Russia and the United States were making progress in peace talks on Ukraine and Moscow was ready to continue working with the current US team, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said on Friday.
His comments came amid uncertainty around progress from talks between US and Russian representatives in Moscow earlier this week.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has since reiterated his hardline demands of Ukraine, telling Kyiv to withdraw from its eastern Donbas region or have it taken by force.
He was set to hold talks with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi on Friday at an annual summit aimed at strengthening bilateral ties as questions lingered over the war.
The summit comes at a pivotal moment, as the United States pushes for a Ukraine peace deal while seeking global cooperation.
The cost of war: A mother cries by the coffin of her son, killed near the heavy fighting in Pokrovsk
A mother cries by the coffin of her son Oleh Borovyk, a Ukrainian serviceman who was killed in fighting with Russian forces near Pokrovsk, during his funeral in Boiarka, Ukraine.
Macron risks row with Trump after saying US will ‘betray Ukraine’ in leaked call with EU leaders
Emmanuel Macron risked sparking a fresh diplomatic row between Europe and Washington after claiming that Donald Trump may “betray” Ukraine during peace negotiations, according to a leaked transcript of a conference call of European leaders.
The French president told Kyiv’s allies that Washington could attempt to force Ukraine to give up territory “without clarity on security guarantees”, German newspaper Der Spiegel reported.
Details of the call – which involved Macron along with German chancellor Friedrich Merz and Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte – were published by the German newspaper on Thursday.
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US talks still on the table, Kremlin says
Russia is ready to work with the US towards peace in Ukraine, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said on Friday, after Trump suggested he didn’t know what Moscow was doing following talks.
He assured that the US and Russia were still moving forward in their discussions.
Ukrainian diver stripped of titles after switching allegiance to Russia
Ukraine’s diving federation said it has stripped Sofiia Lyskun of her titles following her decision to switch allegiance to Russia.
The 23-year-old, who represented Ukraine at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and the Paris Games last year, revealed the switch in an interview with a Russian newspaper earlier this week.
The federation said Lyskun had not informed them, her coaching staff or Ukraine’s sports ministry about her decision.
“Such steps are categorically unacceptable,” it said in a statement.
“They discredit not only an individual athlete, but also the entire team of Ukraine which every day selflessly fights for the right to represent our country in the international arena.”
Putin thanks India’s Modi for attention to peace efforts in Ukraine
Russian president Vladimir Putin told Indian prime minister Narendra Modi that he was grateful for the attention India was paying to peace efforts on Ukraine.
Russia and India have relations in the military sphere, in space development, artificial intelligence and other areas, Putin said.
“We plan to move forward in all these areas,” he added.
Putin says India’s Russian oil purchases dipped in 2025
Vladimir Putin has confirmed India’s purchase of Russian oil has declined after the US cornered Indian authorities in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
“There is a certain decline in overall trade turnover during the first nine months of this year,” Putin said when asked if Indian oil purchases had fallen under pressure from the West.
“This is just a minor adjustment. Overall, our trade turnover stands almost at the same level as before,” he said.
He added: “Trade in petroleum products and crude oil… Russian oil, is running smoothly in India.”
Asked how India and Russia should deal with Trump and his tariffs, Putin said the US president has advisers who believe that implementing such tariff policies ultimately benefits the US economy. “We hope that, in the end, all violations of World Trade Organization regulations will be rectified,” he said.
EU leaders to work on Ukraine funding deal for cash strapped Kyiv in Brussels today
Belgian prime minister Bart De Wever said he hopes to have a “fruitful discussion” with German chancellor Friedrich Merz today about an EU plan to use Russian frozen assets to support Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.
The European Commission, the European Union’s executive body, has proposed a “reparations loan” using Russian state assets frozen in the EU following Russia’s invasion. However, Belgium, which holds the majority of the assets, has raised various legal concerns and remains unconvinced by the plan.
De Wever and Merz will dine in with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels as Belgiam officials continue to have a strong opposition to the scheme, which involves the unprecedented use of frozen Russian assets.
Merz, who has voiced support for the plan but also said the risks should be borne by all EU countries, not just Belgium, will be in Brussels today to discuss the issue.
The chancellor said yesterday evening that his aim was to speak with De Wever as soon as possible to convince him to drop his opposition so the parties could move forward on the issue.
“I hope it will be a fruitful conversation and that we will find a solution that we can then present to Europe over the next two weeks,” De Wever told local media outlets.
The Commission hopes to secure a firm commitment from member states at a summit of EU leaders on 18 December.
Kremlin waiting for Trump’s response after talks on Ukraine in Moscow
Moscow was awaiting a response from Washington following talks between president Vladimir Putin and US representatives earlier this week in the Russian capital, senior Kremlin officials said this morning.
“We are now waiting for the reaction of our American colleagues to the discussion we had on Tuesday,” Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov was quoted as saying by RIA news agency.
He added that there were no plans for a call between Putin and US president Donald Trump, and no date has been set for a new meeting with US envoy Steve Witkoff.
US push for an end to the war in Ukraine sets off a flurry of shuttle diplomacy
The latest US push to end Russia’s nearly 4-year-old war in Ukraine has unleashed a frenzy of diplomatic activity.
Negotiators and officials from the US, Ukraine and Russia have crisscrossed the globe in recent weeks in a flurry of meetings to discuss a potential deal.
Here is a timeline of key talks:
19 November: Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky travels to Turkey in what he said was an effort to jump-start negotiations on ending the war. Reports emerge soon after of a 28-point peace plan drafted by the US and Russia that critics say leans heavily in Moscow’s favour.
20 November: US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll travels to the Ukrainian capital and meets Zelensky to brief him on the US-backed peace proposal.
23 November: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio meets a Ukrainian delegation headed by then-presidential chief of staff Andrii Yermak for talks in Geneva. Both sides say that progress had been made but provide few details. Yermak also meets with European security officials.
24-25 November: Driscoll meets Russian officials in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Russian president Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, says the parties do not discuss the new peace plan in detail.
30 November: A Ukrainian delegation led by Rustem Umerov meets US officials in Florida. Umerov replaced Yermak, who resigned amid a corruption scandal involving the country’s energy sector.
1 December: Zelensky travels to Paris to meet French president Emmanuel Macron and briefs him on the outcome of the Florida talks, as a US delegation heads to Moscow for talks with Russian officials.
Putin insists certain elements of Trump’s peace plan to end Ukraine war are unacceptable
Russian president Vladimir Putin says some proposals in a US plan to end the war in Ukraine are unacceptable to the Kremlin, indicating in comments published yesterday that any deal is still some ways off.
US president Donald Trump has set in motion the most intense diplomatic push to stop the fighting since Russia launched the full-scale invasion of its neighbor nearly four years ago. But the effort has once again run into demands that are hard to reconcile, especially over whether Ukraine must give up land to Russia and how it can be kept safe from any future aggression by Moscow.
“We had to go through practically every point, which is why it took so much time,” he said. “It was a meaningful, highly specific, and substantive conversation. Sometimes we said, ‘Yes, we can discuss this, but with that one we cannot agree.’”
Trump said that Witkoff and Kushner came away from the marathon session confident that Putin wants to find an end to the war. “Their impression was very strongly that he’d like to make a deal,” he added.
Source: independent.co.uk