Ukraine has rescued a wounded soldier from the front line using an aerial drone for the first time.
The Ukrainian army published a video showing the drone lowering itself to the ground, before a man in combat gear fastens himself to a winch and is lifted.
BREAKING:
Ukraine has carried out the first evacuation in history of a wounded soldier from the frontlines by an aerial drone https://t.co/6vnOve3BKH
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 19, 2026
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Marco Rubio has accused Ukraine of attacking ships carrying American-owned energy products in the Black Sea and urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to find a way to end the bloody war.
“We have seen strikes on energy vessels in the Black Sea. And there’s been complaints, a lot, because we have American companies calling us and saying, ‘Hey, that was our oil on that ship that was hit by Ukraine,’” Rubio told Breitbart in an interview released Sunday.
President Donald Trump defended his decision to ease pressure on Russia and accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of prolonging the war Sunday, hurling blame across the Atlantic even as members of his own party criticized Trump’s approach to Moscow.
In a lengthy social media post, Trump praised Russia for supplying diesel to global markets while claiming that Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries were harming American farmers and businesses. He also claimed that Zelensky “doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did.”
Two Russian men secretly working for Ukraine’s intelligence services have given rare accounts of operations they claim to have been involved with, that have targeted military assets and personnel inside Russia.
One of the men, whom we are calling Ivan, claims to have played a role from Russia in Ukrainian drone attacks on strategic bombers and munitions factories on his home soil.
He features in a BBC World Service documentary about the shadowy world of Russian saboteurs.
US President Donald Trump on Sunday defended his decision to waive some sanctions on Russia, accusing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of not wanting to end the war.
“My decision on Russia is a very simple one. I am in the process of negotiating Peace in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and don’t want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“Zelenskyy doesn’t care, and frankly, with all of the money that Europe is famously giving him, and that Crooked Joe Biden gave him in the past, he doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did,” he added.
After Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin met in Anchorage, Alaska, last year, there was a brief moment when it appeared possible that the US would enforce a peace on Russia and Ukraine. But the conditions for a deal were not in place. Neither Putin nor Zelensky would compromise over the status of the Donbas, the Russian-speaking region in eastern Ukraine of which Russia has occupied 90%. Putin wants it all, and Zelensky refuses to hand over any unoccupied land.
Volodymyr Zelensky triggered an audience to break out in laughter when he gave an unexpected answer to a question about Donald Trump.
At a press conference in Brussels following meetings with EU leaders, the Ukrainian leader was asked if Trump was scapegoating him for troubles in the US.
‘President Trump is facing difficult midterm elections, his personal popularity is very low, diesel prices in the US are very high, and the war that he started in the Middle East is not going the way he wants. Do you think you are being a scapegoat for his own problems?’ asked a journalist from Sky News.
She stood at Volodymyr Zelensky’s side for two years as one of his closest aides. She wrote a book crediting him with bringing hope to Ukraine and giving her a voice.
Iuliia Mendel is now using that voice to condemn the Ukrainian leader, calling him “the biggest obstacle to peace”.
Her deeply controversial – and highly contested – message is that the war cannot be won, and Kyiv must surrender.
US President Donald Trump has used his presidential authority to block numerous sanctions on Russia that were recently passed by the US Congress in an effort to punish the country for its war on Ukraine.
In an executive order on Friday night, Trump said that it is in the US “national interests” to withhold some of the sanctions. Trump signed the sanctions bill into law in September, and it was due to take effect on Sunday.
It comes days after Trump said the US would import Russian diesel in an effort to bring down US energy prices before the midterm elections in November, which will decide which party controls Congress.
Elon Musk approached Donald Trump with the idea of slowing down Starlink in Ukraine, The Telegraph can reveal.
The billionaire tech entrepreneur approached the US president with the proposal to introduce speed limits on the system, which hampered Ukraine’s drone defences, according to four sources familiar with the discussions.
One of the sources said Mr Trump “agreed” with Mr Musk’s suggestion, paving the way for the Pentagon to execute the slowdown on Starshield, the military-grade version of the satellite communications system.
US President Donald Trump has renewed his sharp criticism of Volodymyr Zelensky, saying the Ukrainian leader is “more difficult to deal with than [Russian President Vladimir] Putin”.
Speaking to US media on Thursday evening, Trump also called Ukraine’s fresh wave of strikes on Russian oil refineries a “disgrace”.
Zelensky, who is in Brussels for a summit with EU leaders, had paused the attacks for three days at Trump’s request for a ceasefire on energy targets, but said on Thursday the strikes would resume because Moscow had never stopped.
Trump: "I watched an interview of a young woman the other day from Ukraine. And she said, ‘President Zelenskyy has destroyed our country. President Zelenskyy has taken our men away from us. Our men have no legs, no arms. Our men in many cases in mental institutions or they’re dead.’"
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 16, 2026
France’s hard-Right candidate Marine Le Pen has accused Europe of waging a war over energy with Russia and vowed to stop funding Ukraine should she win next year’s presidential election.
Ms Le Pen, who is a front-runner in the polls, pledged to stop bilateral aid for Kyiv within six months, saying France can no longer afford it.
She claimed the ‘honest thing’ the EU should do would be to tell Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky it ‘can’t manage’ to financially support his cause any more.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Thursday said that his country’s military had resumed strikes on Russian energy infrastructure despite US President Donald Trump’s insistence that such attacks stop.
Zelenskyy made the statement in an interview with London’s Financial Times (FT) newspaper, saying: “The block [on energy infrastructure attacks] is out. We’re done.”
The announcement came after Russia reported Ukrainian attacks on oil processing plants in Ryazan, where fire broke out, and Saratov.
That didn’t take long.
Volodymyr Zelensky has said he feels that he has been betrayed by Donald Trump, and warned the US president was not acting on the “right side of history”.
“It is a pity that we are losing a strong partner,” the Ukrainian leader said on Wednesday amid an escalating public clash with his American counterpart.
Relations between Kyiv and the White House have sharply deteriorated after Mr Trump agreed on Friday to waive sanctions on Russia to import diesel.
Wars of attrition are won by whoever can keep paying for them, and Vladimir Putin has spent more than four and a half years betting that Ukraine’s Western partners would tire before Russia’s treasury did. In three days, Washington gave that bet its best return in months.
On October 9, President Donald Trump announced a deal for diesel fuel with the Kremlin. The next day, he suggested that Ukrainians find themselves a new president. On October 11, he proclaimed an “ENERGY CEASEFIRE” that Kyiv had not been told about and that Moscow declined to confirm; within hours, Russian strikes hit the CHP-5 power plant in Ukraine’s Kharkiv.
