Ukraine Russia war live: Trump threatens Putin with ‘massive sanctions’ after Moscow rejects summit plan – UK Times

A Ukrainian man accused of helping to blow up the Nord Stream gas pipelines has been arrested in northern Italy.

The 49-year-old, named by investigators as Serhii K, once served in Ukraine’s security services and special forces, reported Sky News.

He was detained at a bungalow hotel in San Clemente, Rimini province, after German prosecutors issued a European arrest warrant. Officers from Italy’s Carabinieri raided his room without resistance.

Mr K had checked in with his family under his real name, triggering a police alert. At least one of their travel tickets was issued in Poland. He had driven across the Italian border last week in a car with Ukrainian plates.

No weapons or further evidence were recovered during the search.

He has denied the charges, insisting he was in Ukraine at the time of the September 2022 blasts, which ruptured three Russian pipelines near Bornholm island in the Baltic Sea. German authorities accuse him of collusion to cause explosions, sabotage and destruction of infrastructure.

Deputy Bologna Prosecutor Licia Scagliarini authorised his handover to Germany, but Mr K told the court he would not consent, which could delay extradition. He remains in custody in Bologna until the next hearing on 3 September.

The Nord Stream explosions escalated the Ukraine war and deepened Europe’s energy crisis.

Western intelligence has suggested a pro-Ukraine group may have been involved, but responsibility has never been claimed. Italian prosecutors are also probing possible links with other sabotage incidents, including the sinking of a Russian-linked oil tanker off Savona earlier this year.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief said that the possibility of Ukraine ceding land to Russia as part of a peace deal to end their three-year war is “a trap” set by Mr Putin.

The Russian leader is demanding Ukrainian concessions in return for halting his army’s invasion but granting him those demands would amount to rewarding the country that started the fighting, Kaja Kallas, vice-president of the European Commission, said.

The recent talk about handing Putin concessions is “exactly the trap that Russia wants us to walk into,” Kallas said in an interview with the BBC.

“I mean, the discussion all about what Ukraine should give up, what the concessions that Ukraine is willing to (make), whereas we are forgetting that Russia has not made one single concession and they are the ones who are the aggressor here, they are the ones who are brutally attacking another country and killing people,” she said.

“Russia is just dragging feet. It’s clear that Russia does not want peace,” Kallas said.

“President Trump has been repeatedly saying that the killing has to stop and Putin is just laughing, not stopping the killing, but increasing the killing.”

Volodymyr Zelensky says Russia wants to avoid a meeting with him because “they do not want to end the war”.

The Ukrainian president spoke during a press conference alongside Nato secretary general Mark Rutte, who was visiting Kyiv.

“It is necessary that this space for avoidance be reduced,” Zelensky said.

“US and European unity will reduce this space.”

Rutte said that Trump wants to “break the deadlock” with Putin and engage the United States in providing security guarantees for Ukraine.

“President Trump has made this a priority,” he told the news conference.

Russia’s top diplomat said there are no plans for a meeting between Russian president Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss their three-year war, days after US president Donald Trump said he had begun arrangements for them to sit down together.

“There is no meeting planned” between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told NBC.

Uncertainty has grown in recent days about Moscow’s commitment to US-led peace efforts, as Russian officials have raised fundamental objections to the nascent proposals.

Lavrov said Putin would be ready to meet with Zelensky to discuss peace terms – but only after key issues were first worked out by senior officials. That could involve a protracted negotiating process between two sides that are currently far apart.

Ukraine wants Western security guarantees to deter any post-war Russian attack, and US and European officials are scrambling to come up with detailed proposals on how that might work.

But Lavrov said earlier this week that making security arrangements for Ukraine without Moscow’s involvement was pointless.

Donald Trump has expressed frustration that the peace talks between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky have not yet been scheduled.

“We’re going to see whether or not they have a meeting,” Trump told reporters.

“It’ll be interesting to see. If they don’t, why didn’t they have a meeting, because I told them to have a meeting. But I’ll know what I am going to do in two weeks.”

Trump said he had begun making arrangements for a Putin-Zelensky meeting on Monday soon after concluding White House talks with Zelensky and European leaders and speaking on the phone with Putin.

Russia’s top diplomat, Sergei Lavrov, made clear on Friday that Putin won’t sit down with Zelensky until Ukraine agrees to certain concessions.

Vladimir Putin praised Donald Trump for his leadership as he expressed hope of improved bilateral ties between the two nations.

Calling the meeting with him during their Alaska summit “just the start of a full recovery of our relations,” with the US, he added that the outcome would depend on several other western nations.

He also allayed his scepticism about the progress made, saying that the US is “bound by its obligations” to its partners including Nato.

“But I am sure that leadership qualities of the current president, President Trump, are a good guarantee that the relationships will be restored,” Putin said.

President Donald Trump expressed his displeasure on Friday over a Russian strike hitting an American electronics manufacturer in Ukraine.

“I [said] that I’m not happy about it, and I’m not happy about anything having to do with that war,” Trump said.

“No, I’m not happy about anything about that war. Nothing. Not happy at all. We’ll see what happens. I say, over the next two weeks, we’re going to find out which way it’s going to go. And, I better be very happy,” Trump added.

The US president again threatened Russia with “massive sanctions” over the war unless an agreement is reached within a fortnight. Only then, Trump said, would he decide on “whether or not it’s massive sanctions or massive tariffs or both — or do we do nothing and say, ‘it’s your fight.’”

This is not the first time that Trump has expressed a desire to enforce stronger sanctions, only to change his mind.

Last month, he threatened Russia with 100 per cent tariffs if a truce was not reached and on 28 July, he gave Putin another 10 days to reach a deal with Ukraine.

However, that deadline passed without much action.

President Donald Trump on Friday brandished his picture with Vladimir Putin from Alaska that he said the Russian leader sent him.

“I was just sent a picture from somebody that wants to be there very badly,” Trump said. “He’s been very respectful of me and of our country, but not so respectful of others.”

“I’m going to sign this for him. But I was sent one, and I thought you’d like to see it,” Trump said as he shared that the Russian president expressed a desire to attend the Fifa World Cup, which is scheduled to be held in the US next year.

“He may be coming and he may not, depending on what happens. We have a lot of things happening over the next couple of weeks.”

“But I thought it was a nice picture of him. Okay of me, but nice of him. So, that was very nice that it was sent to me,” the US president said.

The family of a British aid worker reportedly killed in a Russian drone strike while volunteering in Ukraine has been left in “red tape limbo”, an NGO has said.

Annie Lewis Marffy, 69, travelled from her home in Silverton, near Exeter, Devon, in late May to deliver a green Toyota Rav4 packed with supplies.

She arrived in Ukraine on 4 June but did not meet co-ordinators from Aid Ukraine UK, the non-profit NGO which had organised the mission, as planned.

After a week of searching for Ms Lewis Marffy, the organisation was contacted by the Kramatorsk district police department with information that she had been killed.

It adds that her body “remains in an area of active hostilities, making it impossible to conduct evacuation measures to transfer the body to the forensic medical examination department”.

Her family have asked for a death certificate to be issued, based on the Kramatorsk district police department report, either through local authorities or the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). But this process could take months or years due to to lack her remains.

Katarzyna Bylok, founder of Aid Ukraine, said: “It leaves her family in a horrible red tape limbo.”

Russian president Vladimir Putin praised US president Donald Trump on Friday, describing the US leader as “the light at the end of the tunnel” for struggling Moscow-Washington relations.

“Our relationship with the United States is at one of the lowest levels it’s been since the end of World War II,” Putin said at an event in Sarov, a closed city about 370km east of Moscow that has served as a base for Russia’s nuclear weapons program since the late 1940s.

“But with the arrival of President Trump, I think that a light at the end of the tunnel has finally appeared.”Putin also commended Trump’s leadership qualities and said he hoped that the first steps had been taken to ensure the “full-scale restoration” of Russia-US ties.

He said that Russian companies were already discussing plans with “American partners” on opportunities for co-operation across the Arctic and in Alaska in areas such as liquified natural gas.

The comments came the same day as Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, in an interview with NBC, said that there were no plans for a meeting between Putin and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky – a proposal that Trump has repeatedly floated to end Russia’s three-year invasion of its neighbour.