Putin says Ukraine not ready for peace, while Kyiv claims to have thrown a punch

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that his country “does not see Ukraine’s will” to negotiate a peace agreementagain blaming the country he ordered a full-scale invasion of almost four years ago for the continuation of a war he refuses to even recognize as a war.

Putin said he was open to a negotiated end to what he calls a “special military operation” but only on his terms, insisting, as he has for years, that Ukraine must accept a massive, formal confiscation of occupied territory and some degree of national demilitarization, both terms that kyiv has rejected.

The Russian president said his forces had “fully seized the strategic initiative” in the conflict and would seize even more ground along the roughly 600-mile front line in eastern Ukraine before the end of the year.

“Our troops are advancing along the line of contact, faster in some areas or slower in others, but the enemy is retreating in all sectors,” Putin said during the wide-ranging live New Year’s Eve news conference that has been a hallmark of his tenure.

His comments came as Ukraine called for a dramatic new blow against Russia, but also as divisions among European nations over how to continue supporting kyiv – fueled, many say, by Moscow’s pressure tactics – were laid bare.

Putin’s latest indictment of both kyiv and his supporters in Europe over the war also came when a senior official Russian envoy prepares to meet again for talks with Trump administration officials in Florida this weekend. The White House is pushing hard for a negotiated resolution to the conflict that President Trump had promised to quickly end when he took office.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday called The proposals being negotiated with the United States are “very feasible,” suggesting they could be finalized within days, allowing American officials to discuss with their Russian counterparts.

Ukraine claims responsibility for drone attack on Russian tanker from “shadow fleet” in Mediterranean

Ukraine has been defending itself with support from the United States and its European partners, and as Putin spoke in Moscow, kyiv claimed a significant expansion of its wartime resistance, with a first alleged attack on a tanker said to be part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” violating sanctions in the Mediterranean.

In a statement, Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency said Friday that it had “collided for the first time with a tanker belonging to Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’ in neutral waters of the Mediterranean Sea,” describing it as an “unprecedented special operation more than 2,000 kilometers away.” [1,200 miles] of the territory of our state.”

The SBU said it used aerial drones to disable the Oman-flagged oil tanker Qendil, which it said was empty at the time and therefore “did not pose any threat to the ecological situation in the region.”

The SBU shared a black and white video, apparently captured by a drone, of the alleged attack showing several explosions on the deck of a tanker.

“Russia used this tanker to circumvent sanctions and make money that went to the war against Ukraine,” an SBU source told News themezone. “Therefore, from the point of view of international law and the laws and customs of war, this is an absolutely legitimate target for the SBU. The enemy must understand that Ukraine will not stop and attack it anywhere in the world, wherever it is.”

Ukraine has long attacked fuel tankers and infrastructure in Russian ports and on land as part of its efforts to undermine Moscow’s war funding, but only this month did kyiv acknowledge attacking ships outside Russia’s territorial waters. News themezone reported on the first attacks of this typetargeting oil tankers off the coasts of Türkiye and West Africa, just over a week ago.

The SBU said the new attack had disabled the Qendil, which ship tracking website MarineTraffic.com confirmed was located in the eastern Mediterranean on Friday afternoon. According to MarineTraffic, the ship, which has not been listed by the US Treasury among Russian shadow fleet ships subject to sanctions, was sailing from the Indian port of Sikka to the Russian port of Ust-Luga.

The US government has sanctioned many ships and shipping companies in an effort to crack down on Russia’s shadow fleet, ships with often murky registration and ownership that Moscow allegedly uses to evade heavy Western sanctions on its energy products, providing vital revenue for its war effort.

The Trump administration accuses several major oil producers, including Russia, Venezuela and Iran, of using a global fleet of such ships, and just last week, the U.S. military They seized a 20-year-old sanctioned oil tanker after it left a port in Venezuela, sources told News themezone.

Armed personnel approached in helicopters and boarded the ship, which was sanctioned by the US Treasury three years ago for its alleged role in an oil smuggling ring that helped finance the Iranian military and its proxies in the Middle East.

When asked about the Qendil attack during his news conference on Friday, Putin was dismissive but promised to respond.

“They are pursuing some utilitarian purposes,” the Russian leader said, without confirming any details. “They want to increase insurance premiums, but this will not produce the result they want. This will not disrupt supply. This would only create additional threats, and Russia will certainly respond.”

Despite divisions, EU agrees on financial lifeline for Ukraine

Meanwhile, the European Union overnight offered a support package to Ukraine worth more than $100 billion, but the bloc could not agree on proposals pushed by leaders to use frozen Russian assets to do so.

After failing to agree on the details, the EU ended up granting an interest-free loan to Ukraine, from its own budget, to finance the country’s military and economic needs for two years.

EU leaders wanted to finance the aid package with frozen Russian assets, but there was always resistance to that idea among some members, most notably Belgium, where much of the protected Russian money is kept.

Putin renewed threats in his comments on Friday that there would be serious consequences for European nations that decided to use Russian money, held up as part of sanctions against Moscow.

He said any such move would have been “daylight robbery.”

“Why can’t this robbery be carried out? Because the consequences could be serious for the thieves,” he said Friday.

Russia has been repeatedly accused in recent months of waging a hybrid war against Ukraine’s European partners, with a series of unclaimed drone raids, including around airports and military bases, Russian warplanes violating European (and NATO) airspace, and other acts of alleged sabotage against vital infrastructure.

“If Europe had left today without a deal, we would not only have failed Ukraine, we would have failed ourselves,” Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever said Friday, putting a positive spin on the agreement reached.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz also praised the agreement for a “zero interest loan” for Ukraine and that it leaves room for Russian assets to be leveraged in the future.

“These funds are sufficient to cover Ukraine’s military and budgetary needs for the next two years,” Merz said, noting that the frozen Russian assets will remain frozen unless and until Russia pays reparations to Ukraine for the enormous damage inflicted during the war.

“If Russia does not pay reparations, we will, in full accordance with international law, use frozen Russian assets to repay the loan,” the German leader said.

Ukraine’s government welcomed the deal but made clear that kyiv still feels Russia’s frozen assets should be accessed to support its defense.

“Indeed, there are times when one must keep in mind that ‘the perfect is the enemy of the good,'” said Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya. “It was a long night for the European leaders, but they achieved a workable result.”