A long-awaited report has strongly criticised the FBI's handling of its investigation into alleged ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign.
In a 306-page report, special counsel John Durham said the agency's inquiry had lacked "analytical rigor".
He concluded the FBI had not possessed "actual evidence" of collusion between Donald Trump's campaign and Russia before launching an inquiry.
The FBI said it had addressed the issues highlighted in the report.
In the report, Mr Durham - who was appointed by then-Attorney General William Barr in 2019 - accused the FBI of acting on "raw, unanalysed and uncorroborated intelligence".
Among the investigative mistakes it made were repeated instances of "confirmation bias", in which it ignored information that undercut the initial premise of the investigation.
The report noted significant differences in the way the FBI had handled the Trump investigation when compared with other potentially sensitive inquiries, such as those involving his 2016 electoral rival Hillary Clinton.
Mr Durham noted that Mrs Clinton and others had received "defensive briefings" from the FBI aimed at "those who may be the targets of nefarious activities by foreign powers". Mr Trump had not.
"The Department [of Justice] and the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law," the report concluded.
In a statement, the FBI said it had "already implemented dozens of corrective actions".
"Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented," the statement added.
Getty Images
The FBI investigation into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, which was carried out by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, led to dozens of criminal charges against Trump campaign staff and associates for crimes including computer hacking and financial crimes.
It did not, however, find that the Trump campaign and Russia had conspired together to influence the election.
Writing on his social media platform, Truth Social, Mr Trump said the Durham report showed that the "American public was scammed". He cited the report's conclusion that there had not been enough evidence to warrant a full investigation by the FBI. Mr Trump has long claimed that members of the "Deep State" are targeting him unfairly.
Last year, Mr Trump said he believed the Durham report would provide evidence of "really bad, evil, unlawful and unconstitutional" activities and "reveal corruption at a level never before seen in our country".
The Durham report falls short of the blockbuster revelations and prosecutions that some Trump allies hoped for from the inquiry.
The four-year investigation has resulted in three prosecutions. They include an FBI attorney who pleaded guilty to altering evidence while applying for permission to eavesdrop on a former Trump campaign official.
Two other people were acquitted on charges of lying to the FBI.
The former president cited some court filings by the Durham team as part of a lawsuit he filed against Mrs Clinton and several other Democrats and government officials, alleging that they had plotted to undermine his 2016 presidential bid by spreading rumours about his campaign's ties to Russia.
A judge dismissed the lawsuit as frivolous in January and ordered Mr Trump to pay nearly a million dollars in penalties.
Mr Durham and his investigation are not likely to disappear from the national headlines in the immediate future.
Shortly after news that the report would be publicly released, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan announced that he would be calling the US former attorney to testify before Congress about his work.
Thai voters have rejected the military-backed government as two opposition parties appear to be set for coalition talks.
Initial results show the Move Forward and Pheu Thai parties surging ahead of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha.
The election has been described as a turning point for Thailand which has experienced military coups in its recent years.
Mr Prayuth led the last coup in 2014 and sought another term in office.
But he has faced strong election challenges from Move Forward and Pheu Thai which are two anti-military parties.
Move Forward is led by former tech executive Pita Limjaroenrat, while Paetongtarn Shinawatra - the daughter of former PM Thaksin Shinawatra - is the Pheu Thai candidate.
With 97% of the vote counted, a calculation by Reuters news agency based on data from the Election Commission suggested Move Forward would win the most seats followed by Pheu Thai in second place.
Mr Pita described the night's results as "sensational" and promised his party would remain opposed to military-backed parties when forming a government.
The party would seek talks with Pheu Thai and a coalition deal was "definitely on the cards", he told reporters.
Pheu Thai leader Paetongtarn Shinawatra congratulated Move Forward on their success and said "we can work together".
"We are ready to talk to Move Forward, but we are waiting for the official result," she added.
But despite their success, Move Forward and Pheu Thai may still face a battle to take power.
The new prime minister will be chosen jointly by the 500 elected MPs and 250 senate members appointed by Mr Prayuth's junta - stacking the deck in the army's favour.
The senators have always voted in favour of the current, military-aligned government, and never in favour of the opposition.
Getty Images
Vote counting got underway after polls closed at 17:00 (10:00 GMT) on Sunday - nine hours after voting began at 95,000 polling stations across Thailand.
About 50 million people were expected to cast their ballots to elect 500 members of the lower house of parliament - and some two million people had voted early.
The Election Commission is not expected to officially confirm the final number of seats won by each party for several weeks.
But it marks a significant shift in public opinion in Thailand as voters of all ages appear to have been willing to take a chance on relatively untested and idealistic young politicians.
Weeks later, a pro-military party formed the government and named Mr Prayuth as its PM candidate in a process that the opposition said was unfair.
The following year a controversial court ruling dissolved Future Forward, the previous iteration of Move Forward, which had performed strongly in the election thanks to the passionate support of younger voters.
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A close presidential election in Turkey – a vote which could end President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s 20 years in power – increasingly appeared to be heading for a run-off as a tense count continued on Sunday night.
Both Mr Erdogan’s party and the opposition, led by Kemal Kilicdaroglu, tried to claim the momentum for their candidates as it seemed neither candidate would cross the 50 per cent threshold required for an outright win. Both Mr Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the People’s Republican Party (CHP) clashed over coverage of the ballot count, a sign of how fractious this contest has become.
Expectations ahead of the presidential vote, taking place alongside parliamentary elections, was that it would be close. Mr Erdogan is fighting for his political life against an emboldened and unusually broad-based six-party opposition united behind Mr Kilicdaroglu. A run-off between the pair would take place on 28 May.
Counts provided by pro-government and pro-opposition sources differed markedly as midnight approached. Results collated by the state-owned Anadolu news agency showed Mr Erdogan holding 49.9 per cent of the vote compared to 44.4 per cent to Mr Kilicdaroglu, with 91 per cent of votes counted. Another poll by the opposition Anka news agency showed that with 95 per cent of ballots counted, Mr Erdogan had 49 per cent and Mr Kilicdaroglu 45 per cent. Another count by Mr Kilicdaroglu’s CHP Party, showed him with 47.2 per cent of the vote compared to Mr Erdogan’s 46.8 per cent.
Opposition leaders accused the state news agency, Anadolu, of displaying a distorted count that favoured Mr Erdogan. The Istanbul mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, and Ankara’s mayor, Mansur Yavas, both publicly criticised the vote-counting process and urged voters to dismiss them. “We are leading,” Mr Kilicdaroglu tweeted. Mr Erdogan then hit back on Twitter, saying: “While the election was held in such a positive and democratic atmosphere and the vote counting is still going on, trying to announce results hastily means usurping the national will.”
Turkey’s election authority, the Supreme Electoral Board, said it was providing numbers to competing political parties “instantly” but would not make the official results public until the count was completed and finalised. By 0100 local time [GMT 2200] it had officially logged 69 per cent of the votes cast.
Ultra-nationalist presidential candidate Sinan Ogan, who results indicated would probably receive about 5 per cent of the vote, reduced the chances of either Mr Erdogan or Mr Kilicdaroglu gaining a clear win.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu addresses supporters in Ankara on Monday
The verbal sparring between the candidates during the count followed a generally calm and orderly day of voting, at the end of a campaign season punctuated by violence and divisive rhetoric. Long lines formed at schools converted into polling stations. Turks normally vote for national elections in very high numbers, and today’s turnout looked even higher than previous ballots.
Voters cited concerns about the economy, which has been on a downward spiral for years, as the primary issue driving their votes, as well as the slow government response to the devastating earthquake in southeast Turkey that killed 50,000 people in February. But there are also concerns about the authoritarian drift of the country under Mr Erdogan, whose party has dominated the country’s politics for more than two decades. It has allowed Mr Erdogan to shape the country in his image, with crackdowns on dissent a regular feature of his years in power.
“Without democracy and freedom, you can’t have any economy,” said Nil Adula, a 74-year-old earlier in the day, as he prepared to vote in central İstanbul. “The most important thing is that the justice system is working properly.”
Voters were also electing legislators to fill Turkey’s 600-seat parliament, which has lost much of its legislative power under Mr Erdogan’s executive presidency. Mr Kilicdaroglu and the six-party opposition coalition he leads are aiming to win both the presidency and a majority in parliament, promising to enact sweeping reforms that would return the country to a parliamentary democracy.
Idris Sinan, 18, voted for the opposition in his first-ever election
(Yusuf Sayman for The Independent)
The elections are being intently watched by Western nations, the Middle East, Nato and Moscow, as the united opposition try to dislodge a leader who has concentrated nearly all state powers in his hands and worked to wield more influence on the world stage.
Mr Erdogan, along with the United Nations, helped mediate a deal with Ukraine and Russia that allowed Ukrainian grain to reach the rest of the world from Black Sea ports despite Russia’s war in Ukraine. The agreement is set to expire in days, and Turkey hosted talks last week to keep it alive.
However, Mr Erdogan also has held up Sweden’s quest to join Nato and has been a difficult partner for the West at times, not being afraid to talk tough or dig his heels in. As one of President Vladimir Putin’s most important allies, a defeat would unnerve the Kremlin, while the president has also clashed with a number of Middle East leaders.
The outcome was always likely to hinge on slivers of swing voters that include ethnic Kurds – who have voted for either the AKP or leftist parties traditionally – Turkish nationalists, and at least 5 million first-time voters whose allegiances remain unclear.
Mr Erdogan struggled to connect with Generation Z voters ahead of the vote, who appeared unmoved by his appeals to conservative and Islamic values.
“I see voting as a tool to change and influence the government from within,” said Idris Sinan, an 18-year-old high school student and first-time voter, as he emerged from a polling station.
Opposition party official Cigdem Gulduval helps organize meals for poll workers
(Yusuf Sayman/ The Independent)
“We have been ruled by this party, the AKP, for 20 years... our country [has] become poor and more lawless,” he added.
Mr Erdogan also alienated ethnic Kurds, who used to vote for him in large numbers but – in a historic shift – embraced the secular centre-left candidacy of Mr Kilicdaroglu. “The election for us is about democracy and cultural and political rights,” said Mehmet Uzum, a 52-year-old Kurdish businessman in the Sultanbeyli district of Istanbul.
He said that Mr Erdogan and the AKP became toxic to Kurds since they partnered with the nationalist National Movement Party (MHP).
“We had a lot of friends who were AKP but then they switched to CHP because of the economy and all the religious talk,” said his daughter, Gizem, 22.
Voters emerge from a balloting station in the Istanbul district of Fatih
(Yusuf Sayman/ The Independent)
But many voters said they were convinced by Mr Erdogan’s nationalist stance that the president said would prioritise Turkey’s security. That also Included attempts to associate the opposition with the West and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), an outlawed separatist group that the US and EU label a terrorist organisation.
“We are not for America. We are not for the PKK,” said Faruk Baba, a 67-year-old clothing shop proprietor in the Fatih district of Istanbul.
When reminded that the Taliban of Afghanistan had endorsed Mr Erdogan he replied: “The Taliban are Muslims. We are Muslims.”
Among AKP supporters, many cited conspiracy theories spouted by Mr Erdogan in previous weeks that the opposition are a proxy for Western powers.
Voters wait in line to vote in presidential and parliamentary elections
(Yusuf Sayman/The Independent)
“Erdogan has stood strong for us,” Ziya Uztok, a 73-year-old in Uskudar. “Kilicdaroglu is an American project.”
“I accept Kilicdaroglu as a fellow citizen, but I would not vote for him,” he said.
However, the country’s faltering economy threatened the steadfast support conservative Turks have given Mr Erdogan for years. In a bid to secure support from citizens hit hard by inflation, the president has increased wages and pensions and subsidised electricity and gas bills, while showcasing Turkey's homegrown defence and infrastructure projects.
On a side street in Fatih, upbeat CHP organisers amassed meals to hand their volunteers throughout the district.
“Before there were certain neighbourhoods that we couldn’t go to campaign,” said Cigdem Gulduval, a local opposition party official.
“Now they’re more receptive. They’re all paying high prices at the same butchers as we are. They’re all paying the same gas bills. They’ll have to wait three or four months to get an appointment at the doctors.”
The gap between the two leading candidates continues to narrow as more big-city votes – generally favouring opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu – come in, but Turkish news agencies are still reporting different numbers.
They agree on one thing, however: a runoff now looks increasingly likely.
The state news agency, Anadolu, is reporting that more than 90% of votes have been counted. It has President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on 49.8% – crucially, below the 50% needed to avoid a runoff – and Kılıçdaroğlu on 44.4%.
The privately owned Anka agency is reporting that 94% of votes have so far been counted. It has Erdoğan on 49.02% and Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu on 45.2%.
In either case, as things are at the moment, the presidential election is heading for a second round on 28 May.
The mayor of Ankara, a senior member of Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s opposition CHP party, has said he expects his candidate to finish ahead of President Erdoğan.
“There is a short time left to get all the results,” Mansur Yavas told a joint press conference in Istanbul with the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu.
“When we see them, we will see our leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu finishing this round as the front-runner.” But Yavas said there was now “a high possibility” that the race would go to a second round.
The electoral council, meanwhile, which will announce the final result, has said a total of 69% of votes – cast both at home and abroad – have been entered into its system.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who is registered to vote in Istanbul, has made a surprise appearance there, mingling with supporters, before getting into his car and heading to the capital, Ankara to await the official results.
As we wait for the last few million votes in the presidential election to be counted, we shouldn’t forget today’s other poll: the election for Turkey’s 600-seat parliament.
At present over 80% of ballot boxes have been opened and Erdoğan’s People’s Alliance (a coalition of right-leaning and right-wing parties, including his AKP’s coalition partner MHP) appear on track to become the largest block. No surprises there.
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s opposition Nation Alliance, led by his CHP (with the right-wing Iyi Party) is the second largest, and appears to have bagged around a third of the votes (35.6% of the total, according the state news agency Anadolu).
Erdoğan’s former economy tsar, Ali Babacan, and former foreign policy guru, Ahmet Davutoglu, are both running on the CHP ticket (despite having established their own parties in the run up to the election) and don’t appear to have significantly impacted the Nation Alliance’s share of the vote.
But the CHP did well on along Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, in Thrace and in the major cities of Izmir, Istanbul and the capital Ankara.
The results also indicate a strong showing for nationalist parties. MHP was real the surprise performer tonight. At the present count, the MHP and its splinter party, Iyi, have about 20% of the vote between them, though they represent opposing camps in this race.
The Yesil Sol party, a successor to the HDP, has swept up the country’s south-eastern region with strong showings in Diyarbakir, Hakkari and Sirnak (over 60%). Most of this region also voted strongly in favour of opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
Most people will have their eyes on the results from the presidential elections, which increasingly look like they’ll go to a second round.
But the Turkish parliament remains an important institution and will have a major role in the coming government, either as a spoiler for a president who doesn’t control it, or a boon for a president whose political allies are represented in it.
Despite the powerful executive presidency Erdoğan introduced in 2018, the parliament has the power to declare war, ratify treaties, pass budgets, amend the constitution and scrutinise the activities of the government.
Members, officials and supporters of both candidates’ parties are waiting for confirmation of the results in a presidential race that now looks likely to head to a second-round runoff in two weeks’ time.
It could be some time before we get an official result.
Ahmet Yener, the head of Turkey’s supreme election council, – which will announce the final figures – has said it has entered just over 47% of domestic votes and 12.6% of votes cast abroad into its system.
In short statement outside the council’s headquarters, Yener also rejected opposition allegations that it was deliberately delaying publishing some results.
The gap between the two leading candidates continues to narrow as more big-city votes – generally favouring opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu – come in, but Turkish news agencies are still reporting different numbers.
They agree on one thing, however: a runoff now looks increasingly likely.
The state news agency, Anadolu, is reporting that more than 90% of votes have been counted. It has President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on 49.8% – crucially, below the 50% needed to avoid a runoff – and Kılıçdaroğlu on 44.4%.
The privately owned Anka agency is reporting that 94% of votes have so far been counted. It has Erdoğan on 49.02% and Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu on 45.2%.
In either case, as things are at the moment, the presidential election is heading for a second round on 28 May.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has tweeted to criticise opposition attempts to declare the result ahead of time, and – as his rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu did earlier – to ask party and election officials to remain vigilant with ballot boxes.
“While the election was held in such a positive and democratic atmosphere and the vote counting is still going on, trying to announce results hastily amounts to a usurpation of the national will,” he said.
“I ask all of officials and my colleagues to stay at the ballot boxes, no matter what, until the results are officially finalised. I congratulate all citizens who voted in the name of democracy and are taking part in the election work.”
Ultranationalist Sinan Oğan, currently credited with about 5% of the vote and a potential kingmaker in the event of a runoff, has said he thinks the election will probably go to a second round on 28 May.
“We see a high probability that the elections will go to the second round” since neither main candidate is on course to win 50% of the vote, he said, adding that “Turkish nationalists and Kemalists are key to this election”.
Opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has posted another tweet suggesting that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s vote share, which began the evening at 60%, has now fallen to below 50%.
He urged election officials to stay alert and not abandon their posts during the rest of the evening.
“The fiction, which started with 60%, has now dropped below 50%,” Kılıçdaroğlu said. “Ballot observers and election board officials should never leave their places. We will not sleep tonight, my people. I warn the YSK [election commission], you have to provide data from the provinces.”
We have just arrived at the Istanbul headquarters of the largest opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), after a journey across Istanbul where the streets were remarkably quiet.
Earlier today, people were outside enjoying a day of spring weather and cheerfully walking to the polls no matter who their chosen candidate was, but as the results started to come in, the streets fell silent – it felt like basically everyone was at home glued to their television sets.
If they did venture out, they were frantically following on their phones. The mood at the CHP is predictably tense – everyone here is quietly glued to any screen showing the results.
As the vote count nears 80% of votes counted – at least, according to the state news agency Anadolu (which has been the source of plenty of controversy so far this evening) – the race is looking increasingly close and we’re starting to see two parallel narratives emerge.
According to the opposition, they are ahead. According to Erdoğan and the spokesperson of his Justice and Development (AKP) party as well as the state news agency, the opposition is falling behind. The opposition claim this is due to the order in which the ballots have been counted, and that the government has slow-walked counting in opposition-majority areas.
As the results started to trickle in a couple of hours ago, leading opposition MPs held multiple press conferences to drive home the message that they are winning, at least according to their data. Now we are seeing Erdoğan and the AKP pushing back, although we are likely to hear more from the CHP as this long night continues.
Ali İhsan Yavuz, an AKP MP in charge of election coordination, just told reporters outside their headquarters in Ankara that “there is no panic and there is no need to blame the institutions”. He added: “We are ahead in both the parliamentary and the presidential results.”
Reuters is reporting sources in both President Erdoğan’s ruling AKP party and his opposition rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s CHP as saying that based on results so far, neither is likely to clear the 50% threshold needed for an outright win.
With 75% of votes counted, the state-owned Anadolu news agency has Erdoğan on 50.76% and Kılıçdaroğlu on 43.43%. The private Anka agency also has Erdoğan ahead, but by a much narrower margin: roughly 48% to 47%.
The steady performance of the third candidate, nationalist Sinan Oğan, unchanged at just over 5.3%, makes a second round – scheduled for a fortnight’s time on 28 May – more likely, several analysts have said.
Ankara’s mayor, Mansur Yavaş, from Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s centre-left CHP party, has said that based on data from party workers monitoring the count, the retired civil servant is ahead.
Turkish news agencies are reporting that President Erdoğan has a lead of between two and eight percentage points with about two-thirds of votes counted.
Yavaş insisted Kılıçdaroğlu was still in a position to win the election outright on Sunday night by securing more than 50% of the vote. Turkey’s supreme election council is expected to announce the official result later.
Ömer Çelik, a spokesperson for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling AKP party, has accused opposition leaders of “an attempt to assassinate the national will” by claiming the Anadolu state news agency is distorting the results (see 18.03 BST).
“Even before the results are finalised, all of a sudden the opposition alliance’s spokesperson and mayors appear on TV. As usual, they began to say that Anadolu Agency is manipulating data,” Çelik said.
More than half the votes have now been counted in Turkey’s presidential election and the gap between President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his chief rival, opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, continues to narrow.
According to the Anadolu state news agency, which the opposition has accused of deliberately releasing results to show the outgoing president ahead, the count with nearly 53% of votes tallied stands at:
Erdoğan : 51.8%
Kılıçdaroğlu : 42.3%
Oğan: 5.3%
The privately owned Anka news agency, however, has Kılıçdaroğlu already ahead with slighty less of the vote tallied. His CHP party has said their candidate is leading according to its data, and is on course to clear the 50% threshold to avoid a runoff and be declared president on Sunday night.
Supporters of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his ruling AKP party have gathered to cheer outside its Istanbul headquarters as early results show the incumbent president ahead.
Analysts have said the gap between Erdoğan and his rival, united opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, should continue to narrow as the evening wears on.
Opposition vice-presidential candidates Mansur Yavaş and Ekrem İmamoğlu have just given a press conference in the Turkish capital, Ankara, lashing out at the state news agency Anadolu for what they said was broadcasting distorted results.
The opposition accuse Anadolu of broadcasting counted AKP votes first in a warped picture of the overall result, and say they are in the lead.
The largest opposition party, the Republican People’s party (CHP) is running a parallel count by stationing their own observers at every ballot box and photographing every ballot as it is counted.
“According to our results, with 23.87% of the votes counted, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu is ahead,” said Yavaş, who is also Ankara mayor, adding: “This data comes from all over Turkey and I can say that we are ahead in Istanbul and Ankara.”
İmamoğlu, whose election as mayor of Istanbul in 2019 was a close race that was ultimately disputed by Erdoğan and re-run before he was declared the winner a second time, also directed his anger at Anadolu.
“Unfortunately, we are still experiencing the scene we see in every election. Another case of Anadolu Agency [...] AA’s reputation is below zero,” he said.
Presidential candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu simply tweeted: “We are ahead.”
With more than a third (38.3%) of votes counted, according to the Anadolu state news agency (AA), the gap between the two leading candidates is shrinking.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan now stands on 52.7%, his centre-left opposition rival Kamel Kılıçdaroğlu on 41.4%, and the nationalist Oğan on 5.4%.
The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) has said early results are looking positive for Kılıçdaroğlu.
Faik Öztrak, the party’s spokesperson, said in a televised speech:
According to the data we received so far, we see the table very positively. When the number of ballot boxes opened reaches a meaningful figure, we will start to share the number of votes.
The Guardian’s video team were on the ground in Turkey last week and produced a fascinating film about the importance of the Kurdish vote in these elections.
Kurdish voters, many of them anti-Erdoğan, account for about 10-15% of the country’s electorate and their ballots could prove crucial. You can watch the film here:
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Ukraine claims its soldiers have retaken a further one square kilometre area around Bakhmut as fierce fighting continues in the city. On Sunday morning, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in Berlin for talks a day after Germany pledged billions of euros worth of new weapons to Ukraine.
Ukraine’s defence ministry is claiming its soldiers have regained one square kilometre of territory around Bakhmut, as President Zelenskyy arrives in Berlin to shore up overseas support for the long-anticipated counteroffensive.
Ukraine’s Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar says Ukrainian troops are advancing “dynamically” in the suburbs of Bakhmut.
But Russia also claims Wagner assault units “liberated a neighbourhood in the north-western part” of the city.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in Berlin early Sunday for talks with German leaders about further arms deliveries to help his country fend off the Russian invasion and rebuild what's been destroyed by more than a year of devastating conflict.
A Luftwaffe jet flew Zelenskyy to the German capital from Rome, where he held talks on Saturday with Pope Francis and Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni.
On the eve of his arrival - which took place amid tight security - the German government announced a new package of military aid for Ukraine with aid worth more than €2.7bn, including tanks, anti-aircraft systems and ammunition.
"Already in Berlin. Weapons. Powerful package. Air defence. Reconstruction. EU. NATO. Security," Zelenskyy tweeted Sunday, in an apparent reference to the key priorities of his trip.
After initially hesitating to provide Ukraine with lethal weapons, Germany has become one of the biggest suppliers of arms to Ukraine, including Leopard 1 and 2 battle tanks, and the sophisticated IRIS-T SLM air-defence system. Modern Western hardware is considered crucial if Ukraine is to succeed in its planned counteroffensive against Russian troops.
After meeting Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other senior officials at the Chancellery, the two leaders are expected to fly to the western city of Aachen for Zelenskyy to receive the International Charlemagne Prize awarded to him and the people of Ukraine.
Organisers say the award recognises their resistance against Russia's invasion is a defence "not just of the sovereignty of their country and the life of its citizens, but also of Europe and European values."
