A renewed push in Miami

The diesel announcement landed while US, Ukrainian and European officials were meeting in Miami, in what was billed as a renewed diplomatic push to end the war. By Saturday, the working part of it appeared to be over: an aide to Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine's delegation was headed home.

US envoy Steve Witkoff set out who sat around the table. In a post on X, he said the meeting included "the E3, the European Commission, Ukraine and NATO". According to Witkoff, the participants discussed potential avenues to de-escalate before winter.

Diesel deal and the Trump-Zelensky clash

The diplomatic choreography sat awkwardly beside the row between Washington and Kyiv. On Friday, Donald Trump announced that he had called Vladimir Putin and agreed to let Moscow release large amounts of diesel onto global markets, easing sanctions on the fuel. The move carries domestic weight for the US president, whose party faces dim prospects in next month's midterm elections partly over soaring US fuel prices.

Zelensky told reporters on Friday that the US move was a "weak decision". Trump answered on Saturday, saying Ukraine should "get a new president" and accusing Zelensky of disobeying his orders not to strike Russian refineries. Of the Ukrainian leader, he said: "I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal, because he could have made many deals that, for some reason, he never does".

• •Trump said the refinery strikes risk worsening global fuel shortages caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran
• •Of Zelensky's refusal to halt them, he warned: "He better damn well stop"
• •EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Saturday that lifting sanctions on Russian diesel would only help fuel the Kremlin's war on Ukraine
• •"This is not the time to ease pressure on Russia, and Europe won't," Kallas wrote online

Strikes kill 21, including four children

While the delegations talked, Russia's bombardment went on. Moscow's strikes on Ukraine killed at least 21 people, including four children.

• •A Russian glide bomb attack on the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia killed 20 people, including three children, according to Ukraine's state rescue service
• •In the central Dnipropetrovsk region, a Russian drone attack killed an 11-year-old boy, the region's governor said
• •Rescuer Daniil Pishkin described finding a woman, her husband and a child under rubble; two people were pulled out alive, but "unfortunately there was a little girl who died"

Iryna, a 69-year-old resident of a hit building in Zaporizhzhia, said she took refuge in her bathroom when the air raid warning sounded. Her two neighbours, both 75, were killed. "They were simply thrown out there, onto the street. They didn't make it to the hospital," she said.

Zelensky tied the assault directly to the sanctions decision. Writing on X, he said: "Today, Russia expressed its thanks for the lifting of sanctions on diesel exports by dropping five glide bombs on residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia".

Further strikes triggered large-scale power outages in Kyiv, according to Ukraine's DTEK energy provider, and the city's mayor reported a strike on a restaurant. The Russian defence ministry said it had hit a "data centre" used by Ukraine's military.

Moscow's response and the state of play

The Kremlin said on Saturday that Trump had conveyed his ideas about de-escalating the war to Putin during Friday's phone call, and that the Russian leader received the proposals "with understanding" - without elaborating.

Russia, which launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, now occupies roughly one-fifth of Ukrainian territory. US-led efforts to broker an end to the more than four-and-a-half-year conflict remain deadlocked, and the bombardment has sent civilian casualties soaring. With Ukraine's delegation travelling home from Miami on Saturday, no breakthrough had been announced.