Ukraine-Russia war latest: Macron warned Trump could ‘betray Ukraine’ in leaked call with European leaders

Vladimir Putin has confirmed India’s purchase of Russian oil has declined after the US cornered Indian authorities in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

“There is a certain decline in overall trade turnover during the first nine months of this year,” Putin said when asked if Indian oil purchases had fallen under pressure from the West.

“This is just a minor adjustment. Overall, our trade turnover stands almost at the same level as before,” he said.

He added: “Trade in petroleum products and crude oil… Russian oil, is running smoothly in India.”

Asked how India and Russia should deal with Trump and his tariffs, Putin said the US president has advisers who believe that implementing such tariff policies ultimately benefits the US economy. “We hope that, in the end, all violations of World Trade Organization regulations will be rectified,” he said.

Belgian prime minister Bart De Wever said he hopes to have a “fruitful discussion” with German chancellor Friedrich Merz today about an EU plan to use Russian frozen assets to support Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.

The European Commission, the European Union’s executive body, has proposed a “reparations loan” using Russian state assets frozen in the EU following Russia’s invasion. However, Belgium, which holds the majority of the assets, has raised various legal concerns and remains unconvinced by the plan.

De Wever and Merz will dine in with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels as Belgiam officials continue to have a strong opposition to the scheme, which involves the unprecedented use of frozen Russian assets.

Merz, who has voiced support for the plan but also said the risks should be borne by all EU countries, not just Belgium, will be in Brussels today to discuss the issue.

The chancellor said yesterday evening that his aim was to speak with De Wever as soon as possible to convince him to drop his opposition so the parties could move forward on the issue.

“I hope it will be a fruitful conversation and that we will find a solution that we can then present to Europe over the next two weeks,” De Wever told local media outlets.

The Commission hopes to secure a firm commitment from member states at a summit of EU leaders on 18 December.

Moscow was awaiting a response from Washington following talks between president Vladimir Putin and US representatives earlier this week in the Russian capital, senior Kremlin officials said this morning.

“We are now waiting for the reaction of our American colleagues to the discussion we had on Tuesday,” Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov was quoted as saying by RIA news agency.

He added that there were no plans for a call between Putin and US president Donald Trump, and no date has been set for a new meeting with US envoy Steve Witkoff.

The latest US push to end Russia’s nearly 4-year-old war in Ukraine has unleashed a frenzy of diplomatic activity.

Negotiators and officials from the US, Ukraine and Russia have crisscrossed the globe in recent weeks in a flurry of meetings to discuss a potential deal.

Here is a timeline of key talks:

19 November: Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky travels to Turkey in what he said was an effort to jump-start negotiations on ending the war. Reports emerge soon after of a 28-point peace plan drafted by the US and Russia that critics say leans heavily in Moscow’s favour.

20 November: US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll travels to the Ukrainian capital and meets Zelensky to brief him on the US-backed peace proposal.

23 November: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio meets a Ukrainian delegation headed by then-presidential chief of staff Andrii Yermak for talks in Geneva. Both sides say that progress had been made but provide few details. Yermak also meets with European security officials.

24-25 November: Driscoll meets Russian officials in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Russian president Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, says the parties do not discuss the new peace plan in detail.

30 November: A Ukrainian delegation led by Rustem Umerov meets US officials in Florida. Umerov replaced Yermak, who resigned amid a corruption scandal involving the country’s energy sector.

1 December: Zelensky travels to Paris to meet French president Emmanuel Macron and briefs him on the outcome of the Florida talks, as a US delegation heads to Moscow for talks with Russian officials.

Russian president Vladimir Putin says some proposals in a US plan to end the war in Ukraine are unacceptable to the Kremlin, indicating in comments published yesterday that any deal is still some ways off.

US president Donald Trump has set in motion the most intense diplomatic push to stop the fighting since Russia launched the full-scale invasion of its neighbor nearly four years ago. But the effort has once again run into demands that are hard to reconcile, especially over whether Ukraine must give up land to Russia and how it can be kept safe from any future aggression by Moscow.

“We had to go through practically every point, which is why it took so much time,” he said. “It was a meaningful, highly specific, and substantive conversation. Sometimes we said, ‘Yes, we can discuss this, but with that one we cannot agree.’”

Trump said that Witkoff and Kushner came away from the marathon session confident that Putin wants to find an end to the war. “Their impression was very strongly that he’d like to make a deal,” he added.

Vladimir Putin has confirmed India’s purchase of Russian oil has declined after the US cornered Indian authorities in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

“There is a certain decline in overall trade turnover during the first nine months of this year,” Putin said when asked if Indian oil purchases had fallen under pressure from the West.

“This is just a minor adjustment. Overall, our trade turnover stands almost at the same level as before,” he said.

He added: “Trade in petroleum products and crude oil… Russian oil, is running smoothly in India.”

Asked how India and Russia should deal with Trump and his tariffs, Putin said the US president has advisers who believe that implementing such tariff policies ultimately benefits the US economy. “We hope that, in the end, all violations of World Trade Organization regulations will be rectified,” he said.

Russian president Vladimir Putin challenged heavy US pressure on India not to buy Russian fuel if the US could do so as he began a two-day state visit, where he was embraced on arrival by Indian prime minister Narendra Modi.

Putin spoke in comments to Indian broadcaster India Today, aired hours after landing in New Delhi for a visit during which both countries are seeking to boost mutual trade and expand the variety of items in transactions.

“The United States itself still buys nuclear fuel from us for its own nuclear power plants. That is also fuel,” Putin told India Today.

“If the US has the right to buy our fuel, why shouldn’t India have the same privilege? This question deserves thorough examination, and we stand ready to discuss it, including with president Trump,” he said.

Emmanuel Macron risked sparking a fresh diplomatic row between Europe and Washington after claiming that Donald Trump may “betray” Ukraine during peace negotiations, according to a leaked transcript of a conference call of European leaders.

The French president told Kyiv’s European allies that the Trump administration could attempt to force Ukraine to give up territory “without clarity on security guarantees”, Germany’s Der Spiegel newspaper reported.

“There is a possibility that the US will betray Ukraine on the issue of territory without clarity on security guarantees,” Mr Macron is said to have told fellow European leaders, including the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, and Nato secretary general Mark Rutte.

Ukraine wants “real peace, not appeasement” with Russia, its foreign minister said at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the security and rights body seeking a role for itself in a post-war Ukraine.

The path ahead for peace talks is currently unclear, US president Donald Trump said on Wednesday, after what he called “reasonably good” talks between Russian president Vladimir Putin and US envoy and his son-in-law Jared Kushner.

“We still remember the names of those who betrayed future generations in Munich. This should never be repeated again. Principles must be untouchable, and we need real peace, not appeasement,” Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha told the OSCE’s annual Ministerial Council.

He was referring to a 1938 agreement with Nazi Germany in which Britain, France and Italy agreed to Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland in what was then Czechoslovakia. The agreement is widely used as shorthand for failing to confront a threatening power.

“Europe had too many unfair peace deals in the past. All of them only led to new catastrophes,” Sybiha said while thanking the United States for advancing peace efforts and pledging that Ukraine would “use every opportunity to try to end this war”.