A first tanker carrying Russian diesel to the United States under a new import agreement has set sail, the Kremlin said Friday, two weeks after President Donald Trump said he struck a deal with President Vladimir Putin despite Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The first oil tanker has sailed off to customers, and regular supplies will continue,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said without elaborating.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said earlier this week that the first shipment would amount to 40,000 tons of diesel, according to Russia’s Interfax news agency.

Marine intelligence firm Kpler said the vessel was signaling it was headed to New York to arrive Nov. 7 and would be the first Russian diesel delivery to the United States since July 2023.

The abrupt reversal of U.S. sanctions policy on Russia over its invasion of its neighbor was seen as an attempt by Trump to address high fuel prices ahead of the midterm elections.

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The leader of an activist group behind pro-Palestine protests in the UK met with two individuals later sanctioned over their links to Iran, The Telegraph can reveal.

In 2014, Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of anti-war organisation Code Pink, was in contact with men later identified by US officials as facilitators for the Islamic Republic’s foreign intelligence. They were sanctioned by the US treasury five years later.

An intelligence source claimed Ms Benjamin had been viewed by Iran as an “asset” to the regime by pushing “Iran’s influence and narratives” in both the US and UK.

Code Pink opposes the war against Iran and sanctions on the regime, organising major rallies and lobbying Congress.

Its British arm has been a key organiser of pro-Palestine and anti-Israel demonstrations, including outside Whitehall and at UK military bases.

Ms Benjamin is believed to have most recently visited the UK in June. She delivered a talk in which she professed her support for Palestine Action, a proscribed terror organisation.

Russia prides itself on its digital advances — from an extensive e-commerce services sector to ambitious plans for developing artificial intelligence.

But now, some of the key data centers at the heart of its technical prowess have been knocked out by Ukrainian drone attacks in the 4 1/2-year-old full-scale invasion, suffering damage that could take a long time to repair.

Ukraine this month hit three main data centers belonging to tech giant Yandex, one for Russia’s biggest bank, Sberbank, and one for social media platform VKontakte, the country’s equivalent to Facebook.

While Yandex, Sberbank and VKontakte are coy about the damage, people and businesses across Russia have reported widespread interruptions to cloud services. Banking, e-commerce, geolocation and ride-hailing services, as well as Alisa, Yandex’s virtual assistant, and multimodal AI chatbots all have suffered lasting disruptions.

The fallout even spread to Russia’s judicial system, reportedly forcing arbitration courts to cancel or postpone sessions and cutting database access.

Most experts predict repairing the damage could take months, if not years. Some warn that Moscow’s aspirations to become a leader in AI development could be significantly set back.

“This effectively sets Russia far behind in the AI race,” said Mikhail Klimarev, head of the Internet Protection Society activist group.

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A possible meeting of the three leaders of China, the United States, and Russia may concern not only the issue of settling the war in Ukraine, but may also amount to a second Yalta, where issues relating to Europe will be decided.

Kyiv has offered to freeze the front line as Trump demanded, yet the pressure keeps landing on Zelenskyy, because Ukraine, wired into American systems, is the easier party to move.

America’s reset with Russia has begun, and nobody waited for the war to end first: a fortnight-long concessions bonanza and yet another round of shuttle diplomacy between Oslo and St Petersburg have delivered deals for Moscow and no breakthrough for Ukraine.  

The order was supposed to run the other way: Moscow stops fighting, then Washington lifts sanctions and talks business. Instead the Treasury has licensed Russian diesel, Donald Trump has waived most of the Graham sanctions act, and his envoy has thanked Vladimir Putin for the fuel. Asked this week why he would meet Putin and Xi Jinping, Trump explained that “Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine.” 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has backed plans for the resumption of talks between Ukrainian, American and Russian negotiators, saying that preparing the ground for a future meeting of national leaders is “very important for everyone.” 

Zelenskyy, who has previously called on Putin to meet him to thrash out a peace deal, emphasized that making progress toward a presidential-level summit should be part of the agenda.