US diplomat John Kelley tells UN security council Washington could impose sanctions on Moscow if war continues. What we know on day 1,283

Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region came under a “massive attack” early on Saturday, the region’s governor said, reporting strikes in Dnipro and Pavlograd. “The region is under a massive attack. Explosions are being heard,” Sergiy Lysak wrote on Telegram, warning residents to take cover. He said overnight Russian strikes killed two people in Dnipropetrovsk, which had been largely spared from intense fighting since Russia’s 2022 invasion. Kyiv acknowledged on Tuesday that Russian troops had entered the region.

The United States has warned Russia to move toward peace and meet with Ukraine or face possible sanctions at an emergency meeting of the UN security council called on Friday after missile strikes on Kyiv killed at least 23 people overnight on Thursday. US diplomat John Kelley told the meeting the strikes “cast doubt on the seriousness of Russia’s desire for peace” and demanded that “these strikes on civilian areas must stop immediately”. He said Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy must agree to meet, and reiterated Donald Trump’s warning that Washington could impose sanctions on Russia if the war continues.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has warned that Trump risked being “played” by Putin if a Russia-Ukraine peace summit did not go ahead. Macron expressed hope that the two-way meeting would take place but warned if Russia did not meet a Monday deadline to agree to the talks, “it will show again President Putin has played President Trump”.

The White House responded that Trump is still working on a Russia-Ukraine peace summit. “President Trump and his national security team continue to engage with Russian and Ukrainian officials towards a bilateral meeting to stop the killing and end the war,” a White House official told AFP. “As many world leaders have stated, this war would have never happened if President Trump was in office. It is not in the national interest to further negotiate these issues publicly.”

Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller dismissed the suggestion that the US president had been fooled by Putin. “Such an absurd question,” he said when asked about Macron’s comments. “No president in history has done more to advance the cause of peace. He’s working steadfastly to end the killing, and that’s something that everybody in the world should celebrate.”

Zelenskyy said he expected to continue talks with European leaders next week on “Nato-like” commitments to protect Ukraine, adding that Trump should also be involved. “We need the architecture to be clear to everyone,” he said, adding that he wanted to tell Trump “how we see it”.

EU defence ministers meeting in Copenhagen on Friday expressed “broad support” for expanding the bloc’s military training mission to operate inside Ukraine, the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said. “The EU has already trained over 80,000 Ukrainian soldiers,” Kallas wrote on X. “We must be ready to do more.”

Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, met with Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, in New York on Friday, discussing the need to increase pressure on Moscow. After the meeting, Yermak said on social media that the mass Russian attack on Kyiv on Thursday showed that Moscow “is not even showing any willingness to end the war”. “We also talked about working with American and European partners on security guarantees. This is very important. Without them, it is impossible to look forward,” he said.

Russia is building up a force of about 100,000 troops near the eastern Ukrainian stronghold of Pokrovsk, which Russia claims as its territory, Zelenskyy said on Friday. “There is a buildup and concentration of the enemy there. Up to 100,000 – that’s what we have as of this morning. They are preparing offensive actions in any case,” the president told journalists. He added that Ukrainian forces were pushing out pockets of Russian troops from the north-eastern border region of Sumy.

North Korean soldiers who died fighting for Russia in Ukraine have been called “martyrs” by the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un. Kim on Friday hosted the families of soldiers, saying they sacrificed their lives to defend the country’s honour, the KCNA state news agency reported. According to South Korea’s intelligence agency, about 600 North Korean troops have been killed from a total deployment of 15,000.