War in Ukraine, Bucharest: two drones shot down in our airspace. Zelensky: ‘Ready for negotiations’

The legislation, named after the late South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, was designed to more swiftly cut off the flow of financial resources fuelling the war against Ukraine.

Trump’s unexpected decision comes a week after his surprising statement that the United States had agreed to purchase diesel from Russia, in an attempt to reduce global energy prices, despite the fact that this could harm Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.

Against this backdrop, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was convinced that the US administration would lift further sanctions against Russia. “Unfortunately, the lifting of sanctions will continue. I believe the diesel deal is just the first step,” Zelensky told reporters, referring to the agreement reached by Trump with President Vladimir Putin.

The measures decided upon by Trump have been met with approval in Moscow. The decision to exempt Russia from significant sanctions – imposed by the US Congress – represents a further setback for Ukraine and marks a ‘historic’ moment: this was stated today by the chief economic negotiator of Vladimir Putin. “The Trump administration’s suspension of the Graham Act is an important and truly historic moment,” Kirill Dmitriev, the Kremlin’s adviser on international economic cooperation, on social media, just a few hours after the US President signed an executive order suspending new sanctions against Moscow.

It would be “a serious mistake” on the part of the United States to restrict access to the satellite systems and intelligence used by Ukraine to defend itself against Russian attacks. This is according to Defence Minister, Guido Crosetto, in an interview with the BBC. The minister warns that such a move by US President Donald Trump’s administration “makes absolutely no sense” and risks prolonging Russia’s large-scale invasion rather than helping to bring about peace.

“Peace will come when Putin is convinced that the situation has reached a stalemate, that he cannot make any further headway,” Crosetto emphasises in the interview, arguing that he considers it a serious mistake on the part of the Trump administration to limit support for Ukraine. If Putin, Crosetto continues, “sees weaknesses on the Ukrainian side – and if the United States deprives Ukraine of resources, this creates weakness – then he will believe he can win. So the war will continue”. “I think that is completely wrong,” he stresses. In the interview, the minister states that Italian military support will continue “as long as this government remains in office”, whilst warning that securing parliamentary approval for further deliveries will be “more difficult” as the elections approach.

“I believe that Putin does not want to stop at Ukraine. That is why Europe is concerned and we, as Europe and as NATO, are preparing ourselves. In the hope that this madness does not come to pass. We are preparing for this madness, hoping never to have to face it, but preparing for the possibility of Russia resorting to madness”, the Defence Minister went on to explain, emphasising that Russia has invested heavily in weapons and troops and, if the war were to end soon, would not know what to do with them. Crosetto also reported that there has been no confirmation of the rumour, which circulated last month, that Russia was planning to launch drone attacks against Italia, France and Spain from container ships in the Mediterranean.

However, cyber-attacks – which the minister attributed to Russia – are now a daily occurrence (“there are hundreds of them every single day”) and, in his view, Europe’s response has so far been too weak. “You cannot win a war if you do not fight back,” the minister said.

The additional European aid called for by the Italian Defence Minister may not be able to count on a contribution from Slovakia or, alternatively, from Hungary. According to the Slovak daily Dennik N., Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has announced that Slovakia will not participate in any further loan of 70 billion euros to Ukraine for 2027. The Prime Minister of Bratislava, who maintains close ties with Moscow and opposes military aid to Kyiv, emphasised that his Hungarian counterpart, Peter Magyar, also shares this position. At the Brussels summit, Volodymyr Zelensky estimated the cost of the war to Ukraine over the coming year at 155 billion euros and asked the Europeans for a further 70 billion euros in aid. The European Council has tasked the Commission with drawing up proposals to meet this financial requirement.

Robert Fico described it as “dangerous” to link this support to the negotiations on the European budget for the period 2028–2034. He did, however, give an assurance that he intended to help Kyiv in other ways, particularly through projects in the fields of education, roads and energy interconnections.

The order to restrict the Starshield satellite service provided by SpaceX – which Ukraine uses for military communications and drone operations – is said to have come from within the White House. This is reported by the Reuters website, citing two US officials and one Western official briefed on the matter. According to the sources, senior officials at the US Department of Defence were informed that the Starshield service provided to the Ukrainian armed forces was to be curtailed. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not specify who in the White House had taken the decision nor who had been tasked with implementing it. Earlier this week, Ukrainian officials had reported that the military-grade satellite receivers had stopped working when mounted on fast-moving objects, compromising the performance of the drones that use them for their on-board guidance systems. On Thursday, a source at the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence stated that the devices had resumed functioning whilst in motion, but only up to a speed of 160 kilometres per hour. The restrictions have complicated missions against Russian forces and logistical infrastructure in the occupied territories, as well as slowing down the interceptor drones deployed to shoot down incoming Russian Shahed drones. When asked about the directive, a senior US official stated that the president “has never made such a request”. The White House did not respond to questions about the possible involvement of other members of the administration. SpaceX, the Department of Defence and the Ukrainian embassy in Washington also did not respond to requests for comment.

Russia attacked Ukraine overnight with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and 332 attack drones. In the early hours of Saturday, ballistic and cruise missile strikes also hit Zaporizhzhia and Kryvyi Rih, damaging buildings and an industrial plant and causing injuries. The Russian military attacked two metallurgical plants, a transformer manufacturer and an electrical substation in the Ukrainian cities of Kryvyi Rih, Zaporizhzhia and Zhytomyr, as well as a merchant ship in the Black Sea, according to the Russian Ministry of Defence.

“Last night, the Russian Armed Forces launched a massive attack, using ground-based, air-based and naval precision weapons, as well as attack drones, against steelworks, a transformer manufacturing plant and a Ukrainian power station in the cities of Kryvyi Rih, Zaporizhzhia and Zhytomyr,” the ministry said in a statement reported by the country’s news agencies.

The ministry stated that among the targets hit was one of Ukraine’s main metallurgical plants in Kryvyi Rih, which supplies metal products to the Ukrainian defence industry.(