Category: 2. Editor’s Choice

The US has demanded control of a crucial pipeline in Ukraine used to send Russian gas to Europe, according to reports, in a move described as a colonial shakedown.

US and Ukrainian officials met on Friday to discuss White House proposals for a minerals deal. Donald Trump wants Kyiv to hand over its natural resources as “payback” in return for weapons delivered by the previous Biden administration.

Talks have become increasingly acrimonious, Reuters said. The latest US draft is more “maximalist” than the original version from February, which proposed giving Washington $500bn worth of rare metals, as well as oil and gas.

Citing a source close to the talks, the news agency said the most recent document includes a demand that the US government’s International Development Finance Corporation take control of the natural gas pipeline.

It runs from the town of Sudzha in western Russia to the Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod, about 750 miles (1,200km) away, on the border with the EU and Slovakia. Built in Soviet times, the pipeline is a key piece of national infrastructure and a major energy route.

On 1 January, Ukraine cut off the supply of gas when its five-year contract with the Russian state energy company Gazprom expired. Both countries had previously earned hundreds of millions of euros in transit fees, including during the first three years of full-scale war.

Volodymyr Landa, a senior economist with the Centre for Economic Strategy, a Kyiv thinktank, said the Americans were out for “all they can get”. Their bullying “colonial-type” demands had little chance of being accepted by Kyiv, he predicted.

Last autumn, Volodymyr Zelenskyy proposed giving the US access to Ukraine’s underdeveloped mineral sector. He envisaged a deal that would see the incoming Trump administration supply Ukraine with weapons, in return for future profits from joint investments.

Instead, Trump has refused to give security commitments or military support but wants the minerals anyway. Last week he complained Zelenskyy was trying to “back out of an agreement” and said Ukraine’s president would have “big problems” if he failed to sign.

Speaking to journalists on Thursday, Zelenskyy said he was ready to do a deal to modernise his country but that Ukraine could only agree if there was “parity” between the two sides, with revenues split “50-50”.

“I am just defending what belongs to Ukraine. It should be beneficial for both the United States and Ukraine. This is the right thing to do,” Zelenskyy said. The US Treasury confirmed “technical” talks were ongoing.

Meanwhile, the US special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, said his remarks over a possible partition of Ukraine had been misinterpreted. In an interview with the Times, Kellogg said the country could be divided “almost like the Berlin after world war two” as part of a peace deal.

Writing on X, Kellogg said he was referring to “a post-cease fire resiliency force in support of Ukraine’s sovereignty”. Under this plan, Russian troops would remain in territory already seized by Moscow, with British and French forces stationed in Kyiv and in other parts of the country.

On Friday, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff held talks with Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg. Witkoff’s reported solution to the conflict was to give Russia the four Ukrainian provinces it is demanding – including territory that Ukraine controls, and which is home to 1 million people.

Meanwhile, at a meeting of the Ukraine defence contact group on Friday, Kyiv’s allies announced a record €21bn (£18.2bn) in additional military help. They accused Putin of dragging his feet over a 30-day ceasefire deal which Ukraine has accepted.

Early on Saturday, Russia carried out further air attacks against Ukrainian civilian targets. Three warehouses were destroyed in Kyiv, with two people injured. The Kremlin has fired 70 missiles and 2,200 drones at Ukraine since the 11 March US ceasefire proposal, Ukrainian officials said.

Zelenskyy paid tribute on Saturday to a 26-year-old pilot, captain Pavlo Ivanov, who was killed during an F-16 combat mission. Ukraine’s small air force “heroically” defends the country from Russian missiles and drones, and supported ground operations, he said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had however warned ahead of that meeting not to expect any breakthroughs, though the process of normalising relations was ongoing. On Friday, European nations agreed to US$24 billion in military aid for Kyiv.

On Saturday in Turkey, Sybiha said the Ukraine war signalled how the international institutional system under the UN had become “dysfunctional”. “We need additional tools of enforcement. We need reforms,” he argued, adding that amendments were needed to implement humanitarian laws.

“It is important that international laws should be laws, not simply declarations,” he said, adding that if the conflict did not end in a “fair way”, then “the price for everybody will be high”.

Sybiha was among speakers at multiple panels at the three-day Antalya Diplomacy Forum, where leaders and diplomats, especially from the Global South, urged more inclusion for their region in international decision-making. They warned that deepening geopolitical fractures and economic rivalries were weakening international cooperation.

The fighting between the Russian Federation and Ukraine drags on, taking a terrible toll on both countries. It has already wreaked havoc for over a thousand days. Though hopes for peace rose after Trump took office, recent diplomatic gaffes have…

Russia launched a barrage of drones in an overnight attack on Ukraine, injuring four people and damaging residential and commercial buildings in Kyiv and other parts of the country, Ukrainian officials said on Saturday.

Overnight attacks

According to the Ukrainian air force, 56 of 88 Russian drones were shot down and 24 disoriented by means of electronic warfare.

Drones have played a big part in the conflict in Ukraine, with both sides employing them to carry out sometimes very long-range attacks on each other.

US envoy denies Ukraine partitioning claims

Meanwhile, Keith Kellogg, the US special envoy to Ukraine, found himself in the middle of a controversy over appearing to suggest that Ukraine could be divided like Berlin after World War II.

Kellogg posted on X, formerly Twitter, to clarify remarks he made in an interview with The Times newspaper published on Saturday.

In the interview, he was quoted as saying: “You could almost make it look like what happened with Berlin after World War II, when you had a Russian zone, a French zone, and a British zone, a US zone.”

His remarks were interpreted by some media outlets as suggestions that Ukraine could be partitioned in a manner similar to postwar Berlin, but Kellogg denied this.

“I was speaking of a post-ceasefire resiliency force in support of Ukraine’s sovereignty. In discussions of partitioning, I was referencing areas or zones of responsibility for an allied force (without US troops). I was NOT referring to a partitioning of Ukraine,” he said.

According to the Times, Kellogg said a demilitarized zone could be established along the existing lines of control in eastern Ukraine as a buffer between Ukrainian and allied troops, and Russian forces.

“You look at a map and you create, for lack of a better term, a demilitarized zone (DMZ),” he was quoted as saying.

Kellogg suggested that the presence of international troops in Ukraine would “not be provocative at all” to Russia, as they would be “west of the (Dnipro), which is a major obstacle.”

He did admit that Russian President Vladimir Putin “might not accept” the proposal.

Fears of concessions to Moscow

Russian troops currently occupy all or most of four regions in eastern Ukraine that it claims as its own, which together make up some 20% of Ukrainian territory.

As the US continues to push for peace talks and a deal with Moscow, US envoy Steve Witkoff held a third set of talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Friday. 

Moscow is facing accusations from the US and others of dragging its feet on a US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire that Kyiv has agreed to.  

Trump tells Russia to ‘get moving’ on Ukraine

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Edited by: Roshni Majumdar 

NATO is concerned that Russia may be considering placing nuclear weapons in outer space to target satellites. Secretary General Mark Rutte warned of the possibility in an interview with German newspaper Welt am Sonntag.

He said Moscow’s capabilities in space are outdated in comparison with the West. “Therefore, the development of nuclear weapons in space is a way for Russia to improve its capabilities. This is very worrying.”

Although the weapons would not target Earth, shooting down satellites could have serious consequences, as many systems we use rely on satellites, including navigation and communication systems, as well as environmental monitoring.

Rutte added that such a move by Russia would violate the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, signed by the United States and the Soviet Union at the time. It still provides the framework of international space law and prohibits the deployment of weapons of mass destruction in space.

According to Rutte, NATO allies are adapting to the new challenges, exchanging intelligence and developing better protected satellites.

“In recent years, space has become increasingly crowded, dangerous, and unpredictable. We know that competition in space is fierce and becoming increasingly bitter. And not just in commercial terms. This affects our entire security,” he said.

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