Ukraine-Russia war latest: Zelensky in US to sign minerals deal as Trump tries to laugh off dictator jibe – UK Times

The Ukrainian military claims to have hit Russia’s Ilsky oil refinery in the Krasnodar region and a thermobaric weapons warehouse in the Russia-occupied Donetsk region overnight.

Ukraine’s military said the refinery was supplying fuel to the Russian military.

While negotiations are yet to be finalised, it has been reported the preliminary agreement establishes a fund in which Ukraine would contribute 50 per cent of proceeds from the “future monetisation” of state-owned mineral resources such as oil and gas, which would be invested in Ukrainian projects.

Included in the deal was a US commitment to back Ukraine’s economic development into the future. Deputy prime minister Olha Stefanishyna told the Financial Times that the minerals agreement is just one part of the bigger picture.

But the deal will not include the US security guarantees keenly sought after by Kyiv.

The US reportedly dropped Donald Trump’s demand for $500bn in potential revenue from Ukrainian resources, a condition which was rejected out of hand by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

My colleague Tom Watling has more details:

Donald Trump considering cancelling Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit today before being persuaded against it by Emmanuel Macron, it has been claimed in a French media report.

Citing a diplomatic source, BFMTV claimed that the US president’s team contacted Kyiv on Wednesday to cancel the visit – prompting Mr Zelensky to contact Mr Macron, who called Mr Trump to say he would personally vouch for Mr Zelensky.

Mr Trump confirmed the visit on Wednesday, following reports that a meeting may be taking place, in an announcement which came after Kyiv-Washington relations hit a shock new low, with Mr Trump echoing Kremlin propaganda in labelling Mr Zelensky a “dictator”.

Ukraine joining Nato is “just not going to happen”, Donald Trump has said, ahead of his meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky today.

Speaking in the Oval Office alongside Sir Keir Starmer on Thursday, the US president was asked about Europe’s Nato ambitions for Ukraine. He replied: “I could be very nice and say, ‘oh, we’ll work to it’. Look – it’s not going to happen. It’s just not going to happen.

“That’s what started this whole thing. Biden said that and all of a sudden the guns started. That was one of the primary reasons this started. And this was long before President Putin. They never said this was an impossibility. So we can say, ‘oh, gee, well we’ll try’, but that’s something that’s just not going to happen.”

But he continued: “Then the other question they ask is about the land – will you get your land back? Well, they’ve fought long and hard on the land … we’re going to certainly try and get as much as we can back. But on the Nato, that’s not going to happen.”

Even before today’s talks commence, Volodymyr Zelensky is already viewed in some quarters as having scored a diplomatic victory in securing a meeting in Washington before US-Russia peace talks begin in earnest – and just days after Donald Trump echoed Kremlin propaganda in labelling the Ukrainian president a “dictator”.

“The Ukrainians have been quite savvy at turning it round, and using this [the minerals deal] as an opening to engage the US,” a senior Kyiv-based European diplomat told Reuters.

Kyiv hopes the agreement will spur Trump to back Ukraine’s war effort, and potentially even win support from Republicans in Congress for a new round of aid.

Speaking alongside Sir Keir Starmer on Thursday, Mr Trump told reporters: “It’s a backstop, you could say, I don’t think anybody’s going to play around if we’re there with a lot of workers and having to do with rare earths and other things which we need for our country.”

However, Russia’s Vladimir Putin has also touted the possibility of a US minerals deal with Moscow, including in occupied Ukrainian territory.

Russia’s FSB security service has said it arrested two church figures suspected of plotting to kill a priest close to Vladimir Putin on the instructions of Ukrainian intelligence.

The alleged target was Tikhon Shevkunov, 66, whom Russian media have described for years as “Putin’s confessor”. He has maintained a public acquaintance with Mr Putin since the late 1990s and the Kremlin has said the two men know each other well.

In 2023, Mr Shevkunov was appointed to the senior church rank of metropolitan of Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula which Russia illegally in 2014.

In a statement, the FSB said it had detained two men it claimed had been recruited by Ukrainian military intelligence on the Telegram messenger service in mid-2024. The FSB said it seized an improvised explosive device and two fake Ukrainian passports.

One of the men, Nikita Ivankovich, is a Russian cleric at a church in Moscow. The other, Denis Popovich, a Ukrainian born in the western city of Chernivtsi, worked as Mr Shevkunov’s assistant.

The authorities released videos of both men confessing to the plot. They spoke hesitantly and it was not clear under what circumstances the confessions had been obtained.

Mr Popovich said he had been recruited to monitor Mr Shevkunov’s movements and threatened with the murder of his relatives unless he complied. He said he was then tasked with finding an accomplice in order to “eliminate” Mr Shevkunov.

He said the plan was to plant a bomb in a residential building of the 14th-century Sretensky Monastery in Moscow, where Mr Shevkunov was superior until 2018.

Russia’s defence ministry claims its forces have retaken the village of Novaya Sorochina in Russia’s western Kursk region, the RIA state news agency reports.

Russian troops have been fighting to eject Ukrainian soldiers from Kursk since last August, when Kyiv staged a lightning incursion over the border and captured a chunk of Russian territory.

Ukraine’s military claimed on Friday morning to have repelled 11 Russian attacks in Kursk over the previous 24 hours, and said Moscow’s forces had carried out 16 air strikes and launched more than 400 artillery shells at Ukrainian positions there.

Sergei Shoigu, the secretary of Russia’s powerful security council has told Chinese president Xi Jinping that Russia-China relations are at an unprecedented high, state media reports.

Mr Shoigu, who met earlier on Friday in Beijing with China’s foreign minister, said the two countries’ partnership was not directed against other nations.

China and Russia declared a “no limits” strategic partnership days before Putin sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022.