Ukraine: Trump tells NATO allies to stop buying Russian oil

Ukraine's Defense Minister Denys Shmyhal on Saturday said her country will need at least $120 billion (€102 billion) for its defense in 2026, with Russia's invasion now well into its fourth year.

"The economy of the war demonstrates that if we spend less money than Russia, then we begin paying with our territories and, most importantly, with our lives," Shmyhal told an annual conference in Kyiv.

Ukraine now spends over a third of its gross domestic product on its army. 

The costs of the war kept rising, according to Roksolana Pidlasa, the head of the parliamentary Budget Committee.

Pidlasa said that in 2025, a day of the war cost $172 million, while in 2024 it was around $140 million. "We need to fundraise all the needed sources, all the needed money," she added.

Kyiv has appealed to allies to find ways to direct Russian frozen assets to help it fend off Moscow's invasion.

"Until any diplomatic solution is reached, we will need to keep fighting. And to keep fighting, we need money. And defense has an enormous financial cost," Pidlasa said.

NATO member Romania said Saturday a drone had breached the country's airspace during a Russian attack on infrastructure in neighboring Ukraine.

Two F-16 fighter jets took off late on Saturday to "monitor the air situation on the border with Ukraine," the Romanian Defense Ministry said in a statement. 

The jets detected a drone in the national airspace and tracked it until "it disappeared from radar," approximately 20 kilometers southwest of the village of Chilia Veche.

"The drone did not fly over populated areas and did not pose an imminent threat to the safety of the population," according to the statement.

Teams were ready to be deployed "to begin searching for possible debris."

The incident came after Poland condemned the incursion of Russian drones into its airspace this week.

Polish and allied aircraft were deployed to protect Poland's airspace on Saturday, authorities said.

"These actions are preventative in nature and aimed at securing airspace and protecting citizens, especially in areas adjacent to the threatened area," the Operational Command of the Polish armed forces said in a statement. 

It cited a threat of drone strikes in regions of Ukraine bordering Poland, but didn't provide more details.

The alert came three days after Poland, with support from its NATO allies, shot down Russian drones which crossed into its airspace.

Authorities also said that the airport in the eastern Polish city of Lublin was closed "due to military aviation activities." 

US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he believed Moscow's war on Ukraine would end if all NATO countries stopped buying oil from Russia and and imposed tariffs of 50% to 100% on China for doing so.

"I am ready to do major Sanctions on Russia when all NATO Nations have agreed, and started, to do the same thing, and when all NATO Nations STOP BUYING OIL FROM RUSSIA," he wrote in a post on his social media site Truth Social.

He criticized the Western military alliance for demonstrating "far less than 100%" commitment to ending the war and also called it "shocking" that some NATO allies continue to purchase Russian petroleum, saying that it weakened their negotiating position.

Turkey, which has the second-largest military in NATO, has continued to buy large quantities of oil from Russia despite Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. Hungary and Slovakia, which are also part of the US-dominated alliance, are also importing Russian energy.

So far, Trump has repeatedly threatened new US sanctions on Moscow but has not followed through.

He has also threatened secondary sanctions on countries buying Russian oil, such as
top buyers China and India, and  imposed an additional 25% tariff on Indian goods over its continued imports of Russian oil. 

Russian forces have used a gas pipeline as a tunnel to strengthen their bridgehead on a riverbank facing the eastern Ukrainian city of Kupiansk, and to approach the city more closely, according to the military-affiliated Ukrainian blog DeepState.

DeepState said it was not the first time Russia had moved forces in the war zone by means of underground infrastructure.

Ukraine's military command has, however, denied there was any direct threat to the city despite what was happening underground.

The pipeline used by the Russians does not lead directly into the town, the command stressed.

DeepState had reported earlier that Russian forces were making a four-day journey through the tunnel to be able to move without major losses.

Kupiansk is a strategically important transport hub located on the Oskil River, which serves as a natural barrier against the invading Russian forces.

It was occupied by Russian forces from February 27, 2022 to September 10, 2022, when Ukrainian troops managed to recapture the city.

Russia's Defense Ministry said on Saturday said Moscow's troops had captured the village of Novomykolaivka near the border with the Donetsk region.

The claim has not been confirmed, and DeepState, an online battlefield map run by Ukrainian military analysts, said the village was still under Kyiv's control.

The Dnipropetrovsk region is not one of the five Ukrainian regions — Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Crimea — that Moscow has unilaterally declared to be Russian territory.

A fire broke out at oil production site in Russia's Bashkortostan region on Saturday following a "terrorist attack," the regional governor wrote on Telegram, without mentioning Ukraine.

"Today, the Bashneft company was subjected to a terrorist attack by aircraft-type drones," Radiy Khabirov wrote on Telegram.

He said one drone was shot down over the facility, causing a fire that was being extinguished.

The site suffered limited damage, and there were no casualties, he added.

The city of Ufa, where the oil facility is located, is some 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) from the Russian border with Ukraine.

You join DW's reporting on Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine as US President Donald Trump urges NATO nations to stop buying oil from Russia.

Trump himself, however, appears reluctant to penalize Russia over the Ukraine war, even after Russian drones entered the airspace of Poland, a NATO member, earlier this week.

Meanwhile, observers claim Russia has used pipelines to move its troops underground.

Here, you can read the main headlines from what is considered to be the largest conflict on European soil since WWII.