US negotiators still want Ukraine to cede control of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions as a condition for peace talks with Russia, an official briefed on the discussions told AFP on Monday.
Kyiv is pushing back against Washington’s demand that it pull troops from the two regions collectively known as Donbas, which Russia has been unable to capture since invading in February 2022.
Russian president Vladimir Putin “wants territory,” the official told AFP, adding the United States was demanding that Ukraine “withdraw” from the regions and that Kyiv was refusing.
“It’s a bit striking that the Americans are taking the Russians’ position on this issue,” the official added.
Moscow controls almost all of the Luhansk region and about 80 percent of the Donetsk region, according to the US-based Institute for the Study of War.
But a poll by published today by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) based on 550 responses showed that 75 percent of Ukrainians oppose giving up Donbas.
Key events
Zelenskyy says talks with US side ‘not easy’ but ‘productive’
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy has delivered an address to mark the end of the talks in Berlin. He just spoke at the German-Ukrainian Business Forum.
He says after two days in Berlin, the talks on the US side were “not easy” but they were productive.
He also went on to say Russia is using its relentless strikes as leverage in negotiations – noting not a single power station in Ukraine has been exempt from attack.
Still no detail yet on any tangible compromises made. The two sides are hashing out the US plan presented several weeks ago that has been amended since in other rounds of negotiations in Geneva and Florida.
The exact details aren’t public but Zelenskyy has said Kyiv will not accept any territorial concessions – which the plan purportedly suggests.
The White House has now withdrawn that alert about a press call- saying it was sent in error.
The White House will be holding a press call shortly on the Ukraine war peace talks that have taken place in Berlin.
Ukraine’s military says it has struck a Russian submarine in Novorossiysk, a gas processing plant in the southern city of Astrakhan and a missile fuel plant in the Rostov region.
The SBU domestic security service said drones had hit the submarine in the port, knocking it out of operation.
Earlier, Kyiv’s General Staff said explosions had been recorded at the Astrakhan plant while the head of Ukraine’s drone forces said his pilots had struck the Kamensky plant, which produces fuel for Iskander and Kindzhal missiles.
Ukraine negotiator notes ‘real progress’ in second round Berlin talks
Ukraine’s top negotiator says on X that talks with the US have been constructive and productive.
Rustem Umerov, secretary of the National Security and Defence Council, said that “real progress” had been achieved with hopes of lasting peace deal.
He said the Americans, led by Witkoff and Kushner, were “working extremely constructively to help Ukraine find a way to a peace agreement that lasts.”
Syrian admits deadly knife attack in Austria
A Syrian man who was arrested at the scene of a stabbing that killed a teen and wounded five others in Austria has admitted terror offences, prosecutors said on Monday.
The 23-year-old suspect was detained in February in the southern city of Villach after what officials described as an “Islamist attack with Islamic State connections”.
A fellow Syrian asylum seeker, a food deliverer, stopped the attack by ramming a car into the attacker. A 14-year-old boy died and five others were wounded.
Announcing charges, prosecutors said that the suspect had admitted “committing terrorist offences”, including murder.
In a statement they said he had “acted with the intention of seriously intimidating the civilian population which does not follow the goals of the terrorist organisation Islamic State”.
He faces 20 years in jail or life imprisonment. No date has yet been set for his court hearing.
Spain fines Airbnb €64m for unlicensed rental listings
Spain’s government said Monday it had fined Airbnb more than €64m for advertising unlicensed tourist rental homes, the Consumer Rights Ministry said on Monday, as the government cracks down on excessive tourism that is driving up housing costs.
Spain’s leftist government, along with some city councils and regional authorities, has been seeking to curb tourism rentals that use sites such as Airbnb and Booking.com, which many in Spain blame for driving up housing costs by limiting the supply of homes available to residents.
Airbnb in July withdrew 65,000 listings that the ministry said violated its rules.
The fine is equivalent to six times the profit Airbnb gained from the illegal listings, the ministry said in a statement, and is the second largest the ministry has imposed for breaching consumer rights, minister Pablo Bustinduy told reporters.
Airbnb said it would appeal.
Away from Ukraine talks, AFP reports that Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado suffered a vertebra fracture during her secret journey from Venezuela to Norway last week.
“The vertebra fracture is confirmed,” her spokesperson, Claudia Macera said, after the Norwegian daily Aftenposten first published the information. The newspaper said the injury was sustained during a high-risk sea crossing in a small fishing boat.
Ukrainian long-range drones struck a Russian oil production platform in the Caspian Sea for the third time in a week, a security source told Reuters on Monday.
The latest attack involved the Korchagin oil rig, which Ukrainian forces struck last week, the source said, adding that production had been halted.
Russia seeks $230bn in damages from Euroclear over seized assets
Jennifer Rankin
in Brussels
Russia’s central bank has said it is seeking $230bn (£170bn) in damages from Euroclear, as the Kremlin fired a warning shot against the use of Russian frozen assets to aid Ukraine.
The Russian central bank said on Monday that it was claiming 18 trillion roubles, according to local state media reports about the case launched last week.
EU leaders will decide later this week whether to use €210bn in Russian frozen assets to provide Ukraine with a loan to fund its defence and keep the economy afloat. Most of the assets, €185bn (£162bn), are held at the Euroclear central securities depository in Brussels, which is the keeper of most of the Kremlin’s immobilised money.
EU officials have argued that the plan is legally sound because Russia remains the owner of its sovereign wealth, which was frozen in European jurisdictions days after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Moscow, however, said that using the assets is theft and has threatened to seize European private investors’ holdings in Russia. Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, who has assumed a key role in peace talks, wrote on X that Russia “will win in court” and “get [the assets] back”, adding that the EU, the euro currency and Euroclear “will suffer’” from the plan.
In an apparent attempt to draw a wedge between Europe and the US, Dmitriev described the assets plan as “a vicious attack on property rights and the international reserves system created by the United States”.
Euroclear declined to comment. It has previously said it is facing more than 100 lawsuits in Russia.
US negotiators still want Ukraine to cede control of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions as a condition for peace talks with Russia, an official briefed on the discussions told AFP on Monday.
Kyiv is pushing back against Washington’s demand that it pull troops from the two regions collectively known as Donbas, which Russia has been unable to capture since invading in February 2022.
Russian president Vladimir Putin “wants territory,” the official told AFP, adding the United States was demanding that Ukraine “withdraw” from the regions and that Kyiv was refusing.
“It’s a bit striking that the Americans are taking the Russians’ position on this issue,” the official added.
Moscow controls almost all of the Luhansk region and about 80 percent of the Donetsk region, according to the US-based Institute for the Study of War.
But a poll by published today by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) based on 550 responses showed that 75 percent of Ukrainians oppose giving up Donbas.
Ukraine-US talks in Berlin end, Zelenskyy’s office says
We’re just getting a line from Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, via Reuters, that the Ukraine-US talks in Berlin have just ended.
Zelenskyy has a busy bilateral agenda in Berlin too, with further meetings expected with German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and Bundestag speaker Julia Klöckner before popping into a meeting of the German-Ukrainian Economic Forum and further talks and a press conference with chancellor Friedrich Merz.
And after all of that, he will still have the evening dinner with European leaders to attend.
Nato’s Rutte to attend Berlin talks, alliance confirms
And in the last few minutes, Nato has also confirmed that its secretary general, Mark Rutte, will also be in Berlin.
