Russia wants “quick peace” in Ukraine and London is at the “head of those resisting” it, the Russian ambassador to the UK has told Sky News.

In an interview on The World With Yalda Hakim, Andrei Kelin accused the UK, France and other European nations of not wanting to end the war in Ukraine.

“We are prepared to negotiate and to talk,” he said. “We have our position. If we can strike a negotiated settlement… we need a very serious approach to that and a very serious agreement about all of that – and about security in Europe.”

US President Donald Trump held a surprise phone call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin last month, shocking America’s European allies. He went on to call Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator” and relations between the pair were left in tatters after a meeting in the Oval Office descended into a shouting match.

Days later, the US leader suspended military aid to Ukraine, though there were signs the relationship between the two leaders appeared to be on the mend following the contentious White House meeting last week, with Mr Trump saying he “appreciated” a letter from Mr Zelenskyy saying Kyiv was ready to sign a minerals agreement with Washington “at any time”.

In his interview with Sky News’ Yalda Hakim, Mr Kelin said he was “not surprised” the US has changed its position on Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began in 2022, claiming Mr Trump “knows the history of the conflict”.

“He knows history and is very different from European leaders,” he added.

No doubt Russia is welcoming shift in world order

Yalda Hakim

Lead world news presenter

@SkyYaldaHakim

I’ve interviewed the Russian ambassador to the UK, Andrei Kelin, on a number of occasions, at times the conversation has been tense and heated.

But today, I found a diplomat full of confidence and cautiously optimistic.

The optics of course have suddenly changed in Russia’s favour since Donald Trump was elected.

I asked him if Russia couldn’t believe its luck. “I would not exaggerate this too much,” he quipped.

Mr Kelin also “categorically” ruled out European troops on the ground and said the flurry of diplomatic activity and summits over the course of the past few weeks is not because Europeans want to talk to Moscow but because they want to present something to Mr Trump.

He appeared to relish the split the world is witnessing in transatlantic relations.

Of course the ambassador remained cagey about the conversations that have taken place between President Trump and Vladimir Putin.

There is no doubt however that Russia is welcoming what Mr Kelin says is a shift in the world order.

Peace deal ‘should recognise Russian advances’

The Russian ambassador said Moscow had told Washington it believed its territorial advances in Ukraine “should be recognised” as part of any peace deal.

“What we will need is a new Ukraine as a neutral, non-nuclear state,” he said. “The territorial situation should be recognised. These territories have been included in our constitution and we will continue to push that all forces of the Ukrainian government will leave these territories.”

Asked if he thought the Americans would agree to give occupied Ukrainian land to Russia, he said: “I don’t think we have discussed it seriously. [From] what I have read, the Americans actually understand the reality.”

Read more:
What you need to know from a monumental week in Ukraine
US ‘destroying’ world order by trying to meet Russia ‘halfway’

Moscow rules out NATO peacekeepers in Ukraine

He said Russia “categorically ruled out” the prospect of NATO peacekeepers on the ground in Ukraine – a proposal made by UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron – saying “they have no rules of engagement” and so would just be “sitting in cities”.

“It’s senseless” and “not for reality,” Mr Kelin added.

He branded the temporary ceasefire raised by Mr Zelenskyy “a crazy idea”, and said: “We will never accept it and they perfectly are aware of that.

“We will only accept the final version, when we are going to sign it. Until then things are very shaky.”

He added: “We’re trying to find a resolution on the battlefield, until the US administration suggest something constructive.”

The violent misogyny promoted by the likes of Andrew Tate fuelled a former soldier’s rape of his ex-girlfriend and the murder of her along with her mother and sister, the prosecution argued in court.

Warning: This article contains distressing details.

Kyle Clifford, 26, had been searching YouTube for the 38-year-old controversial influencer’s podcast the day before he carried out the four-hour attack, it was said in legal argument ahead of his trial.

It can only now be reported because Judge Mr Justice Bennathan excluded the evidence from the trial, saying that it was of “limited relevance” and too prejudicial.

But he added that anyone who takes a close interest in Tate, a “poster boy for misogynists”, could also be seen as a misogynist.

Clifford tricked his way inside the family home in Bushey, Hertfordshire, on 9 July last year on the pretext of returning a bag of 25-year-old Louise Hunt’s clothes 13 days after she dumped him.

He made sure her father, the BBC and Sky Sports racing commentator John Hunt, wasn’t home before stabbing her mother Carol Hunt, 61, to death with a 10-inch butchering knife.

Clifford laid in wait for more than an hour until Louise returned from work at the dog grooming business she ran from a pod in the garden, tied her arms and ankles with duct tape, gagged her and raped her.

He held her captive for hours before shooting her through the chest with a crossbow, using the same weapon to kill her sister Hannah Hunt, a 28-year-old beauty therapist, when she returned home minutes later.

Clifford pleaded guilty to three counts of murder, false imprisonment, and two counts of possession of offensive weapons but denied raping Louise – claiming the DNA found on her body was from 16 days earlier.

He has now been found guilty of the charge by a jury at Cambridge Crown Court.

Interest in Andrew Tate

Clifford had been searching YouTube for Tate’s podcast the day before the murders and is believed to have watched up to 10 of the influencer’s videos.

One of Louise Hunt’s friends had previously asked why he was watching one of Tate’s videos involving drugged animals and he said: “Because it’s funny,” it was said during legal argument before the trial.

Prosecutors argued the “violent misogyny promoted by Tate” was the same kind that “fuelled both the murders” and the rape” committed by Clifford.

Alison Morgan KC said his interest in the “widely known misogynist” helped to explain why he became so “incandescent with rage” after she ended the relationship.

In throwing out the evidence, the judge said that there was likely to be ongoing reporting about Tate after he and his brother Tristan, 36, flew to the US from Romania on Thursday after travel restrictions imposed on the pair were lifted.

A criminal investigation has since been launched into the British-American pair – who are already subject to an ongoing probe into alleged people trafficking in Romania – in Florida.

They are also due to be extradited to the UK after that case to face separate accusations of rape and trafficking dating back to between 2012 and 2015.

The brothers deny any wrongdoing.

‘Misogynistic and sexualised’ comments

Clifford had recently been sacked from his job at a catering supply firm in Waltham Cross.

It also emerged in legal argument that he was said to have made “misogynistic and sexualised comments” about female colleagues in the workplace.

He hid two relationships with women he knew through work from Louise during their 18-month relationship, which started after they met on a dating website.

It can now be reported Clifford went on dating apps Hinge and Tinder moments after Louise ended their 18-month relationship in a message on 26 June last year.

Clifford then started planning his attack, buying a length of rope just two days later, and on 30 June he researched crossbows before searching for a pornographic video of a Wandsworth prison officer having sex with an inmate.

Brother serving life sentence for murder

He also discussed crossbows with his brother Bradley Clifford, who he would visit in prison every other week, where he is serving a life sentence for murdering a teenager in 2017.

Bradley Clifford drunkenly mowed down 19-year-old Jahshua Francis, who was riding a moped, and his pillion passenger Sobhan Khan, 18, after his “prized” red Mustang was damaged.

Police said Kyle Clifford had plenty of opportunities to back out of the 9 July attack but was “absolutely cold-blooded and calculated in his actions”.

In legal argument not before the jury, Ms Morgan said “highly sexualised violence played a part in what took place” and that Clifford was trying to “misogynistically control Louise Hunt for one more time”.

‘Sense of entitlement’

She described him as a man whose identity was based on “whether he has the right number of women and the admiration of women” and “doesn’t like to be told, ‘No,’ by women”.

Ms Morgan said his “sense of entitlement” and the “spite and the sleight” of being dumped fuelled the sexualised violence.

After the murders, CCTV footage shows Clifford calmly leaving the Hunt family home in the quiet cul-de-sac of Ashlyn Close carrying a backpack and holding the crossbow hidden under a blanket.

He drove to a cemetery near his home in Enfield, north London, where he shot himself in the chest with the weapon as armed police descended the next day following a manhunt.

A makeshift noose was found in a nearby tree, but police and prosecutors don’t believe he made a genuine attempt to end his life, although he was left paralysed from the chest down.

The trial was held in Cambridge to accommodate him as a wheelchair user, but he refused to attend.

‘Underwhelming individual’

His victims’ friends and family, including John Hunt – who has one surviving daughter Amy – sat in the public gallery to hear the harrowing details of the case.

Detective Chief Inspector Nick Gardner described Clifford, who served in the army from 2019 for around three years, as an “entirely underwhelming individual” with a failed military career who couldn’t hold down a job.

He worked as a private security guard for a few months in 2023, then was sacked from his job at Reynolds shortly before the murders.

Louise had told a friend Clifford had a “nasty temper”, while friends and family members described him as “odd” or “disrespectful, rude and arrogant”.

Clifford came to the attention of police in London in relation to alleged offences of possession of cannabis, assault without injury and theft when he was a juvenile between 2012 and 2013, but they didn’t result in charges or convictions.

Police say there were no obvious red flags that he would go on to commit such a crime.