Headline

Trump Tells Russia To ‘Get Moving’ On Ukraine As US Envoy Meets Putin

Published

7 months ago

April 12, 2025

US envoy Steve Witkoff wrapped up his latest talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Friday, after President Donald Trump urged his Russian counterpart to move quicker to end what he said was the country’s “senseless war” with Ukraine.

Trump has been pressing Moscow and Kyiv to agree on a ceasefire deal but has failed to extract any major concessions from the Kremlin, despite repeated negotiations between Russian and US officials.

The US leader told NBC News last month he was “pissed off” with his Russian counterpart, while top US diplomat Marco Rubio warned last week that Washington would not tolerate “endless negotiations” with Russia over the conflict.

“Russia has to get moving,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, adding that the conflict, which began in February 2022 when Moscow sent troops into Ukraine, was “senseless” and “should have never happened”.

Kyiv and several of its Western allies suspect Russia of stalling the talks on purpose.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of dragging Beijing into the conflict and on Friday claimed that hundreds of Chinese nationals were fighting at the Ukraine front line alongside Russian troops.

Trump’s post came just before Witkoff’s meeting with Putin at the presidential library in Saint Petersburg, which state news agencies said lasted four and a half hours.

The Kremlin said afterwards only that the meeting had taken place and “focused on various aspects of the Ukrainian settlement”, without elaborating.

Spokesman Dmitry Peskov had said earlier that he expected no diplomatic “breakthroughs” from the talks — Witkoff’s third with Putin since February.

He also said “maybe” to a question about whether a possible meeting between Putin and Trump would be discussed.

– Kellogg’s ‘zones of responsibility’ –

After their last meeting, Witkoff — a long-time Trump ally who worked with the US president in real estate — said Putin was a “great leader” and “not a bad guy”.

The envoy’s praise of a president long seen by the United States as an autocratic adversary highlights the dramatic turn in Washington’s approach to dealings with the Kremlin since Trump took office for a second term.

Despite a flurry of diplomacy, there has been little meaningful progress on Trump’s main aim of achieving a ceasefire.

Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, suggested British and French troops could adopt zones of control in the country, in an interview with The Times published Saturday.

Kellogg suggested they could have areas of responsibility west of the Dnipro river, as part of a “reassurance force”, with a demilitarised zone separating them from Russian-occupied areas in the east.

“You could almost make it look like what happened with Berlin after World War II,” he told the British newspaper.

“I was speaking of a post-ceasefire resiliency force in support of Ukraine’s sovereignty. In discussions of partitioning, I was referencing areas or zones of responsibility for an allied force (without US troops),” he said later on X.

– ‘Using Chinese lives’ –

Kyiv said this week that its forces had captured two Chinese nationals in the eastern Donetsk region fighting for Moscow.

The Kremlin denied the claim, while Beijing warned parties to the conflict against making “irresponsible remarks”.

“As of now, we have information that at least several hundred Chinese nationals are fighting as part of Russia’s occupation forces,” Zelensky told military chiefs from allied countries in Brussels.

“This means Russia is clearly trying to prolong the war — even by using Chinese lives.”

The Ukrainian leader also called out Russia for having refused a complete ceasefire proposed by the United States with Ukrainian approval a month ago.

Putin last month rejected a full and unconditional pause in the conflict, while the Kremlin has made a truce in the Black Sea conditional on the West lifting certain sanctions.

– Question of trust –

Trump has pushed for a broad rapprochement with Moscow, which has yielded some results.

On Thursday, Russia freed dual US-Russian ballet dancer Ksenia Karelina from prison in exchange for suspected tech smuggler Arthur Petrov, the second exchange between Moscow and Washington in less than two months.

Karelina, arrested last January while visiting Russia to see family, was serving a 12-year sentence on “treason” charges after she donated the equivalent of around $50 to a pro-Ukraine charity.

The head of Moscow’s foreign intelligence service, Sergei Naryshkin, said Friday that Russia would discuss more prisoner swaps in the future.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the swaps helped build confidence between the two sides, which deteriorated under former US president Joe Biden’s administration.

“It helps build trust, which is much needed, but it will take a long time to finally restore it,” he told reporters.

AFP

Headline

Sweden To Charge 18-year-old Over IS Terror Plot

Published

6 hours ago

November 4, 2025

Editor

The Swedish Prosecution Authority said Tuesday it intended to charge an 18-year-old man for planning a terrorist act in Stockholm on behalf of the Islamic State group.

According to prosecutors, the planning took place between August 2024 and February 2025.

“We believe the purpose of the preparations was to induce serious fear in the population, in the name of the Islamic State. The criminal act could have seriously harmed Sweden,” Deputy Chief Prosecutor Henrik Olin said in a statement.

Prosecutors did not provide details of the plan but said the man was also suspected of “preparation for serious crimes under the act on flammable and explosive goods and training for terrorism”.

Prosecutors said they planned to file the charges on Thursday and that a press conference would be held the same day.

The young man will also be charged alongside a 17-year-old boy with attempted murder in Germany in August 2024.

Both of them are also suspected of “participation in a terrorist organisation,” according to the statement.

The man was arrested in Stockholm on February 11 and has been in custody since then.

AFP

Headline

US Shutdown Hits 35 Days, Tying Longest In History

Published

6 hours ago

November 4, 2025

Editor

The US government shutdown entered its 35th day on Tuesday, matching a record set during President Donald Trump’s first term, as lawmakers voiced hope over progress behind the scenes to end the dispute.

The federal closure appears almost certain to become the longest in history, with no breakthroughs expected before it goes into its sixth week at midnight — although there were fragile signs in Congress that an off-ramp is closer than ever.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune set the buoyant mood music on Monday when he told reporters he felt “optimistic” that newly energised talks between warring Republicans and Democrats could end in a deal before next week.

The government has been grinding to a halt since Congress failed to pass a bill to keep federal departments and agencies funded past the end of the last financial year on September 30.

“I’ll be honest with you, I don’t think any of us expected that it would drag on this long. We didn’t believe, we couldn’t have imagined,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told a news conference arranged to mark the six-week milestone.

“It’s now tied for the longest shutdown in US history. And we didn’t think we’d have to come in here every single day — day after day after day — and repeat the obvious facts to the American people and to put on display every day what is happening here.”

Some 1.4 million federal workers — from air traffic controllers to park wardens — have been placed on enforced leave without pay or made to work for nothing, while vital welfare programs and even paychecks for active-duty troops are under threat.

Both sides remain dug in over the main sticking point — health care spending.

Democrats say they will only provide votes to end the funding lapse after a deal has been struck to extend expiring insurance subsidies that make health care affordable for millions of Americans.

But Republicans insist they will only address health care once Democrats have voted to switch the lights back on in Washington.

While both sides’ leadership have shown little appetite for compromise, there have been signs of life on the back benches, with a handful of moderate Democrats working to find an escape hatch.

A separate bipartisan group of four centrist House members unveiled a compromise framework Monday for lowering health insurance costs.

Democrats believe that millions of Americans seeing skyrocketing premiums as they enroll onto health insurance programs for next year will pressure Republicans into seeking compromise.

But Trump has held firm on refusing to negotiate, telling CBS News in an interview broadcast Sunday that he would “not be extorted.”

The president has sought to apply his own pressure to force Democrats to cave, by threatening mass layoffs of federal workers and using the shutdown to target progressive priorities.

Last week his administration threatened to cut off a vital aid programme that helps 42 million Americans pay for groceries for the first time in its more than 60-year history, before the move was blocked in court.

And the president has returned to a familiar playbook of demanding the elimination of the Senate filibuster — the 60-vote threshold for passing most legislation — so Republicans can pass government funding themselves.

“Terminate the filibuster now, end the ridiculous shutdown immediately, and then, most importantly, pass every wonderful Republican policy that we have dreamt of for years, but never gotten,” Trump fulminated in an all-caps social media post.

Preserving the filibuster — which senators say protects the voice of the minority — is one of the few issues on which Republicans are willing to defy Trump and radical reform seems highly unlikely.

“The votes aren’t there,” Thune told reporters on Monday.

AFP

Headline

China Backs Nigeria, Warns Against Foreign Interference

Published

6 hours ago

November 4, 2025

Editor

China has urged the international community to respect Nigeria’s sovereignty following a US threat of military action.

The Chinese government reiterated its support for President Bola Tinubu’s administration, commending the government for guiding the country along a development path tailored to its national conditions.

According to a report sourced from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, People’s Republic of China’s website, the Spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, Mao Ning, stated this at a press briefing on Tuesday in Beijing.

She said, “As Nigeria’s strategic partner, China opposes any attempt by foreign powers to use religion or human rights as a pretext to meddle in another country’s internal affairs or impose sanctions and military threats.”

Recently, the US threatened Nigeria with possible military action due to the alleged persecution of Christians in the country.

The United States President, Donald Trump, had threatened to deploy military forces in Nigeria if the alleged genocide against Christians is not stopped in the country.