Live, war in Ukraine: US Senate pushes for further sanctions against Russia

More than 80 US senators have backed a bill to impose new sanctions against Russia , given what they see as Moscow's lack of willingness to end the war in Ukraine.

These elected officials, from both sides, want to put even more pressure on Vladimir Putin, after the telephone exchange on Monday between the Russian president and Donald Trump , which did not result in the ceasefire hoped for by Kiev, its European partners, and the American president.

With 81 co-signatories out of 100 senators, the bill enjoys broad support, but it is not yet certain whether the Senate Republican leader will decide to put the bill to a vote. John Thune has stated that he prefers to wait for instructions from the White House on the matter.

"These sanctions would be imposed if Russia refuses to engage in good-faith negotiations for a lasting peace with Ukraine," Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, and Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, who co-sponsored the bill, said in a joint statement. "The bill would also impose 500 percent tariffs on goods imported from countries that buy oil, gas, uranium, and other products from Russia," they added.

More than 400 kilometers from Russia and 250 kilometers from Belarus, the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia has been relatively spared from the war since July 2022, when a Russian cruise missile strike left 23 dead and more than 100 injured.

Russian forces claimed to have shot down 105 Ukrainian drones flying over Russian territory overnight, including 35 drones flying towards Moscow.

Emergency services have been deployed to the areas where debris fell following the neutralizations, the city's mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said on Telegram . Earlier on Thursday, he had reported 23 destroyed aircraft.

As is customary during air attacks targeting Moscow, the capital's main airfields—Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo, and Vnukovo—temporarily suspended operations, the Russian civil aviation agency, Rosaviatsia, announced. The restrictions were later lifted at Domodedovo, the same source said.

On Wednesday, 27 drones were also heading towards the capital before being shot down, according to the mayor of Moscow.

Cybersecurity agencies from a dozen countries, including the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany, revealed Wednesday the existence of a hacking campaign attributed to Russia's military intelligence service (GRU) aimed at disrupting aid to Ukraine.

"At the end of February 2022, several Russian state-sponsored cyber actors expanded the range of cyber operations for espionage, destruction, and influence, with GRU Unit 26165 primarily involved in espionage," they wrote in a joint statement . GRU Unit 26165, also known as APT28, had already been implicated by French authorities in April.

"Russian military intelligence attempted to hack the Dutch Ministry of Defense, other ministries, and companies for cyber espionage purposes," Dutch Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans wrote on X on Wednesday. "Their goal: to disrupt our military support for Ukraine," he continued.

"The Dutch Ministry of Defence and US agencies uncovered this attempt and took appropriate action," Brekelmans added, without elaborating.

The US Secretary of State did indeed refer to the Cuban Missile Crisis as 1961 during his House hearing , but it actually took place in 1962.

Thirty Ukrainian drones were intercepted in Russia between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. Moscow time, the Russian Defense Ministry announced . Eleven were destroyed in Oryol Oblast, five in Bryansk Oblast, five in Kursk Oblast, and four in the Moscow region. Two were intercepted in Tula Oblast, one in Kaluga Oblast, and the last was shot down in the Ryazan region.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyan had earlier announced the interception of three drones launched towards the city.

An explosive device dropped by a Russian drone killed a 28-year-old civilian in the Semenivka ( 🚩 ) area of ​​Ukraine's Chernihiv region, said Vyacheslav Chaouss , head of the regional military administration.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday stopped short of calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a "war criminal," saying the priority was negotiating to end the war in Ukraine.

In a tense congressional hearing, Democratic Representative Bill Keating recalled Mr. Rubio's harsh criticism of Mr. Putin when the top US diplomat was a senator and asked him if he still thought Mr. Putin was a "war criminal."

"Crimes have been committed in the war against Ukraine and they will be held accountable, but our focus right now is on ending that war," Rubio said. "Because let me tell you, every day that this war goes on people are being killed, people are being maimed, and frankly, more war crimes are being committed," he added. The Democratic congressman accused him of being "inconsistent" and "ambiguous."

"If there had been no communications between the United States and Russia in 1961," Rubio further argued, responding to another lawmaker, "the world could have stopped during the Cuban Missile Crisis."

The Ukrainian army assured in a statement released Wednesday that it is maintaining positions in the Russian region of Kursk, contrary to Moscow's claims. "The statements of the representatives of the aggressor state regarding the alleged end of hostilities in the Kursk region (...) do not correspond to the real situation," the general staff wrote.

"The operations of the Ukrainian Defense Forces in the designated areas of the Kursk border regions continue," he said, referring to the map that illustrates the statement. "Although conditions remain difficult, the Ukrainian defenders are holding their positions, carrying out their tasks and inflicting damage on the enemy."

The Russian military announced at the end of April that it had recaptured the last town in the region from Ukrainian forces, which invaded in August. Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the region on Tuesday. He said Ukrainian forces continue to "try to cross the national border every day."

Russian airstrikes killed one person and injured four others in Kupiansk, a city in Kharkiv Oblast, and a nearby village, Ukrainian rescue services reported .

Pravfond, a foundation providing assistance to Russian citizens abroad, used intermediaries, offshore accounts, and cryptoassets to discreetly continue its activities within the European Union.

OCCRP

In October 2024, Estonian customs officers arrested a 65-year-old woman carrying €10,000 in cash at the Russian border. Tatiana Sokolova was supposed to deliver the cash to Andrei Andronov, a Russian national being prosecuted in Estonia. Accused there of collaborating with Russian intelligence, he needed to pay his legal fees.

Possible Russian-Ukrainian peace negotiations in the Vatican, which have been discussed in recent days, would require "very intensive preparation" and delegations authorized to negotiate a ceasefire, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz's spokesman said on Wednesday.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced Tuesday evening that Pope Leo XIV had confirmed the Vatican's willingness to host such negotiations, a possibility she said was viewed positively by U.S. President Donald Trump, his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, and Kyiv's European allies. The idea has been gaining traction since Pope Leo XIV offered his mediation to warring parties around the world last week.

"It is currently a bit speculative to talk about a date or formats," Stefan Kornelius stressed at a regular conference in Berlin. "I think that after the experience of the last ten days and Istanbul [where the first direct talks since 2022 took place on Friday] , we know that it is a priority that serious discussions are held and that the delegation, whoever it is, also has the power of attorney to negotiate an armistice," he said. "I think such a meeting requires very intensive preparation."

Ukrainian authorities on Wednesday corrected figures provided the day before by MP Yulia Yachik , according to which 44,900 men have illegally left the country since 2022 to escape mobilisation.

According to Andriy Demchenko, a spokesman for the border guards , quoted by the press , this is not the number of men who fled Ukraine, but the number of people arrested while trying to do so. "Nearly 4,000" additional people were also arrested for attempting to cross the border via legal crossing points but "using false documents," he specified.

Yulia Yatsik spoke on Tuesday after a meeting of the parliamentary commission of inquiry on the matter. The post in which her statements were reproduced has been deleted.

"Russian air defense forces repelled an attack by three drones flying toward Moscow," the city's mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, announced on Telegram at midday. "Emergency services are working at the site where debris fell," he added, without giving further details.

Russian civil aviation , meanwhile, imposed "temporary restrictions" on air traffic at Moscow's Domodedovo, Zhukovsky, and Sheremetyevo airports. According to the Russian military , 159 Ukrainian drones were shot down overnight.

The Polish Prime Minister said that a Russian ship from the "ghost fleet" carried out "suspicious maneuvers near an electricity cable connecting Poland to Sweden." "After an effective intervention by our military, the ship returned to one of the Russian ports," Donald Tusk wrote on the social network X.

"Yesterday (...) we observed an oil tanker, which was recently added to the list of ghost fleet vessels, performing suspicious maneuvers" over power cables belonging to the Polish company PSE, Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz later told reporters, adding that the incident occurred outside Polish territorial waters. A hydrographic research vessel was dispatched to the scene. An emergency meeting is to be held on Thursday with the Prime Minister present.

"All necessary means and forces will be allocated to this operation. This shows how dangerous times we are living in, how serious the situation in the Baltic is," Kosiniak-Kamysz stressed.

The European Union imposed a ^17th round of sanctions on Russia on Tuesday, targeting new "ghost" tankers used to circumvent sanctions.

The Iranian parliament has ratified a twenty-year comprehensive strategic partnership treaty between Iran and Russia, aimed at strengthening political, military and economic ties between the two countries.

In April, Russian lawmakers had already ratified this text, which provides for greater cooperation between Moscow and Tehran to address "common security threats." However, the text is not a mutual defense pact like the one signed last year between Russia and North Korea.

The document, however, stipulates that if one party is the victim of aggression, the other will not provide "assistance to the aggressor." The treaty also provides for a strengthening of "military cooperation" between Iran and Russia, two countries targeted by Western sanctions and which share a common desire to counter what they present as American hegemony.

The text also aims to strengthen economic and political ties between Moscow and Tehran, particularly in energy, finance and the fight against terrorism.

Russia is deliberately and methodically targeting Ukraine's agricultural infrastructure in order to eventually replace it as a major global grain exporter, according to the Dutch legal foundation Global Rights Compliance (GRC).

The military operations "are part of a systematic effort to dismantle Ukraine's agricultural sector through occupation, infrastructure destruction, and illegal extraction," says GRC, whose study will "soon be submitted" to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the UN Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine. "They form a pattern that extends beyond ports to energy, water, and environmental systems, causing humanitarian, environmental, and global food security consequences."

The responsibility of the highest Russian civilian and military authorities is clear, according to the report's authors. The level of coordination of the strikes required the approval of the general staff and, in some cases, a "decision" by Russian President Vladimir Putin himself.

In July 2023, Moscow withdrew from the Black Sea Initiative , sponsored by the UN and Turkey, which allowed Ukraine to export its agricultural produce by sea. Russia accused the West of not keeping its word by not lifting certain sanctions. GRC points out that following this withdrawal, there has been an increase in "attacks on grain and related infrastructure located in the ports of the Black Sea and the Danube, previously used for grain exports."

The foundation believes that Russia "appears" to have planned to replace Ukraine as the "world's leading grain exporter." Because if its primary objective was military, "one would expect to see more evidence of attacks on military targets surrounding these facilities, which, according to an analysis of satellite images (...) , was almost absent."

The organization reports damage or destruction to more than 10 hectares of storage area, as well as to "critical machinery" for production and export, and believes this will have long-term impacts on Ukraine's reconstruction, economic recovery, environment and global food security.

Andri Portnov, deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential administration under President Viktor Yanukovych, was shot dead this morning in Pozuelo de Alarcon, near Madrid, in front of his children's school, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP), Reuters , Associated Press (AP) and several Spanish media outlets.

"The victim was shot several times as he was about to get into a car. Several people shot him in the back and head before fleeing into a wooded area," a police source told AFP.

The American news agency AP recalls that, under Mr. Yanukovych's presidency, Andri Portnov "was widely considered a pro-Russian political figure and participated in the drafting of laws aimed at persecuting participants in the 2014 revolution in Ukraine." After the fall of Viktor Yanukovych's regime, Mr. Portnov lived in Russia, then in Austria, before returning to Ukraine after the election of Volodymyr Zelensky as president in 2019.

According to Ukrainian media, he managed to escape in June 2022, after the start of the Russian invasion, thanks to his connections in the highest echelons of power, despite the ban on men aged 18 to 60 leaving the country.

Andri Portnov has been under US sanctions for "corruption" since December 2021. According to the US Treasury, which has compiled a fact sheet on him , he has "built up a vast network of connections within the Ukrainian judiciary and law enforcement agencies through corruption."

According to Cadena Ser , he was also "investigated for 'high treason' for his alleged role in Russia's invasion of Crimea." AP points out that this case was closed in 2019.

Reuters also points out that, since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022, "several crimes involving Russian and Ukrainian figures have been committed in Spain, which has large expatriate populations from both countries."