Russia-Ukraine war updates: EU says Moscow not interested in peace

Thank you for joining our live coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war.

You can continue following updates about US President Donald Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin tomorrow here, and you can read our news story here.

You can also read our comprehensive piece about this week’s meeting of military chiefs from more than 30 countries to thrash out a peacekeeping proposal here.

We’ll be closing this live page soon, so here are today’s main developments:

• The Kremlin has confirmed that Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold talks with US President Donald Trump on Tuesday.

• The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, has questioned Russia’s commitment to a ceasefire, saying Putin can’t be trusted.

• Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal has welcomed the EU’s approval of a $3.8bn tranche in financial assistance, calling it crucial to strengthening his country’s resilience.

• Hungary and Slovakia have reiterated that they will not support further military aid to Ukraine or send troops.

• The UK says more than 30 countries are ready to enforce a peace deal in Ukraine as part of the “coalition of the willing”.

David Lammy tells Putin to prove he is serious about peace in Ukraine by agreeing a “full and unconditional ceasefire now”.

Britain’s foreign secretary said the G7 countries are “united” in supporting Ukraine and its pursuit of peace, telling the House of Commons: “Now it is Putin who stands in the spotlight, Putin who must answer, Putin who must choose – are you serious, Mr Putin, about peace?

“Will you stop the fighting or will you drag your feet and play games, pay lip service to the ceasefire whilst still pummelling Ukraine? My warning to Mr Putin is this: if you are serious, prove it with a full and unconditional ceasefire now,” he added.

“And if Putin does not deliver, and I must tell the House that I currently see no sign yet that he is, the G7 meeting helped us ready the tools to get Russia to negotiate seriously. We’re not waiting for the Kremlin. If they reject a ceasefire, we have more cards that we can play.”

The International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine (ICPA), a multinational effort to investigate Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has confirmed to Al Jazeera that the US has decided to withdraw from it.

“We can confirm that we have been informed by the US authorities that they will no longer continue their involvement,” the group said in a statement to Al Jazeera after a report by The New York Times.

“The ICPA hosted by Eurojust continues its work in support of the national investigations into the crime of aggression related to the war in Ukraine,” the centre said.

The administration of former US President Joe Biden joined the initiative in 2023, making the US the only non-European country to take part. The ICPA was designed to target not just Russia but also Belarus, North Korea and Iran – all accused of backing Moscow’s war.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen has thrown his weight behind the idea of a European nuclear umbrella with Britain’s and France’s arsenals at its core.

“I think it is obvious that we allow British and French nuclear weapons to be included in a European nuclear umbrella,” the former secretary-general of NATO told the Danish newspaper Berlingske during an interview in Taiwan.

Rasmussen, a former Danish prime minister who led the military alliance from 2009 to 2014, didn’t stop there. He argued NATO members should double their defence spending target from 2 percent to 4 percent of their gross domestic products, a direct challenge to those reluctant to foot the bill for Europe’s security.

This was needed to send a “pretty clear signal to Trump … that we are serious about defending Europe,” he added.

Defence budgets are expected to dominate the agenda of the next scheduled meeting of NATO leaders in The Hague in June.

Slovakia has made its stance clear – no funds for military aid to Ukraine.

Prime Minister Robert Fico reaffirmed this after meeting EU ambassadors, insisting Slovakia will not join military missions in Ukraine.

“Slovakia will not participate in any military mission in Ukraine and will not spend a cent on military assistance,” he wrote on Facebook.

While rejecting military aid, Fico backed bilateral talks with Ukraine, proposing a joint government meeting on mutually beneficial projects.

He also insisted that Europe cannot stay competitive without gas transit through Ukraine, which was shut off at the start of the year, and promised to continue Slovakia’s diplomatic push to restore it.

French President Emmanuel Macron has hosted newly appointed Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the Elysee Palace for a working lunch.

The talks focused on Russia’s war in Ukraine. Both Canada and France have been staunch supporters of Kyiv.

They also talked about bolstering strategic and economic ties between the two countries.

The fact that Carney chose to come to France and the United Kingdom for his first overseas trip is highly symbolic – normally Canadian prime ministers would visit Washington first.

But in a statement given before their meeting, both Carney and Macron talked about the importance of supporting “reliable allies”, a term they repeated several times in their statement.

Carney says that this is particularly important in a time of geopolitical and economic turmoil, and Macron talked about the need to fight isolationism.

The name Donald Trump was certainly not mentioned, but no doubt the US president was very much on the minds of these two leaders – a president who is waging a tariffs war on both Canada and France and upturning traditional alliances.

We have some comments from Radoslaw Sikorski in Brussels, where EU foreign ministers are meeting.

“I hope that President Trump turns out to be the dealmaker that many people think he is and gets a good deal for Ukraine,” the Polish foreign minister told reporters. “We wish him luck.”

“This is an unjust, aggressive war,” Sikorski stressed. “President Putin has no business keeping his soldiers in Ukraine. He could finish this war in five minutes by just withdrawing them.”

The attack hit a residential area in the eastern Ukrainian city this morning, injuring three siblings aged eight, 12 and 15, according to the prosecutor’s office in Donetsk region.

The children are suffering from “burns, fractures and contusions”, the office said in a post on Telegram, adding that a criminal investigation is under way.

As of February 21, at least 2,520 Ukrainian children had been confirmed killed or injured in the war, according to UNICEF, which noted that “the real number is likely far higher”.

A Belarusian court has sentenced a Japanese citizen to seven years in prison on espionage charges, according to Russia’s state-run RIA news agency.

Belarusian authorities alleged that Nakanishi Masatoshi – who had lived in Gomel, a city near the Ukrainian border, since 2018 and taught Japanese at a local university – secretly gathered intelligence in the area.

Security services said he took 9,000 photographs of military installations, airfields, railways and bridges, suggesting he was mapping key infrastructure.

Belarus, a close ally of Russia, has served as a staging point for Russian forces in the Ukraine war although it has not deployed its own troops.

General Ben Hodges, a former commander of US forces in Europe, says an international ceasefire enforcement mission to Ukraine would have to have “real deterrent capabilities”.

“With peacekeeping, you think of blue helmets, a UN mandate, … which the Russians never respect and will not have a prayer of being successful in this case,” he told Al Jazeera.

Apart from armour and firepower, the force must have “the authority to use them immediately”, Hodges said.

“If a Russian drone comes flying overhead, then they need to be able to shoot it down immediately, not have to call Brussels or some capital to ask permission,” he added.

“The Russians will, of course, test all this in the first few hours.”

Alexander Grushko, the Russian deputy foreign minister, says Russia will seek “ironclad” guarantees in any peace deal that Ukraine will remain neutral and NATO member states will exclude it from joining the military alliance.

“We will demand that ironclad security guarantees become part of this agreement since only through their formation will it be possible to achieve lasting peace in Ukraine and, in general, strengthen regional security,” Russian media outlet Izvestia quoted him as saying.

Grushko reiterated Russia’s objection to the deployment of a peacekeeping force in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian president says he has met the country’s defence minister and the incoming chief of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to review the front-line situation and outline defence priorities.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on social media that Defence Minister Rustem Umerov will urgently put together a team to coordinate with allies on Ukraine’s security needs. That team, he said, should travel to London this week to join an upcoming meeting of European military allies.

Chief of the General Staff Andrii Hnatov, who replaced Anatoliy Barhylevych on Sunday, will quickly develop a new military “corps system” and audit combat brigades’ needs, ensuring they are “supplied to the maximum”, Zelenskyy added.

“Strengthening the army is a constant priority, and there can be no steps back in this regard,” he said.

I had a meeting with Ukraine's Minister of Defense, Rustem Umerov, and the new Chief of the General Staff, Andrii Hnatov.

We discussed the frontline situation and engagements with partners on security guarantees for Ukraine. I outlined the key objectives.

To the Minister of… pic.twitter.com/ZW1lAwSyoh

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) March 17, 2025

The Russian president has greenlit a US hedge fund to purchase securities in Russian firms from specific foreign stakeholders, according to a presidential decree.

The move comes as Russia has tightened its grip on foreign asset sales, particularly in energy and finance, since the Ukraine conflict began.

The decree permits US-based 683 Capital Partners to acquire securities from about a dozen Western funds.

It also allows two Russian companies to buy these securities from 683 Capital Partners without further presidential approval.

The position here is that Vladimir Putin is not going to back down in the negotiations, he is going to make demands.

The Russian president has said that he is not in favour of a temporary ceasefire unless the Russian demands are met – and these have not changed.

Russia is asking that Ukraine be demilitarised, that it drop its ambition to join NATO and that Russia continue to keep the areas it has seized during the war.

Certainly, there are a lot of things that need to be hammered out before there is even a possibility of Russia agreeing to a temporary ceasefire.

Putin has previously said that temporary ceasefires are seen as an opportunity for Ukraine to rearm and regroup during those periods of peace.

Canada’s newly appointed Prime Minister Mark Carney is making his first international trip to France and the United Kingdom.

During the first leg of his trip, Carney held a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, during which they reaffirmed their support for Ukraine and called for a lasting peace backed by strong security guarantees to deter further Russian aggression.

“It is in this spirit that we will maintain our support for Ukraine and continue to demand clear commitments from Russia,” Macron said alongside Carney.

Carney echoed the sentiment, emphasising that both nations are united in defending “sovereignty and security” and commending Macron’s leadership in supporting Ukraine.

Here are a few highlights published over the past day:

• High-level talks: Trump says he will speak with Putin about Ukraine war
• ‘Maximalist approach’: Military chiefs to thrash out Ukraine peacekeeping proposal
• Key events: Roundup of major developments in the war
• Video: Roadside nets aim to thwart Russian drone attacks in Ukraine

And there’s plenty more here.

The UK government has provided new details on a planned international partnership called the “coalition of the willing” to support Ukraine.

More than 30 countries are expected to be a part of this coalition to send peacekeepers if a Russia-Ukraine peace deal is reached, according to a spokesperson for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

“The contribution capabilities will vary, but this will be a significant force with a significant number of countries providing troops,” the spokesperson said.

European NATO members are expected to take the lead in the peacekeeping efforts after Trump said he expected Europe to shoulder most of the responsibility.

Starmer has already said he is willing to deploy soldiers.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has sounded the alarm over Russia’s alleged role in arson attacks in Lithuania and Poland, saying it proves Moscow cannot be trusted in any negotiations.

“Dear allies, the investigation of the Lithuanian prosecutor’s office has confirmed our suspicions that [those] responsible for setting fires to shopping centres in Vilnius and Warsaw are the Russian secret services,” he wrote on social media.

“Good to know before negotiations. Such is the nature of this state.”

His warning follows Lithuania’s accusation that Russian military intelligence orchestrated an arson attack on an IKEA store in Vilnius in May. Poland, which suffered a similar attack in Warsaw, had already raised suspicions about Russian involvement. Moscow has repeatedly denied such allegations.

Dear allies, the investigation of the Lithuanian prosecutor’s office has confirmed our suspicions that responsible for setting fires to shopping centres in Vilnius and Warsaw are the Russian secret services. Good to know before negotiations. Such is the nature of this state.

— Donald Tusk (@donaldtusk) March 17, 2025