Zelenskyy arrives at Downing Street
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has arrived at Downing Street on Friday to meet prime minister Keir Starmer, and join other European leaders on a “coalition of the willing” call to discuss boosting Ukraine’s defences.
Key events
Trump: “I am the only one that matters”
Simon Jeffery
Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán said Friday that his government was working on “ways to circumvent” US sanctions against Russian energy companies.
President Donald Trump at the Gaza summit on Friday has said that he liked Orbán and: “I know a lot of people don’t agree with me, but I am the only one that matters.”
Dan Sabbagh
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy travelled to London on Friday for a meeting with more than 20 European leaders at a time when military and financial efforts to ramp up military and financial pressure against Russia are stalled or delayed.
The president participated in a meeting of the Coalition of the Willing hosted by UK prime minister Keir Starmer to discuss “to discuss how they can pile pressure” on Vladimir Putin as the war in Ukraine heads towards its fourth winter.
The gathering comes a day after EU leaders failed to make a firm decision on whether to use frozen Russian central bank assets to fund Ukraine’s defence, while the US havers over whether to supply long-range Tomahawk missiles to Kyiv.
Russia has meanwhile intensified its bombing of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Power and water were out in Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv this week, after targeted attacks aimed at breaking public resistance inside Ukraine.
Ahead of the meeting, Starmer accused the Russian president of wanting to prolong a war in which Ukrainian civilians are coming under attack. “From the battlefield to the global markets, as Putin continues to commit atrocities in Ukraine. We must ratchet up the pressure on Russia,” he said.
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Here are the latest photos coming through on the newswires of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s meeting with prime minister Keir Starmer. The leaders have arrived at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), along with Nato Secretary Gen Mark Rutte and other EU leaders for a “coalition of the willing” meeting:
Picasso painting that vanished in Spain found
Spanish police said Friday that a Pablo Picasso painting that vanished en route to an exhibition has been found, raising doubts if it was ever loaded onto a transport truck.
“Still Life with Guitar”, a 1919 gouache and pencil work valued at about 600,000 euros (£523,000), disappeared in early October while being transported from Madrid to the southern city of Granada.
The artwork, which belongs to a private collector in the Spanish capital, was set to be displayed as part of a new exhibition at the CajaGranada Foundation.
But when the truck’s contents were unpacked on 6 October, the curator noticed that the Picasso piece was missing.
The missing painting was reported to police, who confirmed its recovery on Friday, though they did not disclose where it was found.
“Initial investigations suggest that the painting may not have been loaded on to the transport truck,” said a National Police statement.
Police released images of their scientific experts examining the package containing the recovered piece.
Picasso’s fame – and the enormous sums his works command – have long made his art a target for thieves around the world.
In February 2007, two Picasso paintings worth a total of €50m were stolen from the Paris home of the artist’s granddaughter. Two years later, a Picasso sketchbook worth more than €8m was stolen from a Paris museum dedicated to the artist. Twelve Picasso paintings, valued at around £9m, were stolen from the French Riviera villa of another of his grandchildren, Marina Picasso, in 1989. In 1976, 118 works were stolen from a museum in the southern city of Avignon in one of France’s largest art thefts.
Russian special envoy in US for meetings with Trump administration
Russian president Vladimir Putin’s special envoy Kirill Dmitriev was in the US for meetings with Trump administration officials including special envoy Steve Witkoff, according to media reports on Friday.
Dmitriev was expected to meet Trump administration officials “to continue discussions about the US-Russia relationship,” CNN reported, citing sources with knowledge of the visit. Axios reported that Dmitriev would meet Witkoff in Miami on Saturday.
Donald Trump hit Russia’s two biggest oil companies with sanctions this week to press the Kremlin leader to end the war in Ukraine. Trump spoke to Putin last week and said he planned to meet Putin soon, but US officials have said the meeting is on hold.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked the UK for its support and said Vladimir Putin was pushing Ukraine towards “humanitarian disaster”.
At the top of a bilateral meeting with UK prime minister Keir Starmer, the Ukrainian president said:
Yes, I agree with you and know that Putin doesn’t show that he wants to stop the war.
He said Russian aggression was “pushing us with such humanitarian disaster” with attacks targeting infrastructure including Ukraine’s energy sector.
“We’re thankful to you that we are not alone in this situation – from the very beginning of war but especially now, it’s very important,” Zelenskyy said.
UK says allies should boost Ukraine’s long-range missile reach
Keir Starmer said “huge steps forward” had been taken this week to support Ukraine but there was “further we can do” on long-range capability as he described the UK as Kyiv’s “closest supporter and ally.”
At the start of a bilateral meeting with the country’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the British prime minister said:
Volodymyr, it’s really good to be able to welcome you here in Downing Street again for a really important meeting between the two of us, bilaterally, but also for the coalition of the willing.
He added:
Through seeing his majesty, through our meeting and through the coalition of the willing, we reaffirm again our support for you and Ukraine and our absolute commitment to meeting the challenge of Russian aggression.
And whilst you have signalled the path for a way forward and shown that willingness of courage and determination, what we see from Putin is an absolute unwillingness to engage, in fact, the opposite, which is the continued attacks increasingly on civilians and on children and sadly I have to offer you my condolences again, as I did the last time we met and the time before, for those terrible losses.
I do think that this week we can really bear down on Russian oil and gas. Huge steps forward this week already. I think there’s further we can do on capability, particularly … long-range capability, and of course, the vital work for coalition of the willing when it comes to the security guarantees that are necessary.
So we’ve got really important business to go through with the coalition of the willing today, but it’s very good to be able to welcome you back.
French government faces threat of censure over wealth tax
A swing group in French parliament on Friday said that if a 2026 budget bill was not changed to include a tax on the supremely wealthy, it would vote down the government.
Prime minister Sebastien Lecornu has promised to get an austerity budget through a divided parliament by the end of the year, after the legislature toppled his two predecessors over cost-cutting measures. Earlier this month, he agreed to suspend an unpopular pensions reform so the Socialists could help him survive a confidence vote in parliament.
Lecornu has also pledged not to use a constitutional power to ram the budget bill into law without a vote as has been done in previous years.
But the Socialists, a swing group in the hung National Assembly, have also demanded a tax on the ultra-rich, which Lecornu has refused and not included in the draft budget.
A parliamentary commission earlier this week rejected the proposed budget 37 votes to 11, and it is to go to a debate in the lower house on Friday afternoon.
The idea is to make people with at least 100 million euros in assets pay a minimum tax of two percent on that wealth. French economist Gabriel Zucman has said such a tax on the mega-wealthy could raise about 20 billion euros (£17.5bn) per year from just 1,800 households.
Parliament could discuss a proposal from the left wing to add a so-called Zucman tax on Saturday. But the far right and government are against taxing professional assets, which this tax would target. The government instead wants to tax wealth management holdings with at least five million euros (£4.4m) in assets. The government expects to be able to raise 1 billion euros (£872m) from about 10,000 taxpayers with the measure.
Socialist party leader Olivier Faure said his party would vote to oust Lecornu’s government if no levy was imposed on the uber-wealthy.
“We need to tax the ultra-rich and mega-inheritances,” he said. “If there is no progress by Monday, it will be over.”
Four dead, 12 wounded in blast at Ukraine train station
A man detonated an explosive device as border guards checked documents at a railway station in northern Ukraine on Friday, killing himself and three women, the State Border Guard Service said.
It said in a statement that 12 other people were hurt in the blast at the station in Ovruch, close to the border with Belarus, and that a border guard was among the dead, who were aged 29, 58 and 82.
The man who detonated the explosive device was a 23-year-old resident of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine who had recently been detained for trying to cross the border, it said.
It made no mention of any link with Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Zelenskyy arrives at Downing Street
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has arrived at Downing Street on Friday to meet prime minister Keir Starmer, and join other European leaders on a “coalition of the willing” call to discuss boosting Ukraine’s defences.
Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries drive fuel price rise in Tajikistan, Reuters reports
Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian oil refineries are partly responsible for a rise in fuel prices in Tajikistan, three sources in the Central Asian country’s government told Reuters on Friday.
“There is currently a gasoline shortage on the market, which has led to higher prices”, said a source in the Tajik government’s anti-monopoly service.
The source said that contracted supplies from Russian producers were not arriving, linking it to strikes on Russian refineries that provide for many of Tajikistan’s fuel needs. Two other sources agreed.
Reuters monitoring on Friday showed that fuel prices in Tajikistan’s capital, Dushanbe, had risen significantly since the beginning of October. The A-95 grade has risen by 3.54%, the AI-92 grade by 3.68%, diesel by 5.58%, and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) by 5.81%.
One of the sources said that prices were even higher outside the capital.
All five of Central Asia’s former Soviet republics, whose economies are tightly linked to Russia’s, have been rocked since 2022 by the economic fallout of Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
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