Germany's Baerbock rules out easing sanctions on Russia

The invitation was announced on Sept. 23, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Putin had been invited to the summit as part of an effort to give him opportunities to engage with Trump and other world leaders.

The joint September mission follows a serious encounter on June 12, when Sweden was forced to scramble its Gripen jets twice in a single day to intercept Russian Su-24 Fencer and Su-34 Fullback strike aircraft operating aggressively close to Swedish airspace.

The Ilsky refinery, located roughly 500 kilometers (310 miles) from Ukrainian-controlled territory, is one of the largest oil-processing facilities in southern Russia, producing nearly 6.6 million tons of fuel annually.

Ukrainian officials said Trump and Zelensky discussed the possibility of trilateral talks involving the United States, Ukraine, and Russia.

Putin said Russia had been prepared to return to talks after the Sept. 18-20 State Duma election, but claimed the attacks had changed Moscow’s calculus.

Twenty-five people, including two children, were hospitalized, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

British companies are now invited to turn in proposals on how they envision using the "goldmine of battlefield data," the U.K. Defense Ministry said, adding that the selection would be made "in just a matter of weeks."

The Kyiv Independent’s Tania Myronyshena examines why Russia’s manpower advantage is under pressure, what a new mobilization campaign could look like, whether Russians could resist it, and how hundreds of thousands of additional troops could affect the war.

The Kyiv Independent will host a live storytelling event in London on Oct. 2, bringing together its journalists and readers for an evening of firsthand accounts of reporting, working, and living through Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine.

The research, conducted by the Centre for Defense Strategies, a Ukrainian security think tank, and shared with the Kyiv Independent, also shows that the majority of companies supplying components used in the production of Molniya drones are not yet subject to Western sanctions.

"At our meeting, President Trump stressed that he had made his final decision: Ukraine will receive licenses to produce Patriot missiles," President Volodymyr Zelensky said.