Friday, 12 December 2025
Friday, 12 December 2025
US President Donald Trump’s appeal that the Russia-Ukraine conflict could escalate into a “third world war” appeared to have no impact on either side.
“I’d like to see the killing stop...for the most part, 25,000 soldiers died last month. I would love to see it stop. And we’re working very hard,” he said. “Things like this end up in third world wars. And I said that the other day. I said, everybody keeps playing games like this. We will end up in a third world war, and we don’t want to see that happen, ” Trump said at the White House on Thursday.
But Kremlin foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov said on Friday that a ceasefire is only possible after Ukrainian forces withdraw from the entire Donbas region.
“A ceasefire can only come about after the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops. If not by negotiation, then by military means, this territory will come under the full control of the Russian Federation. Everything else will depend entirely on that,” he said, reported Russian newspaper Kommersant
Ukraine’s special forces said that they conducted an operation with what they called a local resistance movement to strike two Russian ships carrying weapons in the Caspian Sea.
They did not specify when the strike took place. A Ukrainian official had said on Thursday that Kyiv’s drones hit a Russian oil rig in the Caspian Sea for the first time, disrupting production from about 20 wells.
The special forces named the targeted vessels as the Composer Rakhmaninoff and the Askar Sarydzha, both sanctioned by the United States for transporting military cargo between Iran and Russia.
They said the “Black Spark” resistance movement provided detailed intelligence on the ships' movements and cargo.
European diplomatic sources on Friday said Germany supports using Russian state assets frozen in other European countries as part of the broader efforts linked to the ongoing Russia Ukraine conflict.
The European Commission proposed on 3 December, an unprecedented use of frozen Russian assets or international borrowing to raise 90 billion euros ($105 billion) for Ukraine to cover its struggling military and basic services against Russia's war.
The move did not sway Belgium, which holds most of the assets and has expressed a range of legal concerns.
On Thursday, Trump said there was a meeting scheduled with Ukraine on Saturday and the United States will participate only if “there’s a real chance to get something done.”
“They want us there, but we won’t waste time if it looks negative. We want this settled. It’s a four or five part peace deal. It’s complicated, you’re dividing land, like a real estate deal times a thousand. But this deal would have stopped the killing of thousands of people every month, mostly soldiers,” he added.
He said Washington would help Ukraine with security as part of a settlement and claimed the United States had been close to securing deals with both Russia and Ukraine.
“Except for President Zelensky, his people liked the idea of the deal,” he added.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the President was “frustrated” with both sides over the slow progress toward a truce and is unwilling to engage in “meetings just for the sake of meeting.”
“The president is extremely frustrated with both sides of this war. He’s sick of meetings just for the sake of meeting. He doesn’t want any more talk. He wants action. He wants this war to come to an end,” she said.
Leavitt said the administration remains involved in mediation efforts, with Trump holding talks with European leaders on Wednesday and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and his team continuing discussions with both sides “literally as we speak.”
Russia currently controls the whole of Luhansk and about 80 per cent of Donetsk, although Ukraine continues to defend major cities such as Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
Ushakov also said that under a possible peace plan, Russia’s Rosgvardiya National Guard could be deployed to Donbas areas still held by Ukraine and that the Russian army would not be present there.
“It’s entirely possible that there won’t be any troops there, either Russian or Ukrainian. But there will be the Russian national guard, our police, and everything necessary to maintain order and organize life,” he said.
Russia’s national guard, a military style internal force of about 400,000 personnel that includes Chechen units, has played a major role in the war and gained the legal authority in 2023 to use heavy weaponry including tanks and artillery.
