Ukraine’s Zelenskyy urges US to broaden Russian oil sanctions and seeks long-range missiles

LONDON (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday urged the United States to expand sanctions on Russian oil from two companies to the whole sector, and appealed for long-range missiles to hit back at Russia.

Zelenskyy was in London for talks with two dozen European leaders who have pledged military help to shield his country from future Russian aggression if a ceasefire stops the more than three-year war.

The meeting hosted by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer aimed to step up pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin, adding momentum to recent measures that have included a new round of sanctions from the United States and European countries on Russia’s vital oil and gas export earnings.

The talks also addressed ways of helping protect Ukraine’s power grid from Russia’s almost daily drone and missiles attacks as winter approaches, enhancing Ukrainian air defenses, and supplying Kyiv with longer-range missiles that can strike deep inside Russia. Zelenskyy has urged the U.S. to send Tomahawk missiles, an idea U.S. President Donald Trump has flirted with.

The Ukrainian leader said Trump's decision this week to impose oil sanctions was “a big step,” and said “we have to apply pressure not only to Rosneft and Lukoil, but to all Russian oil companies.”

“Besides, we are carrying out our own campaign of pressure with drones and missiles specifically targeting the Russian oil sector," he said during a news conference at the Foreign Office in London.

Trump also has put on hold a plan for a swift meeting with Putin in Budapest, because he didn’t want it to be a “waste of time.”

Putin has so far resisted efforts to push him into negotiating a peace settlement with Zelenskyy and has argued that the motives for Russia’s all-out invasion of its smaller neighbor are legitimate. Russia has also been adept at finding loopholes in Western sanctions.

A top Russian official said Friday he has arrived in the United States for talks with U.S. officials. Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s envoy for investment and economic cooperation, announced his visit in a post on X. He said it was “planned a while ago” on an invitation “from the U.S. side.”

Dmitriev will meet with U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff, a White House official not authorized to publicly discuss the private meeting confirmed on condition of anonymity. The meeting was first reported by Axios.

Dmitriev has been a key interlocutor in discussions between the Trump administration and the Kremlin on numerous issues, including the Ukraine war and the release of American detainees in Russia.

Putin's unbudging stance has exasperated Western leaders.

“He’s rejected the opportunity for talks once again, instead making ludicrous demands for Ukrainian land, which he could not and has not taken by force," Starmer said at a news conference alongside Zelenskyy and several other European leaders. “Of course, that is a complete non-starter.”

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said Putin's goals remain unchanged but he "is running out of money, troops and ideas.”

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof also attended Friday's meeting of the “Coalition of the Willing” in person. About 20 other leaders joined by video link.

Ukraine’s Western allies need to resolve some big questions about the future part they will play as Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II heads toward its fourth anniversary.

The uncertainties include how they can help fund war-devastated Ukraine, what postwar security guarantees they might be able to provide, and what Washington’s commitments to future security arrangements might be.

Details of the potential future “reassurance force” are scant, and the London meeting seeks to further develop the idea — even though any peace agreement appears at the moment to be only a distant possibility.

The force is likely to consist of air and naval support rather than Western troops deployed in Ukraine, according to officials. U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey says it would be “a force to help secure the skies, secure the seas, a force to help train Ukrainian forces to defend their nation.”

The war has shown no sign of subsiding, as a front-line war of attrition kills thousands of soldiers on both sides while drone and missile barrages cause damage in rear areas.

The Russian Defense Ministry claimed Friday that over the past week its forces have captured 10 Ukrainian villages. The small conquests are part of Russia’s slow but steady slog to envelop the remaining Ukrainian strongholds in the Donetsk region from both the north and the south and create footholds for pressing further west into the Dnipropetrovsk region.

The Defense Ministry also said its forces downed 111 Ukrainian drones over several regions overnight, with debris causing damage to homes and infrastructure..

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin reported that air defenses downed three drones heading to the city, which forced flights to be suspended at two Moscow airports.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian authorities said Russian artillery struck a residential block in the southeastern city of Kherson on Friday, killing two people and injuring 22 others.

Russian planes also dropped at least five powerful glide bombs on the northeastern city of Kharkiv, injuring six people and damaging homes, according to Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov.

And for the first time, Russia fired glide bombs on Ukraine’s southern Odesa region Friday, according to Oleh Kiper, head of the Odesa Regional Military Administration, calling it “a new, serious threat” in the area. Glide bombs are significantly cheaper than missiles and carry a heavier payload.

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Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer welcomes Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to 10 Downing Street in London, Friday, Oct. 24, 2025 for bilateral talks and a later meeting of the so-called "coalition of the willing".(AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, Pool)

Municipal employees work at the side of a damaged multi-storey apartment building hit by a Ukrainian drone in Krasnogorsk, just outside Moscow, Russia, on Friday, Oct. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Pavel Bednyakov)

Centre from left: Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, King Charles III and Major Ben Tracey inspecting a guard of honour at Windsor Castle, England, Friday, Oct, 24, 2025. (Aaron Chown/Pool Photo via AP)

This photo released by Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobyev official telegram channel shows a view of the damaged multi-storey apartment building hit by a Ukrainian drone in Krasnogorsk, just outside Moscow, Russia, on Friday, Oct. 24, 2025. (Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobyev official telegram channel via AP)

This photo released by Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobyev official telegram channel shows a view of the flat in the damaged multi-storey apartment building hit by a Ukrainian drone in Krasnogorsk, just outside Moscow, Russia, on Friday, Oct. 24, 2025. (Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobyev official telegram channel via AP)

This photo released by Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobyev official telegram channel shows investigators working in the damaged multi-storey apartment building hit by a Ukrainian drone in Krasnogorsk, just outside Moscow, Russia, on Friday, Oct. 24, 2025. (Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobyev official telegram channel via AP)

MADRID (AP) — Venezuelans living in Spain are watching the events unfold back home with a mix of awe, joy and fear.

Some 600,000 Venezuelans live in Spain, home to the largest population anywhere outside the Americas. Many fled political persecution and violence but also the country’s collapsing economy.

A majority live in the capital, Madrid, working in hospitals, restaurants, cafes, nursing homes and elsewhere. While some Venezuelan migrants have established deep roots and lives in the Iberian nation, others have just arrived.

Here is what three of them had to say about the future of Venezuela since U.S. forces deposed Nicolás Maduro.

David Vallenilla woke up to text messages from a cousin on Jan. 3 informing him “that they invaded Venezuela.” The 65-year-old from Caracas lives alone in a tidy apartment in the south of Madrid with two Daschunds and a handful of birds. He was in disbelief.

“In that moment, I wanted certainty,” Vallenilla said, “certainty about what they were telling me.”

In June 2017, Vallenilla’s son, a 22-year-old nursing student in Caracas named David José, was shot point-blank by a Venezuelan soldier after taking part in a protest near a military air base in the capital. He later died from his injuries. Video footage of the incident was widely publicized, turning his son’s death into an emblematic case of the Maduro government’s repression against protesters that year.

After demanding answers for his son’s death, Vallenilla, too, started receiving threats and decided two years later to move to Spain with the help of a nongovernmental organization.

On the day of Maduro’s capture, Vallenilla said his phone was flooded with messages about his son.

“Many told me, ‘Now David will be resting in peace. David must be happy in heaven,’” he said. “But don't think it was easy: I spent the whole day crying.”

Vallenilla is watching the events in Venezuela unfold with skepticism but also hope. He fears more violence, but says he has hope the Trump administration can effect the change that Venezuelans like his son tried to obtain through elections, popular protests and international institutions.

“Nothing will bring back my son. But the fact that some justice has begun to be served for those responsible helps me see a light at the end of the tunnel. Besides, I also hope for a free Venezuela.”

Journalist Carleth Morales first came to Madrid a quarter-century ago when Hugo Chávez was reelected as Venezuela's president in 2000 under a new constitution.

The 54-year-old wanted to study and return home, taking a break of sorts in Madrid as she sensed a political and economic environment that was growing more and more challenging.

“I left with the intention of getting more qualified, of studying, and of returning because I understood that the country was going through a process of adaptation between what we had known before and, well, Chávez and his new policies," Morales said. "But I had no idea that we were going to reach the point we did.”

In 2015, Morales founded an organization of Venezuelan journalists in Spain, which today has hundreds of members.

The morning U.S. forces captured Maduro, Morales said she woke up to a barrage of missed calls from friends and family in Venezuela.

“Of course, we hope to recover a democratic country, a free country, a country where human rights are respected,” Morales said. “But it’s difficult to think that as a Venezuelan when we’ve lived through so many things and suffered so much.”

Morales sees it as unlikely that she would return home, having spent more than two decades in Spain, but she said she hopes her daughters can one day view Venezuela as a viable option.

“I once heard a colleague say, ‘I work for Venezuela so that my children will see it as a life opportunity.’ And I adopted that phrase as my own. So perhaps in a few years it won’t be me who enjoys a democratic Venezuela, but my daughters.”

For two weeks, Verónica Noya has waited for her phone to ring with the news that her husband and brother have been freed.

Noya’s husband, Venezuelan army Capt. Antonio Sequea, was imprisoned in 2020 after having taken part in a military incursion to oust Maduro. She said he remains in solitary confinement in the El Rodeo prison in Caracas. For 20 months, Noya has been unable to communicate with him or her brother, who was also arrested for taking part in the same plot.

“That’s when my nightmare began,” Noya said.

Venezuelan authorities have said hundreds of political prisoners have been released since Maduro's capture, while rights groups have said the real number is a fraction of that. Noya has waited in agony to hear anything about her four relatives, including her husband's mother, who remain imprisoned.

Meanwhile, she has struggled with what to tell her children when they ask about their father's whereabouts. They left Venezuela scrambling and decided to come to Spain because family roots in the country meant that Noya already had a Spanish passport.

Still, she hopes to return to her country.

“I’m Venezuelan above all else,” Noya said. “And I dream of seeing a newly democratic country."

Venezuelan journalist Caleth Morales works in her apartment's kitchen in Madrid, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

David Vallenilla, father of the late David José Vallenilla Luis, sits in his apartment's kitchen in Madrid, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Veronica Noya holds a picture of her husband Antonio Sequea in Madrid, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

David Vallenilla holds a picture of deposed President Nicolas Maduro, blindfolded and handcuffed, during an interview with The Associated Press at his home in Madrid, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Pictures of the late David José Vallenilla Luis are placed in the living room of his father, David José Vallenilla, in Madrid, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)