Putin repeats Russian red lines, criticises ‘illegitimate’ Ukrainian authorities
We are getting some news lines from Reuters as Russia’s president Vladimir Putin was speaking in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, where he said that a draft peace plan proposed by the US could become the basis of future agreements, but it still needed some further work.
But in a sign that he may not quite be that keen on nuanced give-and-take negotiations with Ukraine, he suggested that once Ukrainian troops withdraw from their positions in key areas, then the fighting will stop, but that if they do not then Russian forces will achieve their objectives by force.
He also described the Ukrainian leadership as illegitimate and therefore not in a position to sign any peace deal. He also repeated his demand for the international community to recognise Russian gains in Ukraine, a strict red line for Kyiv.
Putin also said he was surprised by US sanctions against Russian oil companies, and argued they were destroying the country’s relations with the US.
In a pointed warning to Europe, he also said that any move to confiscate Russian assets would be “a theft of property” and would have a negative impact on the global financial system with Russia prepared to retaliate.
But, on the plus side, he insisted that Russia had no plans to attack Europe, calling any such suggestions “ridiculous.”
Key events
Finland detains man suspected of illegal entry from Russia
Meanwhile in Finland, the country’s guard said it had apprehended a man suspected of illegally crossing Finland’s eastern border from Russia, which has been closed for two years, AFP reported.
The man was detained in the southeastern border town of Imatra in the afternoon after a search operation involving border guard vehicles, dog patrols and a helicopter.
The border guard did not disclose the person’s nationality but said it had opened a preliminary investigation into a suspected state border crime.
Jakub Krupa
To whoever is on the night watch in Copenhagen, let me just say this: I see you, I deeply respect you, and I salute you for your work.
We’re in this together.
Denmark sets up ‘night watch’ to monitor Trump since Greenland row
Miranda Bryant
Nordic correspondent
The Danish government has set up a “night watch” in the foreign ministry, not to keep out the wildlings and White Walkers like the Night’s Watch of Game of Thrones, but rather to monitor Donald Trump’s pronouncements and movements while Copenhagen sleeps.
The night watch starts at 5pm each day and at 7am a report is produced and distributed around the Danish government and relevant departments about what was said and took place, the Politiken newspaper reported.
The position is understood to have to been introduced in the aftermath of the diplomatic row between Copenhagen and Washington over Greenland this spring, when the US president threatened to take control of the Arctic island.
Politiken said the initiative was one of several examples of how Danish diplomacy and the country’s civil service have had to adapt to the new reality of the second Trump administration.
A source close to the foreign office told the Guardian: “It is fair to say that the situation in Greenland and the time difference between Denmark and the United States was quite an important factor introducing this arrangement during the spring.”
US deal must punish Russia war crimes, says Ukraine’s Nobel peace prize winner
Dan Sabbagh
in Kyiv
Any peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine that includes an amnesty for war crimes could encourage other authoritarian leaders to attack their neighbours, Ukraine’s only Nobel peace prize winner has warned.
Oleksandra Matviichuk said the leaked 28-point US-Russia plan did not account for “the human dimension” and she supported president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s efforts to rewrite it in dialogue with White House.
“We need a peace, but not a pause that provides Russia a chance to retreat and regroup,” the Kyiv-based human rights lawyer said. A durable settlement must include Nato-like guarantees for Ukraine, she added.
Matviichuk is the head of the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties, which was jointly awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2022, and she has been influential in arguing that Russia has developed a “genocidal character” because the international community has not restrained it enough.
Comments such as hers reflect widespread sentiment in Ukraine. Even after nearly four years of attritional fighting, with power cuts frequently following Russian attacks, there is little appetite to accept territorial concessions, and few Ukrainians believe there can be a permanent end to the war without an effective security framework.
Zelenskyy sends Trump best wishes on Thanksgiving
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy has sent his best wishes to US president Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, on Thanksgiving.
In what appears to be a pretty direct response to Trump’s recent criticism that Ukraine has not shown enough gratitude, Zelenskyy said that Ukrainians “deeply appreciate all the support, which has saved so many lives in Ukraine and helps us defend our independence each day.”
“We are very glad that our relationship is constructive and look forward to further positive progress in diplomacy – to finally end for good Russia’s war against our people,” he continued.
“We sincerely hope that dignified peace and guaranteed security will become our joint achievement,” he ended.
Nato membership, western troops in Ukraine unacceptable for Russia, officials say
Meanwhile, we are getting some new lines from Russia on what would and wouldn’t be acceptable to Moscow in a potential peace deal on Ukraine.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that Ukrainian membership of Nato would be unacceptable, as she blamed the alliance for trying to draw Ukraine into its structure and pose a threat against Russia, Reuters reported.
Separately, deputy foreign minister Alexander Grushko also said that any presence of western troops from countries involved in the Coalition of the Willing would be “absolutely out of question.”
Grushko also dismissed EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas’s suggestion that the settlement could include a limit on commitment to limits Russian military spending.
Pope Leo arrives in Turkey on first overseas trip as pontiff
Angela Giuffrida in Rome and Ruth Michaelson in Damascus
Pope Leo is making his debut overseas trip as leader of the Catholic church, travelling on a six-day mission of peace and unity to Turkey and Lebanon in what the Vatican said was expected to be a “demanding” schedule packed with meetings with political and religious leaders amid heightened Middle East tensions.
The Chicago-born pontiff, who was elected in May, arrived on Tuesday in Turkey, a country with a Muslim majority and home to an estimated 36,000 Catholics.
Leo will first meet President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Ankara. He will also meet Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of the world’s 260 million Orthodox Christians, for celebrations of the 1,700th anniversary of a major early church council in Nicaea, now İznik, which settled ideological disputes.
Leo’s arrival is especially anticipated in Lebanon, where many fear a deepening conflict between Israel and Hezbollah after an Israeli strike earlier this week on a neighbourhood in southern Beirut that killed four Hezbollah operatives and one of the group’s most senior military commanders.
Leo’s predecessor, Francis, who died in April, had planned to visit both countries but was unable to because of ill health.
Macron wants voluntary national service as new threats require new decisions
Setting out his plans, Macron says that while the decision to abandon compulsory national service in the 1990s was right as the end of the cold war changed the perceived level of danger, the new, evolving threats “lead us to make new decisions.”
He says that while there is no return to conscription, France needs a new model of “mobilisation.”
The volunteers, recruited among 18- and 19-year-olds, will start the service next summer with one-month training sessions and a nine-month assignment to domestic activities, with first recruitment drive expected to start in January.
He wants 3,000 people to take part in the first intake in summer 2026, with numbers gradually growing to 10,000 by 2030 and 50,000 by 2035.
He says the service, supported by a €2bn budget, is inspired by the similar services in other European countries, including Norway.
“At a time when all our European allies are moving forward in the face of a threat that weighs on us all, France cannot remain inactive,” he says.
But he also sets out clear boundaries of the new national service with volunteers not to serve overseas; a clear response to speculation about a future French peacekeeping force in Ukraine, and one that he wants to be guaranteed in law.
He says the new voluntary service is meant to support the professional army and its growing ranks of reservists, offering a further pool of trained people that can respond to new and emerging hybrid threats.
But Macron insists that France is well prepared to face these dangers and has “no reason to fear,” even if it is prudent to prepare for the challenges ahead.
“Fear never prevents danger. The only way to avoid it is to prepare for it,” he says.
France’s Macron announces plans for new voluntary national military service
France’s Emmanuel Macron is now speaking in Varces-Allières-et-Risset, confirming his plans for a new voluntary national military service to be launched by next summer, open to 18- and 19-year-olds.
I will bring you the key quotes shortly.
Eight people jailed for life in Russia over attack on bridge to Crimea
Meanwhile, a court in Russia convicted eight people on terrorism charges over an attack on a bridge linking Russia to Moscow-annexed Crimea that is a key supply route for Kremlin forces in the war with Ukraine, AP reported.
The court sentenced all of the defendants to life in prison.
The October 2022 attack on the bridge came when a truck bomb blew up two of its sections and required months of repairs. The blast killed the truck driver and four other people in a car nearby. Moscow decried the attack as an act of terrorism and retaliated by bombarding Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, targeting the country’s power grid over the winter.
The Ukrainian Security Service, known as the SBU, claimed responsibility for the attack.
Ukraine, US negotiators to meet soon to discuss latest in peace deal proposals, Ukraine’s foreign minister says
Ukraine’s and the US negotiating teams will meet soon, foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said, adding that Kyiv would focus on specific steps in peace proposals.
“Our expectations are concrete results. Concrete results so that progress can be made,” Sybiha told a news briefing in comments reported by Reuters. “It is extremely important for us, and Ukraine has demonstrated this repeatedly, to achieve a truce.”
West is ‘missing obscure sanctions that could set back Russia’s war machine’
Aisha Down
A US group has identified several obscure but potentially key sanctions it says could seriously disrupt Russia’s war effort in Ukraine after last month’s targeting of the Kremlin’s biggest oil firms.
Previous rounds of sanctions have been applied to Russian energy companies, banks, military suppliers and the “shadow fleet” of ships carrying Russian oil.
But Dekleptocracy, a civil society group that researches Russia’s war economy, says chemicals used to make mechanical lubricants and military-grade tyres are a vulnerability that US, UK and EU policymakers could exploit.
Kristofer Harrison, the group’s president and a former US state department expert on Russia, described the targets as “weedy and specific”, unlike the microchips and oil companies that generally draw the attention of governments and agencies. But they are hard to replace and essential to Moscow’s ability to field tanks and fight, Dekleptocracy says.
“A lubricant shortage would seriously damage Russia’s war machine,” it wrote in its latest report.
Only a handful of companies worldwide make chemical additives for mechanical lubricants – motor oil for tanks and cars. Almost all of them stopped selling the chemicals to Russia at the start of its full-scale invasion, leading to widespread shortages and complaints from motorists.
Dekleptocracy found that one Chinese company, Xinxiang Richful, now satisfies a large part of Russia’s demand, supplying up to eight million kilograms a year. Richful recently set up an office in Virginia.
Blocking it, as well as a few smaller suppliers, would create a mechanical lubricant shortage in Russia, the group says.
Xinxiang Richful did not respond to a request for comment.
DeKleptocracy also found that Russia has little domestic capability to make vulcanisation accelerants and other substances needed to produce military-grade tyres.
Turkey says any reassurance force deployment needs Russia-Ukraine ceasefire first
Turkey’s defence ministry said that a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia must be achieved first before any discussions can take place on possible troop deployment for a potential reassurance force, Reuters reported.
On Tuesday, French president Emmanuel Macron said the force would have French, British and Turkish soldiers. Ankara, which has maintained cordial ties with both Moscow and Kyiv during the war, has said it was open to discussing such a deployment but only if its modalities were set.
“First, a ceasefire must be established between Russia and Ukraine. Afterward, a mission framework must be established with a clear mandate, and the extent to which each country will contribute must be determined,” the ministry said at a press briefing when asked about Macron’s comments.
Russia to close down Polish consulate in ‘retaliatory’ measure after rail sabotage attack
In the last few minutes, the Russian foreign ministry has said it summoned Poland’s top diplomat to Moscow to let him know it would close the Polish consulate general in Irkutsk from 30 December.
The decision comes as a “retaliatory measure” after Poland’s closure of the Russian consulate in Gdańsk after a rail sabotage attack earlier this month, which Warsaw blamed on the Russian intelligence services, calling it an act of “state terrorism.”
Morning opening: Europe scrambles to join talks and help Ukraine
Jakub Krupa
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, insisted that Ukraine can still successfully defend itself, pushing back on the narrative “peddled by Russia,” as he insisted that it’s not Kyiv, but Moscow, who must face pressure to agree to peace.
His comments come as European governments continue to plan how they could influence the US-led peace talks on ending the Russian war on Ukraine ahead of further crunch talks expected as early as next week, with the legally tricky issue of somehow using frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine still remaining close to the top of the list.
But there is also growing focus on Europe’s own defence.
Later today, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, will unveil proposals for a new voluntary military service to boost the country’s defences without having to return to regular conscription. Under plans, France will see the number of its reservist grow to 100,000 by 2030.
The new volunteers would not serve in overseas missions like a potential peacekeeping deployment to Ukraine, Macron is expected to stress in a bid to quash domestic criticism of the idea.
The issue of ramping up national – and European – military and potential participation in the future Ukraine mission is also likely to come up during talks between Germany’s Friedrich Merz and Estonia’s Kristen Michel in Berlin.
I will bring you all the key updates throughout the day.
It’s Thursday, 27 November 2025, it’s Jakub Krupa here, and this is Europe Live.
Good morning.
