Ukraine-Russia war latest: Trump hints at US air support and says ‘it’s better’ if Putin and Zelensky meet without him

Turkey supports efforts to establish a permanent peace in Ukraine with the participation of all parties, President Tayyip Erdogan told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in a phone call on Wednesday, the Turkish presidency said.

Erdogan also told Putin he was closely following developments related to the process, and that Turkey had strived for a just peace since the beginning of the war, it said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that Moscow is ready to discuss the political aspects of a settlement with Ukraine.

Russia is ready to conduct talks in any format and to raise the level of delegations in negotiations, he added. But he repeated Moscow’s insistence that any meeting of the Russian and Ukrainian leaders should be the culmination of such negotiations, and would need to be carefully prepared.

Russian forces have advanced in the east of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, taking the village of Novoheorhiivka close to the Donetsk region, Russia’s defence ministry said on Wednesday.

Russian forces said in July that they had taken their first village in Dnipropetrovsk, and U.S. estimates of the battlefield indicate Russian forces control less than 1% of the region.

Dnipropetrovsk is not one of the five regions of Ukraine that Russia has claimed as its own territory.

“Soldiers of the 57th Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade pushed out the enemy from Novoheorhiivka in the Dnipropetrovsk region,” Russia’s defence ministry said. We could not independently confirm the battlefield report.

Russia is in favour of reliable security guarantees for Ukraine but it hopes the United States understands that discussing security issues without Russia is a “road to nowhere”, Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday.

The U.S. has an increasingly clear understanding of the “root causes” of the Ukraine crisis, Lavrov added.

Russian President Vladimir Putin held a phone call with his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan to discuss Ukraine and the outcome of Putin’s summit last week with U.S. President Donald Trump, the Kremlin said on Wednesday.

Belarus and Iran – two countries that have backed Russia’s war in Ukraine – plan to deepen bilateral ties across all areas including defence, their presidents said at talks in Minsk on Wednesday.

Belarusian state news agency Belta said presidents Alexander Lukashenko and Masoud Pezeshkian agreed to work on a strategic partnership treaty.

“In conditions of geopolitical turbulence, Minsk and Tehran are undertaking consistent and balanced steps to further develop cooperation, and are working hard to turn each new challenge into a new opportunity,” it quoted Lukashenko as saying.

“We are ready to discuss any issues, we have no closed topics,” Lukashenko said, adding that the two countries could partner across a range of areas including “military-technical cooperation”.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Wednesday its forces had hit port infrastructure used to supply fuel to Ukrainian forces, Interfax news agency said.

The statement didn’t name the port. Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said earlier that Russia had struck a gas distribution station in the southern region of Odesa.

Russian defence ministry also said that its forces had captured the settlements of Novoheorhiivka, Pankivka and Sukhetse in eastern Ukraine.

German prosecutors have charged a Russian national they suspect of planning an attack on the Israeli embassy in Berlin and of trying to join militant organisation Islamic State, they said on Wednesday.

Prosecutors believe the accused, identified only as Akhmad E. in line with German privacy rules, obtained instructions from the Internet on how to make explosives but the plan failed as he could not get the components he needed.

“From the beginning of February, he planned to carry out an attack in Germany, for example on the Israeli embassy in Berlin,” said federal prosecutors in a statement.

He has been detained since his arrest at Berlin airport in February. Prosecutors suspect he was on the way to Pakistan for military training with IS and that he funded the trip by selling expensive smartphones that he obtained via signing up for mobile phone plans.

He is also accused of translating propaganda into Russian and Chechen for IS, said the statement.

Prosecutors charged him on August 7 with preparing and incitement to commit a serious act of violence endangering the state and, as a minor, of trying to join a terrorist group abroad.

Defence Secretary John Healey has reiterated the UK’s willingness to “consider putting boots on the ground” to help provide security guarantees to Ukraine as part of a peace deal.

Speaking to ITV’s Good Morning Britain, he said: “The Prime Minister has made clear that he’s ready to consider putting UK boots on the ground in the circumstances of a negotiated peace.”

He added that the UK and “many other nations” want to support Ukraine in being able to deter future Russian aggression and to reassure them that “we will stay with them to try and secure a long-term peace”.