Ukraine war briefing: Trump says he would want to know Kyiv’s plans for Tomahawk missiles before supplying them

US president Donald Trump has said he would want to know what Ukraine planned to do with US-made Tomahawk missiles before agreeing to supply them because he does not want to escalate Russia’s war against Ukraine. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has asked the US to sell Tomahawks to European nations that would send them to Ukraine. Tomahawk missiles have a range of 2,500km (1,550 miles), putting Moscow in the range of Ukraine’s arsenal, were Kyiv to be granted them. Asked by reporters at the White House on Monday whether he had decided about supplying Ukraine with Tomahawks, Trump did not rule it out and said he had “sort of made a decision”. “I think I want to find out what they’re doing with them. I would ask some questions. I’m not looking to escalate that war.”

The Kremlin on Monday welcomed Trump’s comments about Russia’s offer to extend the last remaining nuclear arms treaty with the US, saying it raised hope for keeping the pact alive after it expires in February. Last month, Russian president Vladimir Putin declared his readiness to adhere to nuclear arms limits under the 2010 New Start arms reduction treaty for one more year, and urged Washington to follow suit. When asked about the proposal, Trump said on Sunday it “sounds like a good idea to me”.

Denmark will step up environmental checks on oil tankers in a key shipping lane linking the Baltic and North Seas to crack down on Russia’s “shadow fleet”, Copenhagen said on Monday. More than 60,000 ships sail past Skagen in north Denmark each year, of which dozens are suspected to belong to a flotilla of rickety ships used by Moscow to circumvent western sanctions on Russia’s fossil fuel exports. The announcement comes after a vessel believed to belong to this “shadow fleet” was linked to mysterious drone sightings over Denmark last month, closing airports at a time of heightened east-west tensions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russia said a Ukrainian strike killed two people in the border city of Belgorod on Monday, after Kyiv launched one of its largest overnight attacks of the war and both sides reported power outages. Kyiv has vowed to increase its strikes on Russian territory, particularly on Russia’s oil infrastructure, in what it sees as a legitimate response to Moscow’s daily barrages on Ukrainian cities and its energy network that have at times cut off heating and power to millions. Russia’s defence ministry said it had downed 251 Ukrainian drones overnight – one of the highest daily tolls since Russia launched its offensive in February 2022.

Long-range Ukrainian drones and missiles hit a major Russian ammunition plant, a key oil terminal and an important weapons depot behind the frontline, Ukraine’s military said on Monday. The Sverdlov ammunition plant in the Nizhny Novgorod region of western Russia was struck overnight, causing multiple explosions and a fire, the Ukrainian general staff said. The plant supplies Russian forces with aviation and artillery ordnance, aviation bombs and anti-aircraft and anti-tank munitions, it said. Ukraine also hit an oil terminal on the Russia-annexed Crimean Peninsula, starting a blaze, and an ammunition depot of Russia’s 18th Combined Arms Army, the general staff said.

Russian sabotage groups are operating inside the embattled eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, where forces from both sides have clashed, the commander of a Ukrainian drone unit said. Dmytro Lavro, a deputy commander in Ukraine’s 25th Airborne Brigade, said fighting raged “on the ground and in the sky” for the city, a strategic hub for Kyiv’s forces on the eastern front.

Ukraine found tens of thousands of foreign parts – some western-made – in Russian drones and missiles fired on Ukraine over the weekend, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday. “During the massive combined strike on Ukraine on the night of 5 October, Russia used 549 weapon systems containing 102,785 foreign-made components,” the Ukrainian president said on social media, referring to an attack in the early hours of Sunday.

A Polish court ruled on Monday that the Ukrainian diver wanted by Germany over his alleged involvement in explosions that damaged the Nord Stream gas pipeline must remain in custody for another 40 days, his lawyer said. Volodymyr Z was detained near Warsaw last Tuesday and the court decided he would be kept in custody for seven days. The court decided on Monday to extend his detention while a decision is made on whether to transfer him to Germany based on a European arrest warrant.

Any European Union decision on using frozen Russian state assets to help Ukraine must follow international law and the European Central Bank is “very attentive” to the process, ECB president Christine Lagarde said on Monday. The EU is searching for a way to finance Ukraine’s defence and reconstruction with some of the €210bn ($245bn) worth of Russian sovereign assets immobilised in the west after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. As outright confiscation would be illegal, the bloc’s political leadership is working on a plan to invest the Russian cash in zero-coupon bonds issued by the European Commission with guarantees from EU governments. The EU would then use the cash to issue a “reparations loan” to Ukraine.