Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said he was ready to meet US secretary of state Marco Rubio following reports of a rift with president Vladimir Putin.
“Secretary of State Marco Rubio and I understand the need for regular communication,” he told RIA Novosti news agency on Sunday, weeks after efforts to organise a summit of Russian and American leaders were put on ice.
Lavrov said he was ready to discuss mending bilateral ties as well as the war in Ukraine, repeating that peace could not be achieved without “taking Russian interests into account”, a phrase Moscow uses to signal it’s standing firm in its maximalist demands for Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Russia launched hundreds of drones and missiles targeting energy infrastructure in Ukraine between Friday and Saturday, killing at least seven people.
State-owned energy company Tsentrenergo said the attacks were one of the largest on its facilities since the start of the war in 2022, and that it had been forced to halt operations at its plants in the Kyiv and Kharkiv regions.
Germany to buy 20 more Airbus helicopters for 1 billion euros, paper shows
Germany will spend almost €1bn ($1.2 billion) on a further 20 military helicopters from Airbus, due to be delivered over two years from 2027, a government document showed.
The funding commitment, first reported by Bloomberg, is contained in a finance ministry paper to be presented to parliament, seen by Reuters yesterday.
The defence ministry declined to comment on the order, saying it could not discuss procurement plans before they had been debated in parliament.
It completes a 2023 framework agreement that allowed the armed forces to purchase up to 82 Airbus H145M helicopters, 62 of which have already been ordered.
The total 931 million euro cost of the 20 additional aircraft – 15 for fighting roles and five for training special forces – will come from a special fund created at the start of this year to fund an urgent modernisation of Germany’s armed forces.
Governments across Europe are ramping up defence spending in the face of the increased Russian threat since its February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The German order will yield benefits for numerous other companies involved in kitting out the helicopters, such as defence electronics company Hensoldt which will provide electronic warfare and night-vision equipment.
Viktor Orban is back in the White House again – doing Putin’s dirty work for him
Given that the two leaders are on opposite sides of a strategic argument that is killing people and shaping the world – an issue that could undermine European cohesion in the face of Russian aggression – a meeting between Donald Trump and Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban should be an incendiary moment.
But the cold water of their mutual admiration for Vladimir Putin means that no fireworks can ignite in the Oval Office.
Orban has been in power for longer than the 47th president of the United States. But he has the same authoritarian instincts. Like Trump, he has sought to undermine the judiciary, while his cronies have captured much of Hungary’s media and enjoy preferential treatment in business.
His problem is that Hungary, along with Slovenia and the Czech Republic, relies heavily on fuel imports from Russia. Mostly through these countries, the European Union has spent €260bn (£230bn) on Russian fuel since Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Inside Ukraine’s start-up weapons industry rising from the ashes
Naive, self-sabotaging and riddled with Moscow’s agents, Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons and an arms industry that produced a third of the Soviet Union’s supply, trusted the West and the Kremlin to protect it, and was left fighting for its life.
Now, 30 years on, the start-up nation redefining how war is fought has been forced into a bodge-and-make-do world of arms production, fusing old technology with IT know-how to break the bonds its allies tied to make Kyiv fight one-handed.
The latest innovation is a cruise missile with a range of 3,000km, a maximum speed of 900kmph and a payload of over a tonne, which has been used in strikes deep into Russian territory.
The FP-5 “Flamingo” missile is powered by a rocket and a Soviet-era turbofan jet engine bolted on top. Some of those engines have been dug out of landfill dumps.
Russian air defence systems destroy 71 Ukrainian drones overnight
Russian air defence systems destroyed or intercepted 71 Ukrainian drones overnight, the Russian defence ministry said on its Telegram channel.
Of these, seven were downed over the Kursk region and seven were downed over the Black Sea. Most of the drones were shot down in the bordering regions of Ukraine and Russia, the defence ministry said.
Russia’s Lavrov says he is ready to meet Rubio
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said he was ready to meet US secretary of state Marco Rubio but that Russia would not abandon its core conditions for ending the Ukraine war.
“Secretary of state Marco Rubio and I understand the need for regular communication,” Lavrov, Putin’s foreign minister since 2004, told state news agency RIA Novosti.
“It is important for discussing the Ukrainian issue and promoting the bilateral agenda. That is why we communicate by telephone and are ready to hold face-to-face meetings when necessary,” Lavrov said.
Czech leader calls on Europe to invest in Ukraine’s defence
Europe will need to invest in Ukraine’s defence to halt Russia’s war and ensure the continent’s security against increasing threats from Moscow, Czech Republic foreign minister Jan Lipavsky said.
“We know that if we want to stop Russia, we have to pay for it,” Lipavsky told AFP from the sidelines of the European Union-CELAC summit in Santa Maria, Colombia yesterday.
The center-right government in Prague has been a strong ally for Kyiv since the beginning of Russia’s invasion in 2022.
Kremlin says Russia will abide by nuclear ban
Russia will abide by its obligations under a global nuclear ban, the Kremlin spokesperson said Dmitry Peskov said.
The remarks from Moscow come after days of uncertainty over remarks by US president Donald Trump that appeared to suggest Washington might restart atomic tests after more than three decades.
Trump’s comments came after Russia announced it had tested a new atomic-powered and nuclear-capable underwater drone and a new nuclear-powered cruise missile.
But Moscow did not announce any tests of its nuclear weapons, which last occurred in 1990.
“Putin has repeatedly said that Russia is committed to its obligation to end nuclear tests, and that we have no intention” of conducting them, Peskov told reporters.
Earlier this week, Putin ordered officials to study the possibility of resuming nuclear testing, though Russia said it would not do so unless the US did so first.
Slovakia won’t use frozen Russian assets, says PM
Slovakia will not be party to use of frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine, the country’s prime minister Robert Fico said.
His remarks come as the European Commission proposed a plan to allow the EU nations to use up to €185 billion, comprising majority of Russia’s sovereign assets currently frozen in Europe, in order to support Ukraine, without formally confiscating them.
“Slovakia won’t take part in any legal or financial schemes to seize frozen assets if those funds would be spent on military costs in Ukraine,” Fico said, stating that use of these assets will only fuel the war.
“Do we want to end the war or are we stoking it? We are going to give €140 billion to Ukraine to keep the war going. So what does that mean? That the war will go on for at least another two years,” Fico said.
Ukrainian services working non-stop to restore power to thousands of homes
Ukrainian repair services have deployed workers non-stop to fix the damage to power grids caused by massive Russian airstrikes, Volodymyr Zelensky said.
“Repair crews are working almost around the clock in most regions,” Zelensky said in his evening address.
“Restoration efforts are ongoing, and although the situation is difficult, thousands of people are involved in stabilising the system and repairing the damage.”
Around 100,000 homes in the Kharkiv region have plunged into darkness after Russian airstrikes through the weekend.
The massive attacks on Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure have heightened scrutiny over the the energy ministry’s apparent failure to protect the country’s most critical energy facilities near nuclear power sites, according to several current and former officials who spoke to AP.
Zelensky says Ukraine looking to order 27 Patriot air defence systems
Ukraine was looking to order 27 Patriot air defence systems from US companies, Volodymyr Zelensky said.
In the meantime, he added, the war-hit nation was looking to borrow essential anti-missile defence systems from its European allies.
Additional help was always needed until Russia continued to wage war, the Ukrainian president said.
“It’s never enough. It’s enough when the war ends. And enough when Putin understands that he has to stop,” he said.
