Ukraine answers Russia’s strikes on energy grid; Zelenskyy tells the Guardian that King Charles eased Trump tensions. What we know on day 1,356
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, emerged from seclusion to say he was ready to meet the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, to discuss the war in Ukraine and mending bilateral ties. It breaks a weeks-long absence of Lavrov from the public sphere after the collapse of attempts to stage a Putin-Trump summit in Hungary. Speaking to Russia’s Ria state news agency, Lavrov signalled there was no change in Moscow’s maximalist demands for Ukraine’s capitulation. He said peace could not be achieved without “taking Russian interests into account”.
Lavrov appeared to be contradicted by the Kremlin after the reappearing foreign minister said work had begun on Vladimir Putin’s order to prepare plans for a possible Russian nuclear test. Putin ordered officials to study the possibility of resuming nuclear testing after Donald Trump’s statements that the US would begin immediately to match nuclear tests by China and Russia – even though, like the US, neither is known to have exploded a nuclear bomb since the 1990s. On Sunday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “Putin has repeatedly said that Russia is committed to its obligation to end nuclear tests, and that we have no intention [of conducting them].” Putin has said Russia would not conduct a nuclear test unless the US did so first.
