Author: AFP

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Saturday said that the war between Ukraine and Russia would only truly end with peace if Ukrainian sovereignty is secured. “There will only be peace if Ukraine’s sovereignty is secured,” he told the Munich Security Conference. “A dictated peace will therefore never find our support.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday it would be “dangerous” if U.S. President Donald Trump met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin before meeting him. Zelenskiy made the remark while addressing the Munich Security Conference, where he echoed his earlier statements that Kyiv wants to achieve peace in its war with Russia this year.

Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched through central London to the United States embassy on Saturday to protest against President Donald Trump’s proposal that the US “take over” Gaza. Waving Palestinian flags and placards saying “Hands off Gaza,” several thousand people walked from Whitehall in Westminster over the River Thames to the embassy in Nine Elms. Earlier this month, Trump stunned the world when he suggested the US could redevelop the war-ravaged Gaza Strip into the “Riviera of the Middle East”. His proposal envisages resettling Palestinians elsewhere, with no plan for them ever to return. Other western leaders and the Arab…

A 14-year-old boy died and four other people were injured in a knife attack in southern Austria on Saturday, police said, adding they have arrested a 23-year-old Syrian asylum seeker. “A man randomly attacked passers-by with a knife,” police spokesman Rainer Dionisio told AFP of the incident in the city of Villach. “One victim, a 14-year-old boy, died.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday insisted that no decisions should be taken on ending Russia’s war without Kyiv and Europe as the United States pushes to open talks with Moscow. “No decisions about Ukraine without Ukraine, no decisions about Europe without Europe. Europe must have a seat at the table,” Zelensky told the Munich Security Conference.

The widow of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny warned Friday that there was “no point trying to negotiate” with Russian President Vladimir Putin, amid talks on ending the Ukraine war. “Even if you decided to negotiate with Putin, just remember he will lie,” Yulia Navalnaya told the Munich Security Conference two days before the first anniversary of Navalny’s death. “He will betray,” she said about Putin. “He will change the rules at the last moment and force you to play his game.” “There are only two possible outcomes for any deal with Putin. If he remains in power, he will find…

Argentina recorded a monthly inflation rate of 2.2 percent in January, the lowest in 4.5 years, the INDEC national statistics agency said Thursday, in a boost for budget-slashing President Javier Milei. Inflation, the perennial bugbear of South America’s second-biggest economy, was down from 2.7 percent in December, it said, and January was the fourth straight month in which prices rose by less than 3 percent. Year-on-year, January inflation came in at 84.5 percent, said the INDEC — the first time in two years it was under 100 percent. Self-declared “anarcho-capitalist” Milei came to power wielding a chainsaw as a symbol…

Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday warned not to trust Vladimir Putin’s claims to want peace, a day after both leaders held separate talks with US President Donald Trump over the three-year conflict. In a post on social media following a call with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Zelensky said he had “warned world leaders against trusting Putin’s claims of readiness to end the war”.

Ukraine conceded Thursday that it was holding barely a third of the territory in Russia’s western Kursk region that it initially captured during a shock offensive last year — land Kyiv hopes it can exchange with Russia. “Today we have our own security zone on the territory of the Russian Federation, along the border of Ukraine, holding around 500 square kilometres (190 square miles),” Ukraine commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky wrote on social media — down from previous claims that it controlled almost 1,400 square kilometres.

Russian attacks killed at least three people in eastern and southern Ukraine on Thursday while Moscow’s advances towards the industrial Dnipropetrovsk region sent residents fleeing, officials said. AFP journalists in the frontline town of Kramatorsk in the war-battered Donetsk region saw rescue workers at the scene of a Russian attack that officials said had killed one person and wounded five more. A 46-year-old man died from his wounds and a 16-year-old girl was among those wounded, the regional governor said on social media, adding that Russian forces had launched two glide bombs against the town. AFP saw a cloud of…