund a war it launched in February 2022.
“Given President Putin’s refusal to end this senseless war, Treasury is sanctioning Russia’s two largest oil companies that fund the Kremlin’s war machine,” Bessent said in a statement. “We encourage our allies to join us in and adhere to these sanctions.”
Russia’s Foreign Ministry called the U.S. sanctions “counterproductive” when it came to finding a peace deal and said its goals in Ukraine remained unchanged.
Oil and gas revenue, which is currently down by 21% year-on-year, accounts for around one quarter of Russia’s budget and is the most important source of cash for Moscow’s war in Ukraine, now in its fourth year.
However, Moscow’s main revenue source comes from taxing output, not exports, which is likely to soften the immediate impact of the sanctions on state finances.
IMPACT ON GLOBAL OIL PRICES
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy thanked the United States for the new sanctions, saying they were “very important” but that more pressure would be needed on Moscow.
Oil prices jumped more than 3% on Thursday amid worries that the sanctions would disrupt global supply. Indian oil industry sources told Reuters that Indian refiners were poised to sharply curtail imports of Russian oil to ensure they were in compliance with U.S. sanctions.
India has become the biggest buyer of seaborne Russian oil sold at a discount after Western nations shunned purchases and imposed sanctions on Moscow following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The U.S. Treasury has given companies until November 21 to wind down their transactions with the Russian oil producers.
Some analysts say that the new sanctions could force Russia to further discount its oil on world markets to offset the perceived risk of U.S. secondary sanctions, but that pain could in turn be mitigated if global oil prices rise supporting the state’s finances and the rouble.
SHIFTING POSITION ON CEASEFIRE
After an August summit with Putin in Alaska, Trump dropped his demand for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine and embraced Moscow’s preferred option of going straight to negotiating an overall peace settlement.
But in recent days he has reverted to the idea of an immediate ceasefire, something that Kyiv supports but which Moscow, whose forces are steadily edging forward on the battlefield, has repeatedly made clear it has no interest in.
Russia has said it opposes a ceasefire because it believes it would only be a temporary pause before fighting resumes, giving Ukraine time and space to re-arm at a time when Moscow says it has the initiative on the battlefield.
In a show of force on Wednesday, Moscow conducted a major training exercise involving nuclear weapons.
Russia argues that negotiating a full peace settlement that paves the way for what it calls a “long-lasting peace” is therefore a better option.
But Kyiv has said that Russia’s conditions for a settlement – which would entail Ukraine handing over more land – were unacceptable and, in effect, a demand for it to surrender.
(Reporting by Reuters; Additional reporting by Gleb Bryanski; Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Alex Richardson)
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -EU countries on Thursday formally adopted a 19th package of sanctions against Russia for its war against Ukraine that includes a ban on Russian liquefied natural gas imports.
The 27 member states had already approved the package on Wednesday evening after Slovakia dropped its block.
“It’s a significant package that targets main Russian revenue streams through new energy, financial, and trade measures,” the Danish rotating presidency of the EU said.
The LNG ban will take effect in two stages: short-term contracts will end after six months and long-term contracts from January 1, 2027. The full ban comes a year earlier than the Commission’s roadmap to end the bloc’s reliance on Russian fossil fuels.
Measures in the package also include a new mechanism to limit the movement of Russian diplomats within the EU, the statement said.
“It targets Russian banks, crypto exchanges, entities in India and China, among others,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said in a post on X.
“The EU is curbing Russian diplomats’ movements to counter the attempts of destabilisation. It is increasingly harder for Putin to fund this war.”
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said the ban on LNG imports is an important step towards a complete phasing out of Russian energy in the EU.
(Reporting by Kate Abnett, Alessandro Parodi and Julia Payne, editing by Bart Meijer)
MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian forces captured two more frontline villages in southeast Ukraine and also reported the capture of an island in southern Ukraine, its Defence Ministry said on Wednesday.
Ukraine’s military also reported success near the town of Dobropillia, an area in the Donetsk region, the heart of the front line, where officials say Kyiv’s forces are making headway in a counter-offensive.
Russian forces have been engaged in a long, grinding westward advance along and near the front line in eastern Ukraine, announcing the capture of new villages on nearly a daily basis. Its troops hold about 19% of Ukrainian territory.
The Russian Defence Ministry said its forces now controlled Pavlivka in Zaporizhzhia region in the southeast, one of four regions it now claims as Russian territory, and Ivanivka, just inside Dnipropetrovsk region, where they have established a foothold.
The ministry also said, in a statement on Telegram, that it struck Ukrainian energy infrastructure in what it said was a response to Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilian targets.
Ukrainian authorities earlier said that six people had been killed in Russian strikes overnight.
Reuters could not independently verify battlefield accounts from either side.
Russian news agencies early on Thursday quoted the Defence Ministry as saying paratroops and other servicemen had pushed their way across the Dnipro River to take control of Karantynnyi Island, close to the city of Kherson in the south.
Ukraine’s military last week said Russian forces had unsuccessfully tried to land on the island.
Kherson was occupied by Russian troops in the early stages of their February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, but Kyiv’s forces took back the city and other parts of Kherson region later that year.
Near Dobropillia, in Donetsk, Ukraine’s 132nd separate battalion of airborne forces said it had taken control of the village of Kucheriv Yar from Russian forces.
(Reporting by Reuters, Writing by Felix Light and Ron Popeski; editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Christian Schmollinger)
WASHINGTON—President Trump has announced substantial new sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil companies as frustration in Washington grows over the war in Ukraine.
The new sanctions, which would be the first direct U.S. measures on Russia during the second Trump administration, target Lukoil and Rosneft as well as nearly three dozen of their subsidiaries. Oil is one of Russia’s largest sources of revenue.
Kyiv – A Russian missile and drone barrage on Ukraine killed six people in and around the capital Kyiv overnight, including two children, proving once again that Vladimir Putin isn’t feeling “enough pressure” to end the war against his neighbors, Ukraine’s leader said.
The wave of strikes left at least 17 other people wounded and triggered power cuts across the country, Ukrainian authorities said, hours after President Trump’s efforts to settle the nearly four-year war appeared to hit another roadblock. The White House said Tuesday that a planned meeting between Mr. Trump and Putin in Hungary — announced by the U.S. leader less than a week earlier — was cancelled.
A White House official said there were “no plans” for such a meeting in the “immediate future,” after Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had a “productive call,” but determined that another in-person presidential summit was “not necessary.”
Mr. Trump told reporters later Tuesday that he didn’t want to “have a wasted meeting.”
“Another night proving that Russia does not feel enough pressure for dragging out the war,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media following the latest overnight Russian attack on his country. “As of now, 17 people are known to have been injured. Unfortunately, six people were killed, among them two children.”
A woman takes a photo of a residential building damaged during by a Russian drone and missile strike, amid Russia’s ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in Kyiv, Oct. 22, 2025.
Alina Smutko/REUTERS
AFP journalists in Kyiv heard multiple explosions during the night and saw a pillar of smoke rising above the capital. The strikes also targeted the country’s energy infrastructure, leaving thousands without heating and electricity across Ukraine as cold fall temperatures start to bite, according to the energy ministry.
“Due to a massive missile and drone attack on the energy infrastructure, emergency power outages have been introduced in most regions of Ukraine,” it said in a statement.
Russia said it had intercepted 33 Ukrainian drones overnight without reporting any substantial damage.
Mr. Trump had said last week that he would meet Putin for peace talks in the Hungarian capital Budapest within two weeks, following what he called a productive two-hour phone call with the Russian leader.
This week Mr. Trump said that while he believed Ukraine “could still win” the war, “I don’t think they will.”
The president has pressured Zelenskyy to give up Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, 78% of which Mr. Trump said Russia’s invading forces already control, during talks at the White House on Friday, a senior Ukrainian official told AFP.
A map posted online by the U.K. Defence Intelligence agency on Oct. 17, 2025 shows the British government’s assessment of the front line in eastern Ukraine, with the area occupied by Russia’s invading forces shown pink.
U.K. Defense Intelligence agency
Ukraine’s leaders have repeatedly rejected those calls to give up any land, and many of America’s European allies have warned against appeasing Russia by allowing it to unilaterally seize part of a sovereign nation.
France, Germany and Britain have lead the charge to rally behind Ukraine, rejecting the idea of Kyiv giving up territory and the White House’s repeated suggestion that the fighting should be frozen along the current front lines. Ukraine’s European partners, under the guises of the “coalition of the willing,” are due to meet again in London on Friday to discuss support for Kyiv’s war effort.
But Zelenskyy has in recent days indicated a willingness to at least negotiate with Russia under a halt to the fighting based on Mr. Trump’s proposal to freeze the battle lines where they currently stand.
Speaking Wednesday during a visit to Oslo, Norway, Zelenskyy said Mr. Trump had “proposed: ‘Stay where we stay and begin conversation’,” and he called that “a good compromise,” but the Ukrainian leader added: “I’m not sure that Putin will support it, and I said it to the president.”
In a statement following the overnight attack, Zelenskyy said “Russian words about diplomacy mean nothing as long as the Russian leadership does not feel critical problems.”
A woman pets her dogs near residential buildings damaged by a Russian drone and missile strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, Oct. 22, 2025.
Alina Smutko/REUTERS
Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, describing it as a “special military operation” to demilitarize the country and prevent the expansion of NATO.
Kyiv and its European allies say the war is an illegal land grab that has resulted in tens of thousands of civilian and military casualties and widespread destruction.
