Ukraine war live: Trump warns Zelensky to accept Putin’s terms or be ‘destroyed’

Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky has claimed that the US is prepared to supply European countries with “as much gas and oil as is needed” to replace Europe’s dependence on Russia.

“There should be zero Russian energy resources in Europe, and the signals from America are clear now – they are ready to supply Europe with as much gas and oil as is needed to replace Russian supplies,” Zelensky said during his evening address.

“In our region there is the necessary infrastructure, there is the necessary potential that can help Europe’s energy independence much more,” the president said.

He added that Kyiv has made a proposal to the US on the development of gas infrastructure.

Field Marshal Lord Richards tells Sam Kiley that Ukraine has been given false hope by its Western allies and cannot triumph against Russia unless Nato forces join the fight.

US president Donald Trump reiterated that Indian prime minister Narendra Modi told him India will stop buying Russian oil, while warning that New Delhi would continue paying “massive” tariffs if it did not do so.

“I spoke with Prime Minister Modi of India, and he said he’s not going to be doing the Russian oil thing,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.

Asked about India’s assertion that it was not aware of any conversation between Modi and Trump, Trump replied: “But if they want to say that, then they’ll just continue to pay massive tariffs, and they don’t want to do that.”

Russian oil has been one of the main irritants for Trump in prolonged trade talks with India – half of his 50 per cent tariffs on Indian goods are in retaliation for those purchases. The US government has said petroleum revenue funds Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Ukrainian prosecutors have claimed that Russia is modifying its deadly aerial-guided bombs to strike civilians deeper in Ukraine.

Local authorities in Kharkiv said Russia struck a residential neighbourhood using a new rocket-powered aerial bomb for the first time.

Kharkiv’s regional prosecutor’s office said in a statement that Russia used the weapon called the UMPB-5R, which can travel up to 130km, in an attack on the city of Lozava on Saturday afternoon. The city lies 150km south of Kharkiv, a considerable distance for the weapon to fly.

Russia continued to strike other parts of Ukraine closer to the front line. In the Dnipropetrovsk region, at least 11 people were injured after Russian drones hit the Shakhtarske area.

At least 14 five-story buildings and a store were damaged, said acting regional governor Vladyslav Haivanenko.

A Russian strike also hit a coal mine in the Dnipropetrovk region, affecting some 192 miners, who were brought to the surface without injuries.

Ukrainian drones yesterday struck a major gas processing plant in southern Russia, sparking a fire and forcing it to suspend its intake of gas from Kazakhstan.

The Orenburg plant, run by state-owned gas giant Gazprom and located in a region of the same name near the Kazakh border, is part of a production and processing complex that is one of the world’s largest facilities of its kind, with an annual capacity of 45 billion cubic meters.

It handles gas condensate from Kazakhstan’s Karachaganak field, alongside Orenburg’s own oil and gas fields.

According to regional governor Yevgeny Solntsev, the drone strikes set fire to a workshop at the plant and damaged part of it.

The Kazakh Energy Ministry, citing a notification from Gazprom, said that the plant was temporarily unable to process gas originating in Kazakhstan, “due to an emergency situation following a drone attack”.

Ukraine’s General Staff said in a statement that a “large-scale fire” erupted at the Orenburg plant, and that one of its gas processing and purification units was damaged.

Kyiv has ramped up attacks in recent months on Russian energy facilities it says both fund and directly fuel Moscow’s war effort.

US president Donald Trump has said that the Donbas region of Ukraine should be “cut up”, leaving most of it in Russian hands, to end the war that has dragged on for nearly four years.

“Let it be cut the way it is,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One. “It’s cut up right now,” adding that you can “leave it the way it is right now.”

“They can negotiate something later on down the line,” he said. But for now, both sides of the conflict should “stop at the battle line – go home, stop fighting, stop killing people.

“The US president reportedly told Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky to accept Russia’s terms or risk facing destruction in an explosive meeting in Washington DC on Friday.

Top Russian official has repeated the Kremlin’s war demands, seeking Ukraine’s full capitulation, as the US president Donald Trump rallies to end the war.

“Russian security council deputy chairperson Dmitry Medvedev responded on 18 October on his English and Russian language social media accounts to Trump’s 17 October call for both Russia and Ukraine to each ‘claim victory’ in Ukraine,” the Institute for the Study of War said.

“Medvedev claimed that this call is not applicable to Russia and that Russia needs a victory ‘with the conditions everyone knows’,” the US-based think tank said, adding that Medvedev is “likely referring to the Kremlin’s consistent pre-war demands to install a pro-Russian puppet government in Ukraine, Ukrainian neutrality and Nato abandoning its open-door policy, and limiting the size of Ukraine’s military as such that Ukraine could not defend itself against future Russian aggression”.

Ukrainians shared their disappointment that the US may not provide Kyiv with long-range Tomahawk missiles, while work to repair the damaged power supply to the country’s Zaporizhzhia power plant soothed other concerns surrounding Europe’s largest nuclear plant.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky met with president Donald Trump at the White House on Friday, after the US leader signalled that Washington could provide Ukraine with the long-range missiles Kyiv believes will help bring Russian president Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table.

Yet Zelensky ultimately left empty-handed — an outcome that dismayed, but did not surprise, many in the streets of the Ukrainian capital, who maintained their determination to end Russia’s invasion of their country.

One Ukrainian military serviceman, Roman Vynnychenko, told The Associated Press that he believed the prospect of Tomahawk missiles for Ukraine was a political “game”.

“Ukraine won’t get those missiles,” he said.

Vynnychenko said Ukraine still needed to procure new weapons with or without American help, particularly as Russian drones and missiles continued to hit civilian infrastructure.

“Every day civilians and soldiers die, buildings collapse, our streets and cities are being destroyed,” Vynnychenko said.

Trump announced Thursday that he will soon meet with Putin in Budapest, Hungary, to discuss an end to the war in Ukraine. The choice has raised questions, because Putin is wanted by the International Criminal Court. However, Hungary appears unlikely to cooperate with the warrant and is in the process of leaving the court, the Associated Press reports.

When HuffPost asked the White House who chose the location for the meeting, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt replied, “Your mom did.” White House communications director Steven Cheung also followed up with, “Your mom,” the outlet reports.