A administração Trump e o Kremlin estão discutindo a possível suspensão das sanções dos Estados Unidos contra o fundo soberano multibilionário da Rússia, segundo declarou um assessor do Kremlin — informação divulgada pela mídia estatal russa.
O movimento representaria mais uma concessão dos EUA a Moscou no âmbito das negociações para encerrar a guerra na Ucrânia.
Yuri Ushakov, assessor de política externa do presidente russo Vladimir Putin, afirmou a jornalistas que as negociações com os Estados Unidos para suspender as sanções contra o Fundo Russo de Investimento Direto (uma entidade estatal) já ocorrem “há algum tempo”, informou a agência de notícias estatal russa TASS na quarta-feira (28).
“Não sei qual será o resultado”, acrescentou ele.
Segundo Ushakov, o CEO do fundo e enviado presidencial, Kirill Dmitriev, tem mantido contato ativo com autoridades americanas para tratar da suspensão das sanções.
A administração Biden impôs as sanções na esteira da invasão da Ucrânia pela Rússia, em fevereiro de 2022, classificando-as como um “fundo secreto” conhecido, utilizado por Putin e seu círculo íntimo.
A CNN entrou em contato com a Casa Branca e o Departamento de Estado dos EUA em busca de um posicionamento.
O jornal New York Times noticiou pela primeira vez, na terça-feira (27), que a administração Trump estava cogitando suspender as sanções.
O presidente Donald Trump defendeu concessões feitas recentemente à Rússia no que diz respeito a sanções — medidas que provocaram críticas de ambos os lados do espectro político em Washington e criaram um distanciamento entre os EUA e seus aliados ocidentais.
No início deste mês, Trump anunciou um acordo que permite a exportação de diesel russo para os mercados globais de energia e suspendeu uma nova série de sanções — recém-promulgadas — relacionadas à venda de combustíveis fósseis russos.
A legislação, cuja aplicação foi suspensa, teria imposto tarifas de até 100% sobre, entre outros itens, mercadorias importadas pelos EUA provenientes dos cinco maiores compradores de petróleo bruto ou gás da Rússia — cujas vendas são fundamentais para financiar a máquina de guerra do Kremlin.
O acordo entre EUA e Rússia sobre o diesel prevê a suspensão, por seis meses, das sanções à exportação desse combustível, permitindo sua comercialização a preços de mercado; contudo, especialistas questionam qual será o real impacto dessa medida nos mercados globais de diesel.
A Rússia proibiu as exportações de diesel no início de julho, depois que ataques de drones ucranianos às suas refinarias provocaram uma escassez generalizada de combustível em todo o país.
A Casa Branca está tentando aliviar a pressão sobre os preços do petróleo e do diesel nos EUA, às vésperas de eleições de meio de mandato cruciais na próxima semana.
Trump também afirmou que sua decisão de suspender algumas sanções contra a Rússia teve como objetivo manter Moscou na mesa de negociações.
“Estou em processo de negociação de paz na guerra entre a Rússia e a Ucrânia, e não quero fazer nada que, de forma imprudente, afaste a Rússia da mesa de negociações”, escreveu Trump em uma publicação na rede social Truth Social, no dia 18 de outubro.
Trump atribuiu à Ucrânia a responsabilidade pelos altos preços globais dos combustíveis e pressionou o presidente ucraniano, Volodymyr Zelensky, a interromper os ataques a refinarias russas — mesmo enquanto a Rússia continua seus ataques contra vilarejos, cidades e a infraestrutura energética da Ucrânia.
Há uma preocupação crescente, em Kiev e na Europa, de que a administração Trump faça novas concessões a Moscou na tentativa de levar Putin a aceitar um acordo de paz.
Recentemente, Zelensky declarou ao programa “Meet the Press”, da rede NBC, que as isenções fortaleceram a guerra de Putin contra a Ucrânia, justamente em um momento em que Moscou vinha fracassando no campo de batalha.
Kiev defende há muito tempo sanções mais rigorosas às exportações russas de energia.
Na semana passada, Putin afirmou que o Kremlin estaria disposto a retomar as negociações de paz trilaterais entre Rússia, EUA e Ucrânia após meados de novembro, a pedido do enviado especial dos EUA, Steve Witkoff, que se reuniu com o líder russo em São Petersburgo.
Durante as conversas, Putin manifestou interesse em restabelecer a cooperação econômica com os EUA.
Entenda o que está por trás da tensão entre Trump e Zelensky
Entenda o que está por trás da tensão entre Trump e Zelensky
There are two ways for Russia to capture the remaining Ukrainian-held cities of Donbas. One is to fight its way through heavily fortified defensive positions, accepting substantial casualties, equipment losses and an uncertain timetable. The other is to secure their evacuation through diplomatic negotiations.
The second would achieve an important Russian military objective without requiring Moscow to bear the full cost of a prolonged offensive.
This distinction helps explain why Vladimir Putin continues to insist that Ukrainian forces withdraw from the remaining government-controlled territory of Donetsk region before a comprehensive settlement can be negotiated.
It also raises a more consequential question: would surrendering Donbas bring the war closer to an end, or would it improve Russia’s position in any subsequent confrontation?
The issue returned to prominence on 27 October when Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre held a rare telephone conversation with Putin.
According to the Finnish president’s official statement, the call followed discussions in Oslo on 20 October involving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff.
The Nordic leaders sought to advance preparations for renewed American-mediated negotiations, expected in Abu Dhabi in November. They emphasised that they were acting on behalf of their respective countries rather than representing Europe collectively.
Stubb described the exchange as “frank and substantive”, arguing that direct communication with Moscow was necessary to address the security consequences of the war.
However, the Kremlin’s account offered little indication of movement on the fundamental disagreements.
Moscow insisted that any durable peace must fully accommodate Russian interests. A source close to the Kremlin told Reuters that Putin had reiterated his refusal to compromise on the objective of controlling the entire Donbas.
Following the conversation, Zelenskyy confirmed that the Nordic leaders had briefed him and stressed to Putin the need for concrete measures to reduce attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
The diplomatic process has therefore resumed without resolving the territorial dispute at its centre.
The territory Russia is demanding includes some of Ukraine’s most important surviving defensive positions.
Since fighting began in eastern Ukraine in 2014, Ukrainian forces have constructed and reinforced an extensive defensive system centred on Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka and Kostiantynivka.
Known as the fortress belt, this network combines urban areas, industrial facilities, transport infrastructure, prepared defensive positions and terrain that complicates offensive operations.
The military importance of this system extends far beyond the administrative boundaries of Donetsk.
According to the Institute for the Study of War, surrendering these positions would allow Russian forces to occupy heavily defended territory without undertaking the prolonged operations otherwise required to capture it.
In its 26 October battlefield assessment, the institute continued to identify the capture of this defensive belt as Russia’s principal military objective in Donetsk. Ukrainian forces retained positions in parts of Kostiantynivka, while Russian operations towards other major cities remained contested.
The implications of a negotiated Ukrainian withdrawal would be substantial.
Russia could occupy the fortified urban corridor, reorganise its forces, establish new logistics routes and potentially redirect formations towards other sectors.
Ukraine, meanwhile, would have to construct or reinforce defensive positions further west, potentially under pressure and in less favourable terrain.
The resulting military imbalance would not necessarily lead to another Russian offensive. But it would change the conditions under which any renewed hostilities might take place.
That is why territory cannot be assessed solely by its surface area. A relatively small section of the front can possess strategic value disproportionate to its size.
Russia’s insistence on Donetsk also reflects the limits of what its military has achieved.
Despite years of fighting, Moscow has not secured complete control of the region. Successive offensives have produced territorial gains, but at considerable cost and without the rapid breakthrough originally anticipated.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently acknowledged the central importance of the remaining Ukrainian-held territory.
In an interview published by the US State Department, Rubio characterised the dispute as centred on territory Russia wants but has been unable to capture militarily, while recognising Ukraine’s sovereignty and long-term security concerns.
His remarks demonstrate how Donbas has become the principal territorial obstacle in Washington’s diplomatic calculations.
For Moscow, however, concentrating negotiations on this specific demand offers an additional advantage.
If Ukraine refuses to withdraw, the Kremlin can argue that Kyiv is preventing progress towards peace. If Ukraine agrees, Russia obtains strategically valuable territory without the military costs associated with conquering it.
The demand therefore serves a dual purpose: it establishes a public explanation for the absence of an agreement while offering Russia an immediate military benefit should negotiations succeed on its terms.
The central weakness in any settlement built around a Ukrainian withdrawal is the assumption that control of Donbas represents the limit of Russia’s territorial ambitions.
Moscow’s previously declared objectives suggest a more complicated picture.
In June 2024, Putin demanded Ukrainian withdrawal from four regions claimed by Russia: Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. Moscow does not fully control these regions, despite claiming to have annexed them in September 2022.
Russia has also demanded restrictions on Ukraine’s military capabilities and future security relationships.
As EU Today previously reported, renewed diplomatic engagement has not produced a clear abandonment of the Kremlin’s wider objectives.
Consequently, transferring the remaining territory of Donetsk would not necessarily satisfy Moscow’s other demands.
There is a significant difference between conceding territory as part of an enforceable settlement and withdrawing from defensive positions as a precondition for negotiating one.
In the first case, territorial arrangements form part of a wider agreement establishing obligations, verification procedures and security guarantees.
In the second, one party makes a potentially irreversible military concession before knowing whether an agreement will ultimately be reached.
This asymmetry is particularly important where the proposed concession directly affects the withdrawing country’s ability to defend itself.
One interpretation of Moscow’s approach is that it reflects a strategy of incremental territorial expansion rather than an attempt to achieve all its objectives through a single decisive offensive.
After Russia failed to capture Kyiv in 2022, its military campaign increasingly concentrated on taking territory through successive, often prolonged operations.
The diplomatic equivalent would involve securing one concession, consolidating the resulting advantage and subsequently presenting additional demands.
Under such a scenario, Russia could obtain control of the remaining Donetsk territory, establish new positions closer to Dnipropetrovsk region and later argue that further territorial or security arrangements were necessary to protect its newly acquired frontier.
Moscow has already used the language of protective buffer zones to justify military operations elsewhere in Ukraine.
There is no evidence establishing that such a sequence would inevitably follow a Donbas settlement. Nevertheless, the possibility must be considered when assessing the military consequences of a withdrawal.
The concern is not merely that Russia might violate a future agreement. It is that the agreement itself could alter the strategic balance in ways that make renewed military pressure more effective.
There is also an internal Ukrainian dimension.
An agreement requiring the evacuation of cities defended for years would create substantial political controversy. Disagreements over territorial concessions, security guarantees and the credibility of Western commitments could complicate domestic political stability.
For Moscow, such divisions might provide another means of influencing Ukraine without immediate military escalation.
Donbas has considerable political significance for Putin beyond its military value.
The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in 2014, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Donetsk and Luhansk became central to the Kremlin’s justification for intervention, and their incorporation into Russia was later proclaimed as part of the 2022 annexations.
Control of the entire region would allow Putin to present a tangible achievement after years of warfare.
Yet the Kremlin’s objectives have never been confined exclusively to Donbas.
Putin has repeatedly questioned Ukraine’s historical and political independence, while Russian negotiating demands have extended to the country’s military posture, international alliances and internal political arrangements.
These positions suggest that territorial control forms part of a broader attempt to determine Ukraine’s strategic orientation.
A settlement that ends fighting in Donetsk without resolving these wider disagreements might therefore suspend the conflict rather than settle its underlying causes.
The planned talks in Abu Dhabi will test whether Moscow is prepared to distinguish between its territorial demands and the conditions necessary for a sustainable ceasefire.
An immediate halt to hostilities along existing lines would preserve the military status quo while allowing negotiations to proceed.
Russia has resisted this approach, arguing that a temporary ceasefire could enable Ukraine to rebuild its forces without resolving the conflict.
Ukraine, by contrast, argues that withdrawing from fortified territory without credible guarantees would expose it to renewed attack.
Neither side can be expected to disregard the military implications of the proposed arrangements.
For European governments, the principal question is consequently not simply whether Ukrainian and Russian representatives can be brought back to the negotiating table.
It is whether any agreement can prevent the territorial settlement from becoming the starting position for another war.
Stubb and Støre’s conversation with Putin demonstrated that diplomatic communication remains possible. It did not establish that Moscow is prepared to abandon its existing territorial objectives.
The distinction matters.
Putin’s demand for Donbas offers Russia two potential advantages: a justification for continuing the war if Kyiv refuses, and a substantial military gain if Kyiv accepts.
That does not prove the Kremlin has already decided to resume hostilities after a negotiated withdrawal. It does, however, explain why the terms, sequencing and enforceability of any agreement are as consequential as the territory itself.
The essential question facing negotiators is therefore not only whether Russia can obtain Donbas through diplomacy rather than force.
It is whether the price of that concession would be a lasting peace — or a weaker Ukrainian defensive position if peace fails.
“Look, this one was by Manhattan Transfer.” Vadym Glynarskyy, 73, throws onto the scorched ground the remains of one of the 25,000 vinyl records from his collection that he estimates were ruined in a Russian bombing of the popular Pochaina market in Kyiv. “War is a disaster,” he laments as he surveys the desolate scene of dozens of businesses gutted by fire, including his own. He points out charred metal objects that only he can identify: a speaker, a mixing console, a turntable, an amplifier… even the frame of a bicycle he says was ridden in the 1978 Tour de France and had been given to one of his sons as a gift. In his assessment, the trader adds several thousand CDs and hundreds of cassette tapes that were also lost.
Dawn breaks under rainfall in Kramatorsk, a Ukrainian stronghold under Russian threat on the eastern front. What makes it harder for drones to fly becomes an opportunity for Russian infantry to try to gain ground. These are, in any case, small skirmishes. EL PAÍS reports this from a military command post in Kramatorsk based on images captured by drones on October 15. The front line shows hardly any change and the war is stuck in a complex tangle as the fifth anniversary of the full-scale invasion approaches. Kyiv has also recently suffered serious setbacks: at home, with attacks across around 20 of its regions, and internationally, the blow represented by the United States’ overt alignment with Russia.
Sergei Kiriyenko, first deputy chief of staff of the Russian Presidential Administration, set the goals for the Ukraine strand of the operation, launched in early 2023 under the codename "Uganda." Alexander Kharichev, now head of the Kremlin's Directorate for Monitoring and Analysis of Social Processes, oversaw it, according to hacked correspondence published by The Insider on 21 October.
Doppelgänger disguises Russian narratives as local news through cloned media sites, fake accounts, paid ads, and fabricated videos. The FBI named Kiriyenko among its orchestrators in 2024, and its contractor, the Social Design Agency (SDA), run by Ilya Gambashidze, is still expanding, now targeting AI chatbots. The new files go inside the Ukraine campaign and show the operation reporting even exposed fakes to the Kremlin as achievements.
An internal briefing on narratives says the project ran its Telegram channels on the principles of agent work and psychological operations, the Russian version of the investigation shows. Early on, the team decided to disguise all its outlets as Ukrainian and to run its campaigns without direct Russian propaganda. Every channel carried Ukrainian news to look unconnected to Russia. Dropping pro-Ukrainian themes, the briefing warned, would eventually expose the client and wreck the whole plan.
Kiriyenko set four goals: discredit Ukraine's military and political leadership, split its elites, demoralize its army, and disorganize its population. The SDA prepared the project's pitch and carried out the work.
Political strategist Alexander Asafov proposed fakes of his own: in May 2023, that soldiers were bribing commanders to avoid the front, and in January 2024, that Ukraine was pulling air defenses back to Kyiv to protect the authorities.
After an Il-76 military transport crashed in Belgorod Oblast on 24 January 2024, Moscow claimed it had been carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war. Kharichev's subordinate Yevgeny Kazakov, chairing a meeting in his place, proposed sending a fake to the widows of Ukrainian soldiers: "They died for an expensive Il-76—the Russians have few of those." The idea was dropped.
The same meeting produced another fake, and three days later the team launched it: that recruitment centers had sent widows a can of stewed meat with a little flag as compensation. The same producers also oversaw letters falsely attributed to Deputy Defense Minister Nataliia Kalmykova, the Russian version says.
The SDA collected coverage of its work in a folder for the Kremlin. It filed the "Zelensky's yacht" story, which JD Vance, then a US senator and now US Vice President, echoed, together with its debunk. The report also included a TikTok campaign about former Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov's family that the BBC had already exposed.
The Insider concludes that the team has had more failures than successes. The US sanctioned Gambashidze and the SDA in March 2024, and the UK followed in October.
The upcoming U.S. midterms are not just another vote. They are on track to become a new testing ground for autonomous AI agents that first emerged in the Hugging Face attack. Experts are already warning of the potential for these “rogue agents,” seen in action this summer, to carry out more refined, dangerous and harder-to-trace disinformation campaigns and electoral interference than those observed in previous election cycles.
The video released by Al Jazeera lasts just 25 seconds but has once again reignited public debate. The footage shows at least 10 fighters in a forest, “coming back from a mission,” as one of them can be heard saying. The group of soldiers, who are Mexican, Colombian, and Panamanian — as acknowledged by the person filming — is allegedly part of Ukraine’s front line in the war launched by Russia.
© Scott Peterson (Getty Images)
On the night of March 20, 2024, unusually humid and mild in London, three people in their twenties pulled up at an industrial estate in the east of the city in a cherry-red Kia Picanto. They went inside, set fire to a warehouse, and filmed the blaze on a cellphone. The video of the flames consuming the premises ended up in the hands of another 20-year-old, Dylan Earl, who was reached via the Telegram messaging app by the Russian paramilitary organization Wagner, linked to the Kremlin, which had in turn recruited others to do the dirty work. One of the burned units contained humanitarian aid and Starlink satellite equipment destined for Ukraine. According to the British investigation, the three young men who lit the fuse did not know they were actually working for Russia.
© Jens Schlueter (Getty Images)
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