Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned Washington against making “unacceptable” arms deliveries to Ukraine during a meeting with US counterpart Marco Rubio in Manila yesterday, Moscow said.

Lavrov told the US secretary of state “it was unacceptable to continue supplying weapons to the Kyiv regime”, the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement.

In their meeting held on the sidelines of a summit of Southeast Asian foreign ministers, Moscow’s top diplomat also condemned what he called “a destabilising policy by European countries, which are still seeking to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia”.

The first sit-down between Lavrov and Rubio since September 2025 comes as Washington’s focus has switched from mediating in Ukraine to dealing with war in the Middle East.

The US State Department said in a brief statement that the Rubio and Lavrov -- who made no statements to the press ahead of their meeting -- had discussed the “US-Russia relationship and the need to end the Russia-Ukraine war”.

Lavrov, according to Moscow’s statement, reiterated that the Russian side was ready for a “political-diplomatic resolution to the conflict”.

Meanwhile, a Russian strike on the Ukrainian city of Pavlograd yesterday killed three people, as Kyiv’s counter-strikes on Russia and Moscow-annexed Crimea killed four others, including a three-year-old.

Civilian deaths in the more than four-year war have spiked this summer, with the United Nations saying last month was the deadliest since the first year of Russia’s invasion in 2022. Diplomatic talks to end fighting are at a deadlock.

“Three people were killed,” said Oleksandr Ganzha, the governor of Dnipropetrovsk region. “Nineteen people were wounded... Among the casualties is a two-year-old girl,” he later added, saying all the wounded were in hospital.

Pavlograd, which lies in east-central Ukraine and had a pre-war population of some 100,000 people, has come under Russian attack throughout the conflict.

Shipowners have temporarily suspended vessel arrivals at Ukraine’s Black Sea ports for agricultural exports after a recent surge in Russian attacks on ports and merchant shipping, the country’s agriculture minister said.

Ukraine has lost about a third of its capacity to export grain via the Black Sea ports due to Russian missile and drone attacks, traders and analysts said.