Ukraine war latest: Trump warns Putin ‘we have a nuclear submarine off your shore’

The US had called on Russian energy buyers – including Japan – to cease those imports ahead of Donald Trump’s Asia trip.

Japan buys less than one per cent of its oil imports from Russia under a sanctions waiver, with the bulk of its oil supply covered by the Middle East.

“The US said it wants Japan to stop importing Russian energy – but this is Japan’s closest LNG source and which is also cheap,” said Nobuo Tanaka, chief executive with Tanaka Global, Inc. advisory.

“I think the question should be framed this way: can the US provide Japan with LNG as cheap as what currently comes from Russia? Can gas from Alaska be that affordable?” he asked.

Japan has stepped up US LNG purchases in the last few years as it tries to diversify away from its key supplier Australia and prepare for supply contract expirations from Russia’s Sakhalin-2 LNG project, which Mitsui and Mitsubishi helped to launch in 2009.

In June, JERA, Japan’s top LNG buyer, agreed to buy up to 5.5 million metric tons per annum of U.S. LNG under 20-year contracts, with deliveries starting around 2030. This is roughly the same amount Japan imports annually from Sakhalin-2.

Most supply from Sakhalin-2, which covers 9 per cent of Japan’s gas needs, ends in 2028-2033.Last week alone, Japan’s biggest city gas supplier, Tokyo Gas, signed a preliminary deal to buy 1 million metric tons per annum of LNG from the Alaska LNG project, following a similar announcement from JERA in September.

Vladimir Putin should end the war in Ukraine insted of testing a nuclear-powered missile, Donald Trump has said.

Putin on Sunday announced that Russia had successfully tested its nuclear-powered Burevestnik cruise missile, a nuclear-capable weapon Moscow says can pierce any defence shield, and will move towards deploying the weapon.

“I don’t think its an appropriate thing for Putin to be saying, either, by the way: You ought to get the war ended, the war that should have taken one week is now in… its fourth year, that’s what you ought to do instead of testing missiles,” Trump said.

Asked on Air Force One about the test of the 9M730 Burevestnik (Storm Petrel) – dubbed the SSC-X-9 Skyfall by Nato – which Moscow said had flown for 14,000 km (8,700 miles), Trump said the United States did not need to fly so far as it had a nuclear submarine off the coast of Russia.

“They know we have a nuclear submarine, the greatest in the world, right off their shores, so I mean, it doesn’t have to go 8,000 miles,” Trump told reporters, according to an audio file posted by the White House.

Ukraine is rushing to strengthen its positions in the strategic eastern transport hub of Pokrovsk as about 200 Russian troops have infiltrated the city in small groups, Kyiv’s military said.

In a battlefield update yesterday evening, the Ukrainian general staff reported fighting involving small arms and the active deployment of drones. The Russian defence ministry said that its assault groups were trying to advance near the train station.

“There is fierce fighting in the city and on the approaches to the city… Logistics are difficult. But we must continue to destroy the occupiers,” president Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday.

Russia has been aiming to occupy Pokrovsk, a key part of Kyiv’s defensive lines, for months, seeing it as a crucial point for its push to fully capture the Donetsk region.

Russia has been chasing civilians who live near the frontline in Ukraine with drones, hounding them out of their homes and hunting them down, forcing thousands to flee whole areas in what amounts to a crime against humanity, a UN inquiry found.

The report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine described civilians being chased over long distances by drones with mounted cameras, and sometimes then attacked with fire bombs or explosives while seeking shelter.

“These attacks were committed as part of a coordinated policy to drive out civilians from those territories and amount to the crime against humanity of forcible transfer of population,” said the 17-page report to be presented to the United Nations General Assembly this week.

Russia denies intentionally targeting civilians in Ukraine, although its forces have killed thousands of them since mounting a full-scale invasion three and a half years ago.

The findings of the investigation were based on interviews with 226 people including victims, witnesses, aid workers and local authorities as well as hundreds of verified online videos.

The attacks described in the report occurred in three regions in southern Ukraine, near the frontline and across the Dnipro River from Russian forces, over a period of more than a year.

Vladimir Putin has asked North Korean foreign minister Choe Son Hui during talks in the Kremlin to tell her country’s leader Kim Jong Un that everything was “going to plan” in bilateral relations.

“We talked in detail in Beijing about our relations and prospects for development,” Putin told Choe, referring to talks the Russian leader held with Kim during celebrations in the Chinese capital last month to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Asia.

“Everything is going according to plan. Please convey my best wishes to him (Kim),” Putin said.

Putin and Kim sealed a strategic partnership treaty last year, which included a mutual defence pact, and North Korea has sent soldiers, artillery ammunition and missiles to Russia to support Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine.

According to Ukraine and South Korea’s estimates, North Korea deployed more than 10,000 troops to the war in Ukraine in return for economic and military technology assistance from Russia.

South Korea’s intelligence agency estimated in September that about 2,000 North Korean soldiers had been killed in the fighting.

About 100 people gathered at a church in Kyiv yesterday to honour two Ukrainian journalists killed when a Russian drone struck their car in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region.

Both 43-year-old war correspondent Olena Hubanova, who worked under the pseudonym Alyona Gramova, and cameraman Yevhen Karmazin were killed last week on Thursday when a Russian Lancet drone hit their vehicle in Kramatorsk, around 20km (12 miles) from the frontline.

It was the latest deadly attack on journalists covering the war in Ukraine. Earlier this month, a French photojournalist, Antoni Lallican, and a Ukrainian reporter, Grigoriy Ivanchenko, were wounded in a similar strike.

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, at least 135 media workers have been killed, according to Ukraine’s National Union of Journalists.

Russia has flown a second prototype of its MC-21 medium-haul passenger jet built with domestic components, the industry ministry said today, as sanctions on foreign components stall production and high interest rates crimp investment.

Battling these obstacles, the Russian aircraft industry proved able to deliver by August just one of 15 jets planned for this year.

The MC-21 took off from the Irkutsk aviation plant operated by Yakovlev, a part of United Aircraft Corp, within state conglomerate Rostec, according to images the industry ministry posted this morning.

The flight tested newly Russian-made onboard systems and PD-14 turbofan engines, the ministry added, as opposed to earlier prototypes that combined Russian and foreign components.

North Korea’s foreign minister Choe Son Hui met with Russian president Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin to discuss strengthening cooperation, North Korean state media KCNA said on Tuesday.

“Many future projects to constantly strengthen and develop” the bilateral relationship were discussed during the meeting, KCNA said. Choe also conveyed North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s “brotherly regard” to Putin.

Choe also held talks with her Russian counterpart foreign minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday and reached agreement on all points during strategic discussions on global issues, KCNA said.

During Choe’s talks with Lavrov, the North Korean side expressed support for Russian measures to “remove the root of the Ukraine conflict”. The Russian side expressed support for North Korean efforts to protect its security interests and sovereign rights, KCNA said.

The visit comes amid growing international concern over cooperation between the two countries, in which Pyongyang is supplying Moscow with soldiers and artillery for its war in Ukraine in exchange for military technology assistance from Russia.

Norway’s military intelligence service said Russia’s test last week of the nuclear-powered Burevestnik long-range cruise missile was launched from the Arctic Barents Sea archipelago of Novaya Zemlya.

Russia said on Sunday it had successfully tested the 9M730 Burevestnik (Storm Petrel) – dubbed the SSC-X-9 Skyfall by Nato – a nuclear-capable weapon Moscow says can pierce any defence shield, but did not say where the launch took place.

“We can confirm that Russia has conducted a new test launch of the long-range cruise missile Skyfall (Burevestnik) on Novaya Zemlya,” Vice Admiral Nils Andreas Stensoenes, head of Norway’s Intelligence Service, told Reuters.

Vladimir Putin should end the war in Ukraine insted of testing a nuclear-powered missile, Donald Trump has said.

Putin on Sunday announced that Russia had successfully tested its nuclear-powered Burevestnik cruise missile, a nuclear-capable weapon Moscow says can pierce any defence shield, and will move towards deploying the weapon.

“I don’t think its an appropriate thing for Putin to be saying, either, by the way: You ought to get the war ended, the war that should have taken one week is now in… its fourth year, that’s what you ought to do instead of testing missiles,” Trump said.

Asked on Air Force One about the test of the 9M730 Burevestnik (Storm Petrel) – dubbed the SSC-X-9 Skyfall by Nato – which Moscow said had flown for 14,000 km (8,700 miles), Trump said the United States did not need to fly so far as it had a nuclear submarine off the coast of Russia. “They know we have a nuclear submarine, the greatest in the world, right off their shores, so I mean, it doesn’t have to go 8,000 miles,” Trump told reporters, according to an audio file posted by the White House.