Trump defends pausing Russia sanctions as Zelensky accuses Washington of withholding Patriot missiles

Trump defends the sanctions pause

US President Donald Trump said on 19 October that suspending a large part of the sanctions on Russia, which Congress had approved and which were due to take effect that day, was meant to keep Moscow in the peace talks. Trump also moved to resume buying Russian diesel, a step Zelensky sharply criticised as taking Moscow's side.

“I am negotiating peace between Russia and Ukraine, and I do not want to do anything that could push Russia away from the negotiating table.”

Trump rejected the criticism and turned it back on Zelensky, whom he accused of blocking an end to the war. He argued that Zelensky's strikes on Russian refineries worsen a global fuel shortage and push up prices, and he has called for Zelensky to be replaced as Ukraine's president.

“Zelensky does not want to end this war. He could have reached a better deal two years ago than he will get now.”

Interceptors, intelligence and Starlink

The dispute has been building for about a week. Zelensky accused Washington of slowing the Starlink satellite service that Ukrainian forces rely on and of halting the sharing of intelligence on Russian ballistic missile launches. Both problems appeared resolved over the weekend of 17-18 October, when Starlink was restored and intelligence sharing resumed, prompting Zelensky to thank Trump publicly. By 19 October the problems had returned, and Zelensky said the connection starts to fail when drones using it reach speeds of 130 to 161 kilometres per hour.

Zelensky also told Bloomberg that Patriot interceptors already paid for by European countries through the NATO-coordinated PURL scheme were being held back, and that Washington had approved only some of them. He said the US now supplies 12 Patriot interceptors a month, about a quarter of the number under the Biden administration, and told US senators that one batch was waiting for the signature of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. He added that Washington had rejected a Kyiv offer to pause attacks on Russian oil industry targets in exchange for more Patriot missiles, and said steps had been taken to push Ukraine to capitulate. Washington denies any change to intelligence sharing, and Marco Rubio, travelling in Uzbekistan, denied any pause in the sharing of secret intelligence.

Overnight strikes on Kyiv, Kharkiv and Rivne

Ukrainian authorities said Russian forces fired 16 ballistic missiles at Kyiv and the surrounding region, along with hundreds of drones across the country. The attack damaged energy infrastructure, residential buildings, a school and a metro station. Zelensky wrote that more than 10 energy facilities were damaged and at least 550,000 households were left without electricity. SIC Notícias reported that a residential building and a metro station were hit in Kyiv and that electricity substations were struck in Rivne.

Casualty figures are still moving. SIC reported ten dead, including three children, in a park in the country's second-largest city. An Observador roundup placed the attack on a park in Kharkiv, citing six dead including children and 15 people seriously injured, with the toll revised upward during the day. Those drones were reportedly launched near the Russia-Ukraine border.

On 19 October Pope Leo XIV called Zelensky, as he had called Putin the previous week, to seek a truce around Oleshky in the Russian-occupied Kherson region that would let food, medicine and wounded people through.

Talks without Kyiv on the table

The Wall Street Journal reported that the idea of a meeting between Trump, Putin and Xi Jinping on the war, excluding Kyiv and its European allies, came from Putin. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov confirmed that the topic was mentioned during the last Putin-Trump phone call, on 9 October. He denied, however, that a concrete proposal had been made or that the three leaders had agreed to a meeting.