Ukraine-Russia war latest: Putin meets Slovak PM Robert Fico in surprise Moscow visit

Ukraine’s security service has named a Russian general it suspects of ordering a missile strike on a hotel in eastern Ukraine in August and said he acted “with the motive of deliberately killing employees of” Reuters.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said in a statement on Friday that Colonel General Alexei Kim, a deputy chief of Russia’s General Staff, approved the strike that killed Reuters safety adviser Ryan Evans and wounded two of the agency’s journalists on 24 August.

In a statement posted on Telegram messenger the SBU said it was notifying Mr Kim in absentia that he was an official suspect in its investigation into the strike on the Sapphire Hotel in Kramatorsk, a step in Ukrainian criminal proceedings that can later lead to charges.

In a separate, 15-page notice of suspicion, in which the SBU set out findings from its investigation, the agency said that the decision to fire the missile was made “with the motive of deliberately killing employees of the international news agency Reuters who were engaged in journalistic activities in Ukraine”.

The document, which was published on the website of the General Prosecutor’s Office on Friday, said that Mr Kim had received intelligence that Reuters staff were staying in Kramatorsk. It added that Kim would have been “fully aware that the individuals were civilians and not participating in the armed conflict”.

The Russian defence ministry did not respond to a request for comment on the SBU’s findings and has not replied to previous questions about the attack. The Kremlin also did not respond to a request for comment.

Russian forces captured two villages in Ukraine, one in Kharkiv region in the northeast and one in eastern Donetsk region, the Russian defence ministry said on Sunday.

Donetsk region is where Moscow is concentrating most of its efforts to seize two cities.

Russian forces, making steady progress across Donetsk region, are moving on the towns of Pokrovsk, a logistics centre and site of an important coking colliery, and appear to be closing in on Kurakhove, farther south.

The Defence Ministry statement said troops had taken control of Lozova, near the town of Kupiansk, in an area north of Donetsk region also under Russian pressure in recent weeks. The village of Sontsivka, north of Kurakhove, was also captured.

The ministry on Saturday announced the capture of another village near Kurakhove, Kostiantynopolske.

The Ukraine military’s general staff made no mention of those villages falling into Russian hands, but said Sontsivka was in a sector subject to 26 Russian attacks in the past 24 hours. The general staff also reported heavy fighting near Pokrovsk, with 34 Russian attempts to pierce defences.

The popular Ukrainian military blog DeepState said Sontsivka was under Russian control.

Russian reports have described intensified pressure on Kurakhove.

Visits and phone calls from European leaders to Vladimir Putin have been rare since Moscow sent troops into Ukraine, although Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban visited Russia in July, and Austrian chancellor Karl Nehammer met with the Russian leader just weeks into the full-scale war.

Both trips drew condemnation from Kyiv and European leaders.

Mr Orban, widely seen as having the warmest relations with Mr Putin among EU leaders, has routinely blocked, delayed or watered down EU efforts to assist Kyiv and impose sanctions on Moscow for its actions in Ukraine.

He has long argued for a cessation of hostilities in Ukraine but without outlining what that might mean for the country’s territorial integrity or future security.

Mr Fico’s views on Russia’s war on Ukraine differ sharply from most other European leaders. The Slovakian PM returned to power last year after his leftist party Smer won parliamentary elections on a pro-Russia and anti-American platform. Since then, he has ended his country’s military aid for Ukraine, lashed out at EU sanctions on Russia, and vowed to block Ukraine from joining Nato.

Mr Fico has also been a rare senior EU politician to appear on Russian state TV following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. In an interview with the Rossiya-1 channel in October, he contended the West has “prolonged the war” by supporting Ukraine, adding that sanctions against Russia were ineffective. He declared that he was ready to negotiate with Putin.

Mr Fico also vowed to attend a military parade in Moscow next May that will mark the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s defeat in World War II. The Kremlin has used the annual “Victory Day” celebrations to tout its battlefield prowess, and Putin hailed Russian troops fighting in Ukraine as “heroes” at this year’s event.

Robert Fico’s visit to Moscow was reaction to Volodymyr Zelensky’s opposition to gas transit to Slovakia through Ukraine.

Sharing details about his visit, Mr Fico said on Facebook that Ukrainian president supported sanctions against Russia’s nuclear program, which was against Slovakia’s interest as it relied on nuclear energy.

Mr Fico said Mr Putin confirmed to him that Russia is still ready to deliver gas to the West. He said the two also discussed the military situation in Ukraine, chances for a peaceful solution to the war and the bilateral relations between their two countries which Fico said they will seek to “standardise.”

His trip, however, was condemned by the major Slovak opposition parties.

Slovakia last month signed a short-term pilot contract to buy natural gas from Azerbaijan, as it prepares for a possible halt to Russian supplies through Ukraine.

Earlier this year, it struck a deal to import US liquefied natural gas through a pipeline from Poland.

The country can also receive gas through Austrian, Hungarian and Czech networks, enabling imports from Germany among other potential suppliers.

Russian forces executed five Ukrainian prisoners of war, Ukraine’s Parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets, said on Sunday.

Lubinets said on the Telegram messenger app that Russian troops shot the five unarmed soldiers after capturing them. He gave no details, but will report this fact to the UN.

“Russian war criminals who shoot Ukrainian prisoners of war should be brought before an international tribunal and punished with the most severe punishment provided for by law,” Lubinets said.

Russia did not immediately comment on the incident, but has previous denied committing war crimes.

Russian president Vladimir Putin yesterday hosted Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, in a rare visit to the Kremlin by an EU leader since Moscow’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Mr Fico arrived in Russia on a “working visit” and met with Mr Putin one-on-one on yesterday evening, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Russia’s RIA news agency.

According to Mr Peskov, the talks were expected to focus on “the international situation” and Russian natural gas deliveries.

Russian natural gas still flows to some European countries, including Slovakia, through Ukraine under a five-year agreement signed before the war that is due to expire at the end of this year.

At a summit in Brussels on Thursday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky told EU leaders that Kyiv has no intention of renewing the deal, something Mr Fico insisted will harm his country’s interests.

Ukraine lacks the military capability to retake all the territories occupied by Russia since 2014, president Volodymyr Zelensky has acknowledged, as he urged the West to take stronger action to confront Moscow.

“Legally, we cannot give up our territories. This is prohibited by the constitution,” the Ukrainian president said. “But let’s not use such big words. Russia actually controls part of our territory today.”

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Not so very long ago, Vladimir Putin, the would-be reincarnation of Joseph Stalin, had some cause for satisfaction. True, his ill-fated “special military operation” in Ukraine had spectacularly failed in its initial stated aim of subsuming the country into a Greater Russia, resistance supposedly crumbling in days, with Volodymyr Zelensky skulking off into exile.

However, the Kremlin’s “meat-grinder” strategy has succeeded in occupying roughly a third of what was left of Ukrainian territory after the 2014 invasion. Russian troops were advancing, albeit at a glacial pace and an obscene cost in human lives.

The attacks on civilians, homes and energy infrastructure were helping to demoralise and exhaust the Ukrainians, brave as they were. Some 40,000 fresh troops were promised by North Korea – Kim Jong Un’s elite squads, according to reports. Mr Kim and Russia’s other allies in the Middle East were assisting with the sanctions-busting; and the Iranians and Syrians (and, to a lesser degree, the Houthis, Hezbollah and Hamas) shared Russia’s agenda.

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