Ukrainian drones hit a historic museum in Sevastopol in Russia-annexed Crimea, local authorities said today, as they reduced the number of nighttime trains in the face of intensifying air attacks.

The museum commemorates the 1853-1856 Crimea War between the Russian Empire and a coalition that ⁠included the Ottoman Empire. Russia was defeated in that war.

Sevastopol’s Russian-installed governor, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said on Telegram the museum’s roof was hit. He did not provide details about the damage or whether there were any casualties.

“The enemy will pay for this sacrilege!” Razvozhayev said ⁠in his post early on Wednesday.

Elsewhere in Crimea, authorities cut train schedules for night hours, the peninsula’s Russian-installed governor Sergei Aksyonov said on Telegram, after a drone attack this week injured a train driver and killed his assistant.

The Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, ​annexed ⁠by Russia from Ukraine in 2014, ‌is facing a fuel shortage following recent Ukraine drone attacks just as the holiday season starts.

The Kremlin has claimed that the European Union was far from ready to act as a mediator in any ‌Ukraine peace ‌process and ‌appeared ⁠to be more focused ⁠on continuing the war.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov was speaking to journalists when he was ⁠asked about ‌the ‌possibility of the ‌EU stepping in as ‌a mediator at a time US-led negotiations have taken a backseat due to the war in Iran.

“First of ‌all, starting mediation efforts by putting ⁠forward certain ⁠conditions to Russia is likely illogical and wrong. And, of course, this is unacceptable to us,” Peskov said.

His remarks came after Volodymyr Zelensky returned from a meeting in London with the leaders of Britain, France and Germany who said they were ready to support ceasefire talks and engage with Russian president Vladimir Putin, if required.

The EU has proposed a 21st package of sanctions against Russia for its war in Ukraine, heavily targeting the country’s banks and crypto networks as well as drone ⁠production, oil traders and refiners, EU chief diplomat Kaja Kallas said.

The new package will propose listing 170 individuals and entities. These include close to 90 banks – the biggest in one go – and would take the total number of listed banks to over 100, or more than half of Russia’s 213 internationally connected lenders.

The banks will come under the full weight of EU sanctions including asset freezes, travel and transaction bans.

“We intend to deal a heavy blow to Russia’s financial sector, imposing assets freezes on close to 90 banks and additional transactions bans on over 30 banks in Russia and other third countries,” Kallas said in a post on X.

An EU diplomatic source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the aim was to weaken Russia’s financial system and incentivise Moscow to negotiate a peace deal with Ukraine.

The package will be presented to EU ⁠ambassadors today for negotiations. Sanctions require unanimity to be adopted.

Western sanctions already heavily target Russia’s banking system and its major banks were disconnected in 2022 from SWIFT, a secure global financial payment instructions system.

Russian companies now use a broad network of smaller lenders to evade sanctions and continue trading.

A Russian general handling the ammunition supplies for the Russian army has been killed in an attack in the Moscow region, officials said.

Damir Davydov, the head of the Russian defence ministry’s missile and artillery wing, has been named in reports of the car explosion in Balashikha, reports said.

The explosion took place around 5.30am on Tuesday, when a BMW X3 exploded near Koldunova Street in Balashikha’s Aviatorov neighbourhood, with reports saying the driver was pulling out of a parking space.

Witnesses reached the driver, Davydov, while he was still alive but he died shortly after at the scene.

Officials also found a second car bomb and blew it up in south-west Moscow.

The Russian federal Investigative Committee and the prosecutor’s office for the Moscow region confirmed the explosion but did not name the victim.

Ukraine has not issued a comment on his death so far, though Kyiv has claimed responsibility for several attacks on Russian generals since the start of Vladimir Putin’s war.

The city of Novokuibyshevsk in Russia’s Samara region was under drone attack in the early hours today, regional governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said on Telegram.

Russian state ‌oil company ‌Rosneft runs the Novokuibyshevsk ⁠oil refinery in the area. Fedorishchev said air space in ‌Samara was ​closed, ‌without ⁠providing details.

While Britain has an embarrassingly underpowered military plagued by incompetence, the Ukrainians have the biggest army of any European nation:

Falling debris from a Ukrainian drone triggered a fire in a fuel tank at a civilian site, the governor of Russia’s southern Rostov region said early on Wednesday.

Yuri Slyusar, writing on Telegram, said the drone attack was still going on in the region’s Millerovsky district, just over the Ukrainian border. He said there was no indication so far of any casualties.

Ukraine has signed a drone deal with Latvia, Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday as he met with Latvian Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs.

“These are concrete things to strengthen our joint defense and co-production, and, importantly, this also means Ukraine’s expertise and experience helping to strengthen our partners,” the Ukrainian president said in a post on X.

He gave no details of what the deal entailed.

Kulbergs said the agreement would give Latvia technological know-how and co-production opportunities.

“We need to protect our skies, and nobody knows how to do that better than Ukraine,” he told a joint press conference with Zelensky and other leaders attending the summit, adding that drones were responsible for the vast majority of deaths of Russian troops in the Ukraine war.

Bulgaria’s newly appointed defence minister, Dimitar Stoyanov, said on Tuesday his country would no longer provide arms to Ukraine and urged Moscow and Kyiv to sit down at the negotiating table to end the war, the BTA news agency reported.

Bulgaria, a NATO and European Union member state that holds a strategic position on the Black Sea, sent Ukraine anti-tank missiles, armoured vehicles, mortars, anti-aircraft guns and howitzers in 2024 and 2025, as well as infantry weapons, after a change in policy course.

In 2022 and 2023 it did not officially export weapons and ammunition to Ukraine, but instead exported to mostly European intermediaries, with Bulgarian officials saying they could not control what buyers did with these exports.

“It is not planned for the Bulgarian side to provide more weapons to the Ukrainian army,” Stoyanov said while presenting the priorities of his ministry.