The United States has offered to provide Nato-style security guarantees for Kyiv as US and European negotiators report progress in talks to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, but a deal on territorial concessions remained elusive. Envoys sent by Donald Trump made the unprecedented offer at talks on Monday with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in Berlin. US officials have warned that such a deal would not be on the table forever. European leaders stressed the outcome of the talks would affect their own countries’ security for decades to come, write Andrew Roth, Deborah Cole and Shaun Walker.
Zelenskyy said after the talks he would ask the US to hit Russia with sanctions and provide Ukraine with more arms, including long-range weapons, if Moscow rejected the proposals being discussed between Kyiv, Washington and European leaders. “I think America will apply sanctions pressure and give us more weapons if he [Putin] rejects everything,” Zelenskyy told reporters. Kyiv supported the idea of a ceasefire, in particular for energy strikes, during the Christmas period, he added.
“We’re trying to get it done,” Trump said, speaking at the White House after he called into a dinner involving the key officials in Berlin. “We had numerous conversations with President Putin of Russia, and I think we’re closer now than we have been ever and we’ll see what we can do,” Trump added.
The talks in Berlin have sparked some optimism from European leaders but Moscow has yet to agree to any of the changes discussed in Germany and has not indicated any willingness to do so. “For the first time since the war began, the possibility of a ceasefire is conceivable,” the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said. The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, told reporters on his plane after leaving Berlin: “Today I had the feeling for the first time … that everyone was behaving like allies from one camp.” He said that “for the first time I heard from the mouths of American negotiators … that America would engage in security guarantees for Ukraine in such a way that the Russians would have no doubt that the American response would be military if the Russians attacked Ukraine again”.
The Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, said the issue of security guarantees had become “clearer and more credible” but that “many difficult questions remain, not least about territories and whether Russia wants peace at all”.
Germany’s lower house of parliament suffered a major email outage on Monday in what officials suspect was a cyber-attack during high-stakes US-Ukraine talks, the Financial Times reported. Members of parliament were unable to access their email accounts for more than four hours, it reported.
Ukrainian underwater drones struck and disabled a Russian Kilo-class attack submarine in the Russian navy’s most important remaining Black Sea base, in the first operation of its kind, Ukrainian officials said on Monday. The strike, carried out by Kyiv’s SBU security service with its “sub sea baby” drones, hit the submarine in the port of Novorossiysk, where Russia has rebased many naval vessels to put them out of reach of Ukrainian strikes. Kyiv has been trying to show it can inflict significant damage on Russia. A Ukrainian navy spokesperson said the operation to hit a submarine – the most difficult target to hit – marked “another turning point” in the naval battle between Ukraine and Russia.
The head of Britain’s MI6 spy agency says Putin is stalling efforts to end Russia’s war on Ukraine, and is testing the west with tactics that fall “just below the threshold of war”. Blaise Metreweli said Putin was “dragging out negotiations” on stopping the conflict and remained determined to “subjugate Ukraine and harass Nato members”. Dan Sabbagh covered Metreweli’s first public speech since she became chief of Britain’s foreign intelligence agency.
Russia’s central bank has said it is seeking $230bn (£170bn) in damages from Euroclear, as the Kremlin fired a warning shot against the use of Russian frozen assets to aid Ukraine. The Russian central bank said on Monday that it was claiming 18tn roubles, according to local state media reports about the case launched last week. EU leaders will decide this week whether to use €210bn (£185bn/$247bn) in Russian frozen assets to provide Ukraine with a loan to fund its defence and keep the economy afloat, Jennifer Rankin reports.
European leaders including Zelenskyy will meet in The Hague on Tuesday to launch an international claims commission to compensate Kyiv for hundreds of billions of dollars in damage from Russian attacks and alleged war crimes. The one-day conference, co-hosted by the Netherlands and the 46-nation Council of Europe, is expected to be attended by dozens of senior figures including the EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas.
The EU adopted fresh sanctions against Russian oil interests on Monday, targeting traders Murtaza Lakhani and Etibar Eyyub for helping Moscow to circumvent western sanctions on crude exports. The EU has imposed 19 packages of sanctions so far, but Moscow has managed to adapt to most measures and is still selling millions of barrels of oil to India and China, albeit at discounts to global prices.
