Russia is ready to legally confirm it has no intention of attacking the EU or Nato, deputy foreign minister says<\/p>\n
The Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, has said that Russia<\/a> is ready to confirm in a legal agreement that it has no intention of attacking either the EU or Nato, according to a report in the state RIA news agency. We have not been able to independently verify these comments yet.<\/p>\n As mentioned in a previous post<\/a>, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has offered<\/a> to drop Ukraine\u2019s ambition to join Nato in an attempt to show his willingness to reach an agreement to bring about an end to the war.<\/p>\n In return, Zelenskyy and his European allies have been pushing for \u201carticle-5-like\u201d security guarantees from Europe<\/a> and the US, referring to Nato\u2019s founding principle that an attack on one member country should be considered as an attack on all.<\/p>\n Last week, American officials reportedly said the US was ready to offer Ukraine<\/a> Nato-like security guarantees to safeguard an eventual ceasefire in Russia\u2019s war on Ukraine.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a008.05 EST<\/p>\n Key events<\/p>\n Show key events only<\/p>\n Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature<\/p>\n In this report<\/a>, the Guardian\u2019s central and eastern European correspondent, Shaun Walker<\/a>, explores the hostile atmosphere some Ukrainians are facing in Poland, where resentment has been stoked, in part, by disinformation. Here is an extract:<\/p>\n Oleksandr Pestrykov, of the Ukrainian House in Warsaw, said anti-Ukrainian sentiment first appeared online in 2023, with any news article relating to Ukraine on Polish media immediately swamped with negative comments. Some have accused Russian bots of stoking prejudice online, and for a while the online hatred did not seem to make its way into the real world. That, he said, is now changing.<\/p>\n \u201cUntil summer this year, this negativity rarely left the bounds of the internet; the complaints we would get from Ukrainians would be sporadic, and similar to the situation before the full-scale war. But starting from summer we\u2019ve had a pretty large number of people reporting attacks to us, thankfully so far mostly verbal attacks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The complicated history between Poland and Ukraine also plays a role, with the massacre of over 100,000 Poles<\/a> between 1943 and 1945 by Ukrainian nationalists attempting to ensure the Volhynia region did not become part of Poland a frequent talking point. Ukraine has now allowed Poland to exhume the bodies of victims, but work is moving slowly and the topic is an emotive one for many in Poland.<\/p>\n Share<\/a>Russia says there has been ‘slow progress’ in talks with the US on Ukraine<\/p>\n Russian state media has quoted the Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, as having said on Monday that there was \u201cslow progress\u201d being made over a plan to end the war in Ukraine after the talks in Miami<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cSlow progress is being observed,\u201d Ryabkov was quoted as saying, after Russia and Ukraine<\/a> sent negotiators to Miami for separate talks with Donald Trump\u2019s envoys Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner, the US president\u2019s son-in-law and adviser.<\/p>\n There were no major breakthroughs from the talks as there remain several major sticking points to overcome, although both the US and Ukrainian envoys said the talks had been \u201cproductive and constructive\u201d.<\/p>\n Moscow has insisted, for example, that any peace deal must cede to Russia<\/a> the entire eastern Donbas region, including areas it has not yet occupied. Ukraine sees this as an unacceptable reward for Moscow\u2019s aggression. Russian troops continue a slow but grinding advance in the Donbas region, made up of the two heavily industrialised regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a009.34 EST<\/p>\n Prominent Russian assassinations<\/p>\n Russian general Fanil Sarvarov was killed by a car bomb in Moscow on Monday, the latest in a growing list of military officials and pro-war figures to be assassinated since the start of the full-scale invasion in Ukraine<\/a>.<\/p>\n Reuters has pulled together this summary of the most prominent cases since 2022:<\/p>\n April 25, 2025 – Lieutenant General Yaroslav Moskalik, 59, is killed by a car bomb near Moscow. Moskalik was deputy head of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff.<\/p>\n December 17, 2024 – Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, who was chief of Russia\u2019s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, is killed outside a Moscow apartment building along with his assistant when a bomb hidden in an electric scooter goes off.<\/p>\n November 13, 2024 – A bomb planted under a car kills a Russian serviceman in Sevastopol in Russia-annexed Crimea. A Ukrainian security source names him as Valery Trankovsky, a Russian naval captain whom Kyiv accused of war crimes for ordering missile strikes on civilian targets.<\/p>\n October 4, 2024 – Andrei Korotkiy, an employee at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine is killed in a car bomb attack. Ukrainian military intelligence calls him a collaborator and a war criminal.<\/p>\n December 6, 2023 – Illia Kyva, a former Ukrainian lawmaker regarded by Kyiv as a traitor, is shot dead near Moscow.<\/p>\n July 11, 2023 – Russian military officer Stanislav Rzhitsky, who had commanded a submarine in the Black Sea and appeared on a Ukrainian blacklist of alleged war criminals, is shot dead while out on a morning run in the southern city of Krasnodar.<\/p>\n April 2, 2023 – Vladen Tatarsky, a pro-war Russian military blogger, is killed by a bomb concealed in a statuette presented to him by a woman in a St Petersburg cafe.<\/p>\n August 20, 2022 – Darya Dugina, the daughter of a pro-war nationalist figure, is killed by a car bomb in the Moscow region.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a009.03 EST<\/p>\n EU says China dairy hit ‘unjustified’ in escalating trade tiff<\/p>\n Brussels has responded to China slapping duties of up to 42.7 percent on some EU dairy imports, denouncing the move as \u201cunjustified\u201d.<\/p>\n Beijing\u2019s salvo on Monday is just the latest in a trade spat with the EU that\u2019s affected products from food to electric vehicles.<\/p>\n The Commerce Ministry said the \u201cduty deposits\u201d, ranging from 21.9 percent to 42.7 percent will apply from Tuesday, and affect a range fresh and processed cheese, curd, blue cheese and some milk and cream.<\/p>\n Beijing says it has lodged the duties after concerns from its local dairy industry that EU subsidies have unfairly caused damage to Chinese producers. They have launched a probe. However EU officials reject the allegations.<\/p>\n \u201cOur assessment is that the [Chinese] investigation is based on questionable allegations and insufficient evidence, and that the measures are therefore unjustified and unwarranted,\u201d a European Commission trade spokesman said.<\/p>\n Beijing\u2019s probe is being seen as a tit-for-tat measure, after the EU investigated Chinese subsidies on electric vehicles, and then imposed tariffs as high as 45.3% on China-made EVs.<\/p>\n China urged the EU to scrap those tariffs. It has also initiated other probes into European brandy and pork imports which is being seen as a counter move to the EV tax.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Back to the killing of general Fanil Sarvarov this morning, the third such killing of a senior Russian official this year.<\/p>\n As expected, Ukraine<\/a> has not offered any official comment. It rarely officially admits or claims responsibility for targeted attacks.<\/p>\n Ukrainian intelligence has targeted dozens of Russian military officers and officials since the start of the war, accusing them of war crimes. But, as my colleague, the Guardian\u2019s Russian affairs reporter Pjotr Sauer writes, little is known about the clandestine Ukrainian resistance cells believed to be behind such assassinations and attacks inside Russia.<\/p>\n Ukraine\u2019s continued targeting of senior Russian military figures has underscored failures within Russia\u2019s security services.<\/p>\n Last December, Kyiv sources claimed responsibility for the assassination of Lt Gen Igor Kirillov<\/a>, the head of the military\u2019s nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces, who was killed by a bomb concealed in an electric scooter outside his apartment building, a day after Ukraine levelled criminal charges against him. His assistant, Ilya Polikarpov, was also killed in the attack.<\/p>\n Vladimir Putin described the killing of Kirillov as a \u201cmajor blunder\u201d by the country\u2019s security agencies, saying they should learn from it and improve their effectiveness.<\/p>\n It is unclear whether the high-profile killing of Sarvarov today will have any impact on the peace talks, as Ukrainian and US officials are holding discussions in Florida<\/a> aimed at ending the nearly four-year war between Russia and Ukraine.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a009.04 EST<\/p>\n Russia is ready to legally confirm it has no intention of attacking the EU or Nato, deputy foreign minister says<\/p>\n The Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, has said that Russia<\/a> is ready to confirm in a legal agreement that it has no intention of attacking either the EU or Nato, according to a report in the state RIA news agency. We have not been able to independently verify these comments yet.<\/p>\n As mentioned in a previous post<\/a>, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has offered<\/a> to drop Ukraine\u2019s ambition to join Nato in an attempt to show his willingness to reach an agreement to bring about an end to the war.<\/p>\n In return, Zelenskyy and his European allies have been pushing for \u201carticle-5-like\u201d security guarantees from Europe<\/a> and the US, referring to Nato\u2019s founding principle that an attack on one member country should be considered as an attack on all.<\/p>\n Last week, American officials reportedly said the US was ready to offer Ukraine<\/a> Nato-like security guarantees to safeguard an eventual ceasefire in Russia\u2019s war on Ukraine.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a008.05 EST<\/p>\n Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last week<\/a> that without a significant cash injection by spring, Ukraine will have to cut its drone production, with Kyiv under pressure to cede territory as the US pushes for a swift deal to bring the war to an end.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n As a reminder, EU leaders agreed<\/a> on Friday to provide \u20ac90bn ($106bn) to Ukraine to meet its military and economic needs for the next two years, although they failed to bridge differences with Belgium that would have allowed them to use frozen Russian assets to raise the funds. Instead, they were borrowed from capital markets.<\/p>\n Most of Russia\u2019s \u20ac210bn worth of assets in the EU are held by Euroclear, the Brussels-based securities depository.<\/p>\n Belgium is deeply anxious about being left exposed to legal and financial risks, and other states including Italy have also voiced concerns. Russia has filed a lawsuit against Euroclear in a Moscow court to try to get its money back.<\/p>\n Ukraine needs about \u20ac137bn over the next two years to cover its military\/public services.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a007.08 EST<\/p>\n EU Council extends economic sanctions against Russia for another six months<\/p>\n The EU Council said in a press release<\/a> on Monday that it has extended economic sanctions against Russia for six more months, in response to Moscow\u2019s ongoing aggression against Ukraine.<\/p>\n The measures will remain in force until 31 July 2026, the council said. The press release reads:<\/p>\n These economic measures, first introduced in 2014, were significantly expanded since February 2022 in response to Russia\u2019s unprovoked, unjustified and illegal military aggression against Ukraine.<\/p>\n They currently consist of a broad spectrum of sectoral measures, including restrictions on trade, finance, energy, technology and dual-use goods, industry, transport and luxury goods. <\/p>\n They also cover: a ban on the import or transfer of seaborne crude oil and certain petroleum products from Russia to the EU, a de-SWIFTing of several Russian banks and the suspension of the broadcasting activities and licenses in the European Union of several Kremlin-backed disinformation outlets. Additionally, specific measures enable the EU to counter sanctions circumvention.<\/p>\n As long as the illegal actions by the Russian Federation continue to violate fundamental rules of international law, including, in particular, the prohibition on the use of force, it is appropriate to maintain in force all the measures imposed by the EU and to take additional measures, if necessary.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n The Ukrainian army is battling an attempted Russian breakthrough in the Sumy region, it has said, after reports Moscow forcibly moved 50 people from a border village there.<\/p>\n That marks a renewed Russian advance in the part of the region largely spared from intense ground fighting since Ukraine<\/a> regained land there in a 2022 counteroffensive.<\/p>\n \u201cFighting is currently ongoing in the village of Grabovske,\u201d Ukraine\u2019s joint taskforce said yesterday, adding the troops were \u201cmaking efforts to drive the occupiers back into Russian territory\u201d.<\/p>\n It also refuted media reports saying Moscow\u2019s troops were in the neighbouring Ryasne village. Earlier on Sunday, the Ukrainian rights ombudsman said Russian troops forcibly moved about 50 people from Grabovske to Russia. There was no official comment from Russia.<\/p>\n