Ukraine-Russia war latest: Trump says he will loosen oil sanctions after ‘very good’ call with Putin – UK Times

A Russian drone struck an area near a high-rise apartment building on Monday in Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, injuring six people, smashing windows and setting cars ablaze, the city’s mayor said.

Mayor Ihor Terekhov said a small child was among the injured.

Kharkiv, located about 30km (18 miles) from the Russian border, withstood early advances by Russian forces following their full-scale invasion in February 2022 and has since been a frequent target of Russian air attacks.

Separately, Russian shelling in the southeastern city of Dnipro injured seven people, regional Governor Oleksandr Ganzha said on Telegram. Ganzha posted photos online showing rubble strewn across streets and damaged building facades.

Ukraine’s Maksym Murashkovskyi credited artificial intelligence for helping him win a silver medal at the Milano Cortina Winter Paralympics, calling ChatGPT a “revolutionary technology” after finishing runner-up in Sunday’s biathlon event.

Murashkovskyi, a bronze medallist at the 2023 world championships, was edged out by China’s Dang Hesong and narrowly missed gold.

“For the past six months, I have been training with ChatGPT,” the 25-year-old told reporters.

“It was not only tactics. It was half of my training plan – motivation, and so on. So it made up a huge part of my training.

“I used it as a psychologist, coach and sometimes even as a doctor.”

He added that artificial intelligence could eventually replace some aspects of the work done by human coaches.

“Not completely for five to 10 years. But part of it, definitely,” he said. “I believe in it – it is a revolutionary technology.”

Ukraine have won 10 medals at this year’s Paralympics so far.

Donald Trump said Vladimir Putin “wants to be helpful” with the Iran conflict after his call with the Russian leader.

Putin and Trump had their first call since the beginning of the war with Iran.

“I said, ‘You could be more helpful by getting the Ukraine–Russia war over with. That will be more helpful,’” Trump told reporters during a press conference at his Florida golf club.

A foreign policy aide to Putin said on Monday that the Russian president had proposed an idea for a “quick political and diplomatic end to the Iranian conflict”.

Kremlin foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov told reporters that the two leaders held hour-long call, initiated by the United States, focused on the conflicts involving Iran and Ukraine.

Trump told reporters he had a “very good call” with Putin about Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East.

“There’s tremendous hatred between President Putin and (Ukraine’s) President Zelensky. They can’t seem to get it together, but I think it was a positive call on that subject,” Trump said.

Trump has recently expressed dismay about the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which began more than four years ago.

Donald Trump has said the US plans to waive oil-related sanctions on “some countries” to ease the shortage triggered by the US-Israel war on Iran following his call with Vladimir Putin.

“So we have sanctions on some countries. We’re going to take those sanctions off until the Strait [of Hormuz] is up,” he told reporters.

The US president declined to provide further details.

Last week, the United States issued a temporary waiver allowing India to purchase certain Russian oil cargoes to help offset the loss of supplies from the Middle East.

With the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed to most oil tankers, benchmark crude prices surged past $100 a barrel on Monday – their highest level since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – before easing slightly this morning.

Lawyers representing Roman Abramovich have insisted that the £2.5bn proceeds from the sale of Chelsea football club belong entirely to him, and have warned that he will fight any attempt to confiscate the funds.

In a growing row between the oligarch and the government, Mr Abramovich’s legal team has also insisted ministers are responsible for the delay in releasing the funds for victims of the Ukraine war, claiming in a letter that this was always his intention and something he will do voluntarily when the assets are no longer tied up in a legal case.

But the letter has drawn a furious response from the foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, who told The Independent: “It is time Roman Abramovich does the right thing, but if he won’t, we will act.”

Political editor David Maddox reports:

President Donald Trump said that it was inconsequential if Russia has provided Iran with information to help Tehran target US military personnel and assets in the Middle East as the week-old war rages.

The president dismissed the import of such information-sharing after he attended the dignified transfer for six Army reservists who were killed in a drone strike in Kuwait the day after the US and Israel launched a war on Iran that has unsettled the global economy.

Trump stopped short of confirming reports by The Associated Press and other news outlets that U.S. intelligence officials believe Russia has provided Iran with such targeting information.

But if Moscow is passing on such details, he said Iran was getting little out of it.”If you take a look at what’s happened to Iran in the last week, if they’re getting information, it’s not helping them much,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One as he flew to Miami, where he’s spending the rest of the weekend.

The president also waved off a question about how Russia assisting Iran in such a way might affect his view of the US-Russia relationship.

“They’d say we do it against them,” Trump responded. “Wouldn’t they say that we do it against them?

“Ukraine, in the four years since it was invaded by Russia, has received US intelligence to help defend against incoming missiles from Russia as well as to help Kyiv hit certain Russian targets.

Russia has lost 1,273,290 troops since the start of the full scale invasion in 2022, according to Ukraine’s armed forces.

The number includes 930 casualties suffered over one day in the weekend.

The figures, reported early Sunday, are broadly supported by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, which assessed 1.2m casualties since Feb 2022 earlier this year.

That figure included killed, missing and wounded.

US President Donald Trump said he had a “very good call” with Vladimir Putin. He told Putin to get the Ukraine and Russia war “over with”.

“We had a lot of people on the line from our side, from his side. We were talking about Ukraine, which is just never ending fight, and when look, there’s tremendous hatred between President Putin and President Zelensky, they can’t seem to get it together, “ Mr Trump said during a press conference.

“But I think it was a positive call on that subject. And we obviously talked then about the Middle East, and he wants to be helpful. I said, you could be more helpful by getting the Ukraine, Russia war over with.”