Closing summary
The Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, reportedly said that Russia is ready to confirm in a legal agreement that it has no intention of attacking either the EU or Nato.
A Russian general has been killed after an explosive device detonated beneath his car, officials said, in what Moscow described as a possible assassination carried out by Ukrainian intelligence services. Lt Gen Fanil Sarvarov, the head of the operational training directorate of the Russian armed forces’ general staff, died of his injuries, a spokesperson for Russia’s Investigative Committee said. Ukraine has not commented on the car bombing, which reportedly took place in Moscow.
The EU Council says it has extended economic sanctions against Russia for six more months, in response to Moscow’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine. The measures will remain in force until 31 July 2026, the council said.
Russian state media quoted the Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, as having said on Monday that there was “slow progress” being made over a plan to end the war in Ukraine after talks in Miami. “Slow progress is being observed,” Ryabkov was quoted as saying, after Russia and Ukraine sent negotiators to Miami for separate talks with Donald Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner, the US president’s son-in-law and adviser.
There remain several major hurdles in the negotiations, including Vladimir Putin’s insistence that Russia control the entire eastern Donbas region as part of any peace deal – which would see Ukraine cede territory it controls.
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Updated
In this report, the Guardian’s central and eastern European correspondent, Shaun Walker, explores the hostile atmosphere some Ukrainians are facing in Poland, where resentment has been stoked, in part, by disinformation. Here is an extract:
Oleksandr Pestrykov, of the Ukrainian House in Warsaw, said anti-Ukrainian sentiment first appeared online in 2023, with any news article relating to Ukraine on Polish media immediately swamped with negative comments. Some have accused Russian bots of stoking prejudice online, and for a while the online hatred did not seem to make its way into the real world. That, he said, is now changing.
“Until summer this year, this negativity rarely left the bounds of the internet; the complaints we would get from Ukrainians would be sporadic, and similar to the situation before the full-scale war. But starting from summer we’ve had a pretty large number of people reporting attacks to us, thankfully so far mostly verbal attacks,” he said.
The complicated history between Poland and Ukraine also plays a role, with the massacre of over 100,000 Poles between 1943 and 1945 by Ukrainian nationalists attempting to ensure the Volhynia region did not become part of Poland a frequent talking point. Ukraine has now allowed Poland to exhume the bodies of victims, but work is moving slowly and the topic is an emotive one for many in Poland.
