Ukraine war briefing: Trump says he will ‘probably’ meet Zelenskiy in US next week

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would “probably” meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who will be in the US next week to address a meeting of the UN security council on Russia’s war in his country. “Probably, yes,” Trump said in response to a question from a reporter about whether he will meet the Ukrainian leader. Trump did not provide further details. Zelenskiy said in August he wanted to present a peace plan to US President Joe Biden, vice-president Kamala Harris and Trump. While Trump and Zelenskiy talked over the phone in July, they have not talked in person since Trump’s 2017-2021 term.

Zelenskiy said on Wednesday that his “Victory Plan”, intended to bring peace to Ukraine while keeping the country strong and avoiding all “frozen conflicts”, was now complete after much consultation. Zelenskiy pledged last month to present his plan to Biden, presumably next week when he is in the US. While providing daily updates on the plan’s preparation, Zelenskiy has given few clues of the contents, indicating only that it aims to create terms acceptable to Ukraine, now locked in conflict with Russia for more than two and a half years.

The Biden administration still is not convinced that it should give Ukraine the authority to launch long-range missiles deeper into Russia, and US officials say they are seeking more detailed information about how Kyiv would use the weapons and how they fit into the broader strategy for the war, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday. US officials said they have asked Ukraine to spell out more clearly its combat objectives. The report comes a week after Biden discussed easing restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles supplied by the west with British prime minister Keir Starmer.

A Ukrainian drone attack on a large Russian weapons depot caused a blast that was picked up by earthquake monitoring stations, in one of the biggest strikes on Moscow’s military arsenal since the war began. Pro-Russian military bloggers said Ukraine struck an arsenal for the storage of missiles, ammunition and explosives in Toropets, a historic town more than 300 miles north of Ukraine and about 230 miles west of Moscow. Videos and images on social media showed a huge ball of flame rising high into the night sky and detonations thundering across a lake, in a region not far from the border with Belarus.

The European Union must be quick to increase its defences as Russia may be ready for a confrontation in six to eight years, the nominee to be the EU’s first defence commissioner told Reuters in an interview. Andrius Kubilius, a former prime minister of Lithuania, has been tapped to boost the continent’s arms industry, by getting EU countries to spend more on European weapons and procure jointly – as well as by getting companies themselves to cooperate more across borders. The new post reflects how security has risen to the top of the EU’s political agenda since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. “Defence ministers and Nato generals agree that Vladimir Putin could be ready for confrontation with Nato and the EU in six to eight years,” Kubilius, a fierce critic of Russia and a supporter of Ukraine, said on Wednesday.

Putin on Wednesday said he had ordered a boost of Russia’s army to 1.5 million active soldiers earlier this week to ensure a well-trained military. The president on Monday signed a decree boosting the number of active troops by 180,000 soldiers – making the Russian army the second largest in the world by active troop size.

Russia’s counteroffensive to retake Ukrainian-held territory in the Kursk region has been “stopped”, a spokesperson from Ukraine’s military administration there told AFP on Wednesday, after Moscow said it was beginning to repel the surprise incursion. Russia earlier this month said it had taken back several villages from Ukraine in the region, where Kyiv has held on to swathes of land since its shock offensive began more than a month ago. “They tried to attack from the flanks, but they were stopped there,” spokesperson Oleksiy Dmytrashkivsky from Ukraine’s military administration in Kursk told AFP.

The British government on Wednesday said it summoned Russia’s ambassador to condemn what it called Moscow’s “unprecedented and unfounded public campaign of aggression against the UK”. Andrei Kelin was told that Russia’s behaviour, including its “malicious and completely baseless” claims of spying against six British diplomats, contravened the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations, the foreign ministry said.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has indefinitely postponed a staff mission to Moscow this week to review the Russian economy for the first time since the invasion of Ukraine, after the move came under heavy criticism from several of Kyiv’s European allies. After revelations in the Guardian of widespread condemnation, the IMF said it would spend more time gathering information for a “rigorous analysis”.