Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,290

Here is how things stand on Saturday, September 6:

• Russian forces took control of the settlement of Markove in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, Russian state news agency TASS reported, citing the Ministry of Defence.
• Ukraine attacked Russia’s Ryazan oil refinery, said the commander of Kyiv’s drone forces, Robert Brovdi, as well as an oil depot in the Russian-occupied Luhansk region.
• Debris fell on the grounds of an industrial enterprise after the Ukrainian attack, said Ryazan’s regional governor, Pavel Malkov, with air defence and electronic warfare systems shooting down eight drones in the region, causing no casualties.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said “thousands” of foreign troops could be deployed to his country under post-war security guarantees agreed this week with the so-called “coalition of the willing”, led by French President Emmanuel Macron.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow would regard foreign troops in Ukraine as legitimate targets. “If some troops appear there, especially now, during military operations, we proceed from the fact that these will be legitimate targets for destruction,” Putin told an economic forum in Russia’s far eastern city of Vladivostok.
• Putin also said that if an agreement is reached on “long-term peace” with Ukraine, then he did “not see any sense” in the presence of foreign troops “on the territory of Ukraine, full stop”.
• North Korean soldiers fighting alongside Moscow’s forces are not being deployed on Ukrainian territory, only on Russian territory, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency.

• President Donald Trump said the United States is still working on Ukraine security guarantees that will help bring an end to the country’s conflict with Russia.
• Kremlin spokesman Peskov said Trump’s deal-making approach to diplomacy is “quite cynical”, but in a “good sense”. Peskov contrasted Trump’s position with that of Europe, which, he said, was doing everything it could to hinder a peaceful settlement.
• “In contrast, Trump is much more constructive. He is, in the good sense of the word, quite cynical. In terms of ‘why fight if you can trade’. And based on these interests of America, he does everything to stop wars,” Peskov said.
• Peskov added that Putin and Trump could meet again “very quickly” if the Russian leader deemed it “necessary”.

• Ukraine’s allies are preparing a new set of sanctions against Russia as part of a campaign to pressure President Putin to end the war on Ukraine, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said.

• Trump said India and Russia seem to have been “lost” to China after their leaders met with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week. “Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China. May they have a long and prosperous future together!” Trump wrote in a social media post accompanying a photo of the three leaders together at Xi’s summit in China.

• US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said he is not worried that any Russian sales of gas to China would harm US exporters. Russia and China gave their blessing earlier this week to a gas pipeline called Power of Siberia 2, underscoring Xi’s disregard for Western demands that he row back from a deepening partnership with Moscow.
• President Zelenskyy said Ukraine would continue to respond reciprocally to Russian attacks on its energy facilities, despite criticism from Slovakia and Hungary, which have suffered Russian oil supply disruptions as a result of Kyiv’s strikes. Zelenskyy spoke after holding his first high-level talks with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, with whom he has clashed over Russian energy supplies in the past.
• Slovakia, along with Hungary, has continued to buy Russian gas and oil through the Druzhba pipeline, even as other European Union countries cut ties over Moscow’s war on Ukraine.
• The EU is sticking to its plans to phase out Russian oil by January 2028, the bloc’s energy chief Dan Jorgensen told the Reuters news agency, adding that he had not faced pressure from Washington to bring forward this deadline.
• Hungary and Slovakia oppose the EU’s phase-out plan, saying it would hike energy prices and could lead to shortages.
• Jorgensen said he was in talks with Hungary and Slovakia about their concerns, but EU countries could approve the phase-out plans without them. “If, for domestic reasons, there are countries that don’t feel that they can support it, then this is not something that demands unanimity,” he said.