President meets Slovakian PM in the wake of Kyiv’s attack on Russia’s oil pipeline; Putin warns any western troops in Ukraine would be ‘legitimate targets’. What we know on day 1,291

Ukraine’s president has vowed to continue retaliating to Russian attacks on his country’s energy facilities despite criticism from neighbours and Moscow oil customers Slovakia and Hungary. Oil shipments to both countries have been disrupted in recent weeks due to Kyiv’s attacks on the Druzhba pipeline, which runs from Russia through Ukraine before reaching Slovakia. “Ukraine responds to Russia’s attacks on our energy facilities, and will keep doing so,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at a joint news conference with the Slovakian prime minister, Robert Fico, with whom he held talks in the Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod. Zelenskyy urged Fico to cut off oil supplies from Russia.

Fico said he saw a quick end to the war, but admitted that he and Zelenskyy had “different opinions” on that. Slovakia’s PM, who met Vladimir Putin in China earlier this week, also said he could foresee a normalisation of relations with Moscow. “We are simply saying in advance what the possibilities are, where we will start talking again, what tasks we will do together.”

Zelenskyy said thousands of troops could be deployed to Ukraine under security guarantees proposed by its allies once Russia’s war on his country ends. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said on Thursday that 26 countries had pledged to provide postwar security guarantees to Ukraine, including an international force on land and sea and in the air. Some countries would provide guarantees while remaining outside Ukraine, for example by helping to train and equip Kyiv’s forces. “It is important that we are discussing all this … it will definitely be in the thousands, not just a few,” Zelenskiy said on Friday after meeting the European Council president, António Costa, in Uzhhorod.

Putin has said any western troops placed in Ukraine would be “legitimate targets” for Russian strikes. Putin on Friday said any guarantees that involved boots on the ground would violate Moscow’s longstanding objections to Nato troops in Ukraine. “Therefore, if some troops appear there, especially now, during military operations, we proceed from the fact that these will be legitimate targets for destruction,” Russia’s president told an economic forum in Vladivostok.

Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, has said Ukraine’s allies are preparing a new set of sanctions against Russia as part of a campaign to pressure Putin to end the war. “Mr Putin is the cause of this war. He’s the reason for the killing – he is not going to dictate the terms of the peace,” Carney told a news conference on Friday.

Seizing Russian central bank assets frozen by the EU over the Ukraine war risks inflicting major damage on Europe’s economy, the Belgian foreign minister, Maxime Prévot, has warned. The vast majority of the €200bn ($234bn) in assets is held by the international deposit organisation Euroclear in Belgium. “For Belgium, confiscating Russian sovereign assets is not an option,” Prévot told AFP. “Such a confiscation, motivated by a political decision rather than a legal or judicial one, would be likely to cause a terrible systemic shock across all European financial markets, deal a severe blow to the credibility of the euro, and thus have very problematic domino effects.”

Australia’s Ukrainian community has urged the country’s government to intervene to have captured soldier Oscar Jenkins included in planned prisoner swaps, warning he risks becoming a “forgotten” prisoner of Russia’s war. The 33-year-old Australian citizen was jailed for 13 years on the charge of being a “mercenary” after being captured while fighting with Ukrainian forces. “Claiming that he is a mercenary is just a word game so that Russia can send a warning to other foreign soldiers who might want to join Ukraine’s fight for freedom,” a spokesperson for the Australian Ukrainian Congress community group said.