Author: Daily Sabah With Reuters
With his Gaza home destroyed in Israel’s military offensive, Shaban Shaqaleh was intending to take his family on a break to Egypt once the Hamas-Israel ceasefire is firmly in place. He changed his mind after Donald Trump announced plans to resettle Gaza’s Palestinian residents and redevelop the enclave – plans which the U.S. president said on Monday would not give them the right to return. The Tel Al-Hawa neighbourhood in Gaza City, where dozens of newly built multi-storey buildings once stood, is now largely deserted. There is no running water or electricity and, like most buildings there, Shaqaleh’s home is…
Russia on Monday said that Chinese President Xi Jinping has accepted the invitation to attend commemorations of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. “Chinese President Xi Jinping has accepted an invitation to take part in the celebrations on May 9 in Moscow on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War,” Igor Morgulov, Russia’s ambassador to China, told state TV channel Rossiya-24. Nazi Germany’s surrender during what Russians call the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45 is marked as “Victory Day” in Russia. Morgulov said that Xi also invited Russian President Vladimir…
The Kremlin said on Monday it could neither confirm nor deny whether or not Russian President Vladimir Putin had spoken to U.S. President Donald Trump by phone about finding a way to stop the war in Ukraine. Mystery surrounds the first direct contact between the leaders of the two largest nuclear powers since Russian began its full-scale war in Ukraine in February 2022, with both Washington and Moscow offering partial answers and hints. Trump, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, said he believed the United States was making progress, but declined to provide details about any communications…
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who oversees U.S. relations and arms control, said on Monday that all of President Vladimir Putin’s conditions for ending the conflict in Ukraine must be met before any settlement is possible. On June 14, Putin set out his terms for an immediate end to the war: Ukraine must drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw its troops from the entirety of the territory of four Ukrainian regions claimed and mostly controlled by Russia. Ryabkov said that the sooner the United States and the West understood that all of Putin’s conditions needed to be met, the…
U.S. President Donald Trump has said he will impose tariffs on imports of steel and aluminium and raise rates to match those of other countries in the coming week. The United States and the European Union have the world’s largest commercial relationship, trading 1.5 trillion euros ($1.55 trillion) of goods and services in 2023. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said last week the EU would “respond firmly” if targeted unfairly or arbitrarily. Here is the EU’s possible course of action. RETALIATORY TARIFFS In 2018, after Trump imposed tariffs on 6.4 billion euros of EU steel and aluminium imports,…
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday he could “neither confirm nor deny” reports of a conversation between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump, Russian state news agency TASS reported.
Russian troops repelled three Ukrainian counterattacks in the Kursk region overnight, the Russian Defence Ministry said on Sunday, quoted by state news agency TASS. The Russian Defence Ministry has said that Ukrainian troops attempted a counterattack in the west of Kursk Region near the villages of Ulanok and Cherkasskaya Konopelka on Thursday but were repelled by Russian troops. Reuters was unable to obtain independent confirmation of the reported fighting.
Russian troops took control of the settlement of Orikhovo-Vasylivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, the TASS state-run news agency reported on Sunday, citing the Defence Ministry. Reuters could not independently confirm the battlefield report.
Ukraine’s military said on Sunday that it shot down 70 drones out of the 151 that Russia launched to attack the country overnight. Ukraine’s air force said that 74 drones did not reach their targets, likely due to electronic warfare, and two were still in the air, it said in a statement. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that over this week, Russia had launched 1,260 aerial bombs, almost 750 drones, and more than 10 missiles of various types against Ukraine. Zelenskiy said that Russian military production relies on sanctions evasion schemes, high oil prices and an insufficient number of Ukrainian…
Billionaire Elon Musk said that he was not interested in purchasing TikTok, the popular short-video app that the United States has been trying to ban over national security concerns with its Chinese owner ByteDance. Musk’s comments, made in late January, were released online Saturday by The WELT Group, a part of the German media company Axel Springer SE, which hosted a summit, where the Tesla chief joined the conference via video. “I have not put in a bid for TikTok,” Musk said a week after U.S. President Donald Trump said he was open to Musk buying the ByteDance-owned app if…