Ukraine-Russia war latest: Zelensky may meet Trump next week after calls for ‘clear position’ on sanctions

Italy’s defence minister has said the country would not be ready for a Russian attack, as European countries remain unsettled following Russian activity in Polish and Romanian airspace this week.

“We are not ready for either a Russian attack or an attack by another nation,” Guido Crosetto told reporters.

“I’ve been saying this for a long time. I think it’s our job to put this country in a position to defend itself if a madman decides to attack us – I don’t just mean Putin, I mean anyone.”

President Trump and President Zelensky could meet in New York next week, as the UN General Assembly holds its annual high-level session.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Trump is “trying to do everything possible to bring the war to an end.”

“The president had multiple calls with (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, multiple meetings with Zelensky, including probably next week again in New York,” he said on Tuesday (16 September).

Dmytro Khyliuk, a journalist detained by Russian forces in the initial days of the invasion of Ukraine, has bared the details of his three and a half year imprisonment.

“They grabbed us and literally dragged us to the prison and on the way they beat us with rubber batons shouting things like, ‘How many people have you killed?’” he told the BBC.

Khyliuk, 50, said he was held at multiple facilities during his detention. He was released last month.

“Sometimes they’d let the guard dog off its leash so that it could bite us. The cruelty was really shocking and it was constant. I was so stressed I only felt the pain 20 minutes later.”

Five members of Pussy Riot have been sentenced in absentia to prison in Russia on charges relating to performances criticising the war in Ukraine.

The jail terms handed down to members of the feminist punk group by Moscow’s Basmanny District Court ranged from between eight to 13 years, according to Rolling Stone and independent Russian outlet Mediazona.

At least three Russian soldiers have died after Ukrainian special forces blew up a railway line and caused two trains to derail in separate attacks deep behind enemy lines.

Authorities said a diesel locomotive derailed close to St Petersburg, shortly after a freight train carrying empty fuel tanks came off its tracks in a similar area.

Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has said they are “not planning to threaten anyone”, following the end of five days of joint war games with Russia.

“We are practising everything there,” he told Belarusian state agency Belta on Tuesday (16 September).

“They (the West) know this too, we are not hiding it. From firing conventional small arms to nuclear warheads. Again, we must be able to do all this. Otherwise, why would they be on Belarusian territory?

“But we are absolutely not planning to threaten anyone with this.”

Ukrainian children are being indoctrinated at over 210 sites in 39 locations across Russia and occupied Ukraine, a new report by the Yale School of School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab has concluded.

The children abducted by Russia are being subjected to re-education at more than half of the facilities (62.9 per cent) and underwent militarisation in at least 18 per cent of the sites identified.

Described as a “potentially unprecedented system of large-scale re-education, military training and dormitory facilities”, the sites are capable of holding tens of thousands of children for lengthy periods of time.

At least seven civilians have been killed and 49 injured in Russian attacks across Ukraine over the last 24 hours, regional authorities said on Tuesday (16 September).

The Ukrainian Air Force said 113 Shaheds were used in the attacks. Eighty-nine of the drones were intercepted, but 22 hit across six locations in Ukraine.

The affected areas include Sumy, Kharkiv, Kherson, Zaporizhizhia, Donetsk, and Mykolaiv, according statements issued by the Governors of each region on Telegram.