Author: AFP

Russian chief of staff Valery Gerasimov visited troops fighting in east Ukraine as Russian forces advance in the area, the defence ministry said Saturday. “General Valery Gerasimov … visited a command post of the ‘South’ group of troops in the zone of the special military operation,” the Russian term for its campaign in Ukraine, the ministry said in a statement.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is “not ready” to sign a deal that would give the United States preferential access to his country’s rare earth minerals, a Ukrainian source told AFP. US President Donald Trump wants Ukraine to give US companies access as compensation for the tens of billions of dollars of aid delivered under his predecessor Joe Biden. Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser on Friday predicted that Zelensky would sign the deal soon, but the contours of the proposed agreement have not been made public. “In the form in which the draft is now, the president is not ready…

Hamas accused Israel on Saturday of disseminating “baseless lies” regarding a mother and her two children who had died in Gaza captivity, after Israel said the Bibas family were killed by militants. “The false allegations that the criminal (Israeli) occupation is disseminating about the death of the Bibas children at the hands of their captors are merely baseless lies and fabrications,” Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said in a statement. The Palestinian resistance group has long said an Israeli air strike killed Shiri Bibas and her infant sons, Kfir and Ariel, early in the war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday praised the United Kingdom for showing “leadership” on the war with Russia, after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged his “ironclad support” for Kyiv in a phone call. “I spoke with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom,” Zelensky said in his evening address. “We have coordinated our positions and our diplomacy. We appreciate that the UK is committed to maintaining leadership in protecting life and just normalcy.”

Iran’s foreign ministry said Saturday that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will visit Tehran in the coming days to meet his Iranian counterpart and discuss “regional and international developments”. “The visit … will be carried out within the framework of ongoing consultations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation on bilateral relations and regional and international developments,” Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said, according to a statement by the ministry.

An 86-year-old Missouri man who pleaded guilty to shooting a Black teenager who rang his doorbell by mistake has died ahead of his sentencing, prosecutors said Wednesday. Andrew Lester, who is white, pleaded guilty on Friday to felony assault for the shooting of Ralph Yarl, who was 16 years old at the time. Yarl recovered from his wounds and is now attending a university in Texas. Lester had been scheduled to be sentenced on March 7 but Zachary Thompson, the prosecuting attorney for Clay County, said he had died. “While the legal proceedings have now concluded, we acknowledge that Mr…

Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday called for a strong relationship between Kyiv and Washington, amid rising tensions with US President Donald Trump. “Strong Ukraine-US relations benefit the entire world,” Zelensky said after holding what he called a “productive meeting” with US envoy Keith Kellogg on the “battlefield situation, how to return our prisoners of war, and effective security guarantees”.

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa called on Thursday for “multilateralism” and international law in solving world crises as G20 foreign ministers met amid rising tensions over various conflicts and trade disputes. “It is critical that the principles of the UN Charter, multilateralism and international law should remain at the centre of all our endeavours. It should be the glue that keeps us together,” Ramaphosa said in an address to open the meeting. The G20, a grouping of 19 countries as well as the European Union and the African Union, is deeply divided on key issues from Russia’s war in Ukraine…

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Thursday accused Donald Trump of wanting to “become an emperor of the world”, as he called on the US president to respect other countries’ sovereignty. Post-World War II democracy has been an example of the best governance of the last 70 years, said Lula in an interview with a local radio station, “but the way (Trump) acts, he is trying to become an emperor of the world”.

Ousted South Korean leader Yoon Suk Yeol will become the country’s first sitting head of state to stand trial in a criminal case as hearings open Thursday on his bid to impose martial law. The 64-year-old former prosecutor has been behind bars since he was arrested last month on charges of insurrection, for which he could be sentenced to life in prison or face the death penalty. Criminal proceedings kick off at 10 am (0100 GMT) Thursday at Seoul’s Central District Court. Prosecutors have accused the suspended president of being the “ringleader of an insurrection”. But his lawyers insist the…