Ukraine-Russia war latest: Trump ‘pessimistic’ about ending war and says Putin ‘lost to deepest, darkest China’

The US Department of Defence informed European countries last week that military support under a program known as Section 333 will be cut to zero from the next fiscal year, a Lithuanian defence ministry official said on Friday.

Two sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday the United States will phase out some security assistance for European countries near the border with Russia.

The move has raised concerns among key recipients such as Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia.

European leaders are trying to build a new world order outside of the “chaos” caused by Trump, The Independent’s world affairs editor Sam Kiley writes in his latest analysis.

But every attempt is “dogged” by the US President, he says. You can read his full analysis below.

A hot mic picked up a conversation between Presidents Putin and Xi where the pair appeared to discuss organ transplants and immortality.

They met as world leaders gathered at a summit in China earlier this week.

India’s diesel exports to Europe soared to an 11-month high in August, as European buyers rushed to stockpile supplies before a looming EU ban on fuels made from Russian crude.

Tanker-tracking firm Kpler says shipments hit about 260,000 barrels per day last month – a jump of 63 per cent on July.

It comes as Europe moves to ban the import of petroleum products refined from Russian oil in third countries from January 2026.

Ukraine’s allies are preparing a new set of sanctions against Russia in a bid to put pressure on Putin to end the war on Ukraine, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Friday,

“Mr Putin is the cause of this war. He’s the reason for the killing – he is not going to dictate the terms of the peace,” he told a televised news conference.

Ukrainians in the eastern Donetsk region, are being forced out of their homes as Russian strikes show no signs of slowing down.

Towns across the area, larger than Slovenia, are steadily emptying as Russian forces now control around 70 per cent of the territory.

“We kept hoping. We waited for every round of negotiations. We thought somehow they would reach an agreement in our favor, and we could stay in our homes,” said Zaichikova, who still bears bruises and hematomas across her face.

Hanna Arhirova and Vasilisa Stepanenko report…

Russia published a list of locally developed social media, taxi and other apps that it said would keep working during its mobile internet blackouts.

These are shutdowns that have often been ordered to disrupt Ukrainian drone attacks.

The list issued on Friday included online government services, marketplaces, the Mir electronic payment system and state-backed messenger MAX.

Foreign services including Meta Platforms’ WhatsApp were missing from the list.

The Digital Development Ministry said it had a “special technical solution” to let local apps keep going. “This measure will reduce the inconvenience caused to citizens by mobile internet shutdowns necessary to ensure security,” it added.

It made no mention of Ukraine or drones. Governors from Russian border regions have regularly said blackouts were needed to disrupt assaults that use the internet to navigate to their targets.

Ukraine is set to ban a branch of the Orthodox Church over claims it has failed to sever its long-standing ties with Russia.

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church denounced the full-blown Russian invasion from the start in 2022 and reiterated that stance this year.

But Kyiv says it has not done enough to sever centuries-old ties to Moscow.

Ukraine has previously banned the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox Church over its support for Russia’s invasion.

President Zelensky met with Slovakia’s Robert Fico on Friday to discuss tensions between the two countries over Kyiv’s targeting of Russian oil refineries.

The Druzhba pipeline, which carries Russian oil to central Europe – including Slovakia – has recently been at the centre of such attacks. While Ukraine is likely to see them as necessary strikes on a key piece of Russian infrastructure, the hits have a knock-on effect on countries like Slovakia.

Previously, he Hungarian and Slovakian governments wrote to the European Commission, the EU executive, saying that Russian oil supplies could be suspended for at least five days owing to the damage following one such strike.

“The physical and geographical reality is that without this pipeline, the safe supply of our countries is simply not possible,” their foreign ministers, Péter Szijjártó and Juraj Blanár, said in a letter.