More than 100 leaders, including the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, and the presidents or heads of the EU, South American, Middle East and Asian countries, will gather in Switzerland on Saturday for one of the most ambitious attempts yet to forge a peace plan for Ukraine.
The summit comes as G7 leaders gathering in Italy clinch a new deal for a €50bn loan for Ukraine, securitised through use of the windfall profits from the interest on Russian central bank assets frozen by the EU and other western nations after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The two-day peace conference, which will take place at the luxury Bürgenstock resort outside Lucerne, will discuss Kyiv’s proposed 10-point plan to end the war along with three other themes: the nuclear threat, food security and humanitarian needs in Ukraine.
A joint communique on Sunday is expected to centre on the importance of the UN principles on maintaining and respecting “sovereignty and territorial integrity”.
While this is not seen as advancing peace in itself, it is designed to “reduce the space for any unhelpful initiatives”, say those with knowledge of the conference.
This will be seen as a success for Volodymyr Zelenskiy who is aiming to build international support for his peace plan that includes a full withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine and return to its 1991 post-Soviet borders.
Organisers of the peace summit played down China’s decision not to attend, a move that prompted Zelenskiy to accuse Beijing of helping Moscow undermine the meeting, which China’s foreign ministry denied.
Kyiv had been pushing hard for a Chinese delegation to attend the summit to give the conference further legitimacy and drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing.
There were also hopes that Saudi Arabia may attend after what Zelenskiy described as “productive and energetic” talks with the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman on Wednesday.
Moscow has dismissed the meeting as futile.
China, which has close ties to Russia, said it would not attend because the conference did not meet its requirements, including the participation of Russia.
That dozens of leaders will be in Switzerland at a time when Ukraine is on the back foot militarily, and with talk of war fatigue growing, is an impressive feat, senior US figures said.
“It’s rather remarkable that there’s 100 countries showing up to a peace summit at which the main instigator of that conflict is not participating,” said Max Bergmann, a former US state department official.
“It’s a diplomatic masterstroke,” said Bergmann, who now heads the Europe, Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
William Courtney, a former US diplomat, called the Swiss outreach a “huge success”.
The summit follows several previous gatherings, including one in Saudi Arabia attended by 40 countries including China, which has been trying to enlist support for its own six-point peace plan.
As the summit approaches, China has intensified its outreach through meetings with visiting foreign dignitaries, phone calls and messages to foreign missions on China’s WeChat platform, diplomats told Reuters reporters.
But sources said organisers were not concerned, as there had been “no concretisation” of any Chinese diplomatic manoeuvres, with many global south countries, including Colombia, Chile, Argentina and Ecuador, attending on Saturday.
Others attending include Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines and Japan, while Malaysia and Cambodia, which have close ties to China, are not thought to be going.
Cyril Ramaphosa has been re-elected for a second five-year term as president of South Africa.
The result comes after his African National Congress (ANC) party struck a late coalition deal with the centre-right Democratic Alliance (DA), a former political foe, and smaller parties.
The ANC lost its controlling majority in last month's election after ruling for 30 years since the end of apartheid.
It won just 40% of the vote, forcing Nelson Mandela's legacy liberation movement to negotiate a power-sharing agreement with rival parties.
In a speech to parliament, Mr Ramaphosa, 71, praised the parties for coming together.
He said he was "humbled and honoured" to be elected again as president, which was a "big responsibility".
"This is what we shall do and this is what I am committed to achieve as the president," he added.
More on Cyril Ramaphosa
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Image:ANC supporters dance outside a polling station during the May election. Pic: Reuters
The deal marks the start of a new era in South African politics.
Following two weeks of intensive talks with opposition parties, Sihle Zikalala, a member of the ANC's governing body, said in a post on X on Friday: "Today marks the beginning of a new era where we put our differences aside and unite for the betterment of all South Africans."
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John Steenhuisen, leader of the DA, said he was looking forward to working on "serving the people of the country and building a better future".
"I think we get an opportunity today to write a new chapter for South Africa and that chapter I think we can make the best chapter ever. No party has got a majority. We are required to work together and we're going to do it," he added.
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The newly elected National Assembly - where the ANC holds 159 of its 400 seats, while the DA has 87 - began proceedings with the swearing-in of MPs.
The ANC's main reservation about joining forces with the pro-business DA had been that while the party is liked by investors because of its free-market policies, it is unpopular with its own voters who see it as a defender of the privileged white minority's interests.
The ANC has over the last decade seen its support dwindle amid widespread poverty, a stagnating economy, rising unemployment, and power and water shortages.
The poverty disproportionately affects black people, who make up 80% of the population and have been the core of the ANC's support for years.
Whatever shape the new government takes, it will not be a national unity alliance like the one negotiated by Nelson Mandela in 1994.
At that time the ANC reached across the divide from a position of strength. Now it is doing so from a position of political necessity – having lost its outright majority.
It seems the composition will be similar. Thirty years ago the ANC joined forces with the National Party that ruled during the racist system of apartheid, and the Zulu nationalist Inkhata Freedom Party (IFP).
The IFP has already confirmed it’s on board again.
The white-led Democratic Alliance, which absorbed some members of the National Party, is reportedly also now on board.
But ANC breakaway factions on the left have made it clear they will not join.
“This is not a government of national unity,” says TK Pooe from the Wits School of Governance.
“It’s just a bit of camouflaging so that people don’t have to own that it’s a grand coalition between three parties.”
The prospect of an alliance with the DA, a historic opponent of the ANC, has triggered a backlash within the ruling party.
A senior Hamas official has said that “no one has an idea” how many of the 120 remaining hostages in Gaza are alive. The comment was made in an interview with CNN.
In the interview with CNN, Hamas spokesperson and political bureau member Osama Hamdan said:“I don’t have any idea about that. No one has an idea about this.” CNN reports that he alleged – without providing any evidence – that the Israeli operation to free four hostages on Saturday resulted in the deaths of three others, including a US citizen.
Hamdan was asked about the testimony of a doctor who treated the released hostages, in which it was reported that they had suffered mental and physical abuse and were beaten every hour. He replied:
I believe if they have mental problem, this is because of what Israel have done in Gaza. Because [no one can] handle what Israel is doing, bombing each day, killing civilians, killing women and children … they saw that [with] their own eyes.”
Hamdan said that any deal to release the hostages held in Gaza would need to include guarantees of a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
Hamdan also told CNN that the latest US-backed proposal did not meet Hamas’s demands, with a key concern being the duration of a ceasefire. Hamas wants written guarantees from the US for a permanent ceasefire, plus a withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, in order to sign off on the truce proposal, two Egyptian security sources told Reuters earlier this week.
Hamdan also refuted reports that Hamas’s chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, suggested the deaths of thousands of Palestinians were “necessary sacrifices”. Hamdan told CNN the messages, reported by the Wall Street Journal, “were fake.”
According to CNN’s report, “Hamdan repeatedly deflected any questions about Hamas’s role in the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza” and called the 7 October attacks, which sparked the current war in Gaza, “a reaction against the occupation”.
Television footage on Friday showed damaged buildings and cars as well as brush fires in several locations caused by strikes fired from southern Lebanon into the area around the border town of Kiryat Shemona, Reuters reports. It adds that falling debris amid heatwave conditions have also caused bush fires.
The Israeli military has exchanged regular fire with Hezbollah forces across the border in southern Lebanon ever since the start of the war in Gaza in October.
Neither side has appeared to wish a wider conflict, but there has been growing worry that the steady intensification of strikes could push the situation out of control with the risk of a wider conflict in a region that has already seen direct exchanges between Israel and Iran.
Reuters reports that the latest salvo came after an Israeli strike killed a senior commander from the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, drawing the heaviest bombardment of northern Israel since the start of the war in October last year.
According to Reuters, tens of thousands of residents have been evacuated from their homes on both sides of the border, creating growing pressure to resolve the standoff, but diplomatic efforts have so far proved fruitless.
On Friday, the Israeli military said fighter jets and anti-aircraft systems had intercepted 11 of the 16 drones launched by Hezbollah against Israel in the past 72 hours.
“The Israeli air force is continuing to operate at all times to thwart terrorist activities and protect Israel’s skies from any threat,” it said in a statement.
Israeli strikes hit Gaza on Friday as truce talks with Hamas militants failed to progress and tensions surged on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
According to the news agency, witnesses reported the strikes in various parts of the GazaStrip in the morning, particularly the centre.
AFP reports that at al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah, men gathered over the body of an 11-year-old boy who died during bombardment of nearby Bureij refugee camp.
Israel’s military on Friday said troops continued operations in central Gaza, where warplanes had struck a militant cell and “military structure” in the Zeitun area.
After projectiles were fired from northern Gaza into southern Israel on Thursday night, artillery and aircraft hit the launch sites, the army said.
Fears of a broader Middle East conflict have surged again, with Lebanon-based Hezbollah fighters, who are backed by Iran, launching waves of rockets against Israeli military targets on Wednesday and Thursday.
AFP reports that Hezbollah said the strikes were retaliation for the Israeli killing of one of its commanders.
Sirens sounded on Friday morning in northern Israel, where police said munitions had fallen in the Kiryat Shmona area, with no immediate sign of victims.
Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem has a news report on the CNN interview with a senior Hamas official which we mentioned earlier in the blog (see 08.54 BST):
A senior Hamas official has said the group does not know how many of the Israeli hostages it is holding in Gaza are still alive, as Israeli and Hamas sources set out positions that could undermine the possibility of any imminent ceasefire deal.
The Lebanon-based Hamas official Osama Hamdan said in an interview with CNN that “no one has any idea” how many of the remaining 120 hostages captured on 7 October last year were still alive, amid Israeli estimates that at least a third had died in captivity or were killed when seized.
Reiterating Hamas’s position on the US-supported ceasefire proposal, now backed by a UN security council resolution, he said the group “needed a clear position from Israel to accept the ceasefire, a complete withdrawal from Gaza, and let the Palestinians to determine their future by themselves”. He also referred to the need for reconstruction and the end of the years-long Israeli blockade of Gaza, adding: “[Then] we are ready to talk about a fair deal about the prisoners exchange.”
Hamdan’s comments are the clearest public signalling of Hamas’s position that has remained largely unchanged in recent unsuccessful negotiations: that its agreement is preconditioned on Israel agreeing to end the conflict and withdraw its troops from Gaza.
On their part Israeli officials have said they see Hamas’s response – despite a previous statement that it was “positive” about a proposed ceasefire – as representing a rejection of the proposed deal that would have exchanged hostages for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
While Joe Biden called Hamas the “biggest hang-up” to another truce, there has been little evidence in the days since the security council vote that either the Israeli government or Hamas are interested in compromising on a meaningful ceasefire, with Israeli officials indicating they see any agreement as time limited and allowing Israel to return to its offensive against Hamas.
In the north of the Gaza Strip where Palestinians have been hit hardest by hunger, residents say they are surviving on bread alone due to acute shortages of vegetables, fruit and meat.
Reuters reports that food that can be found in markets is being sold at exorbitant prices: a kilo of green peppers, which cost about a dollar before the war, was priced at 320 shekels or nearly $90. Traders demanded $70 for just a kilo of onions.
Um Mohammed, a mother of six in Gaza City, told the news agency:
We are being starved, the world has forgotten about us.
Except for the flour, bread, we have nothing else, we don’t have anything to eat it with, so we eat bread only.
In social media posts, Palestinians accused unscrupulous merchants of exploiting needs by buying goods at regular prices in Israel and the West Bank and selling them at a huge mark-up. They said traders are taking advantage of a breakdown of policing in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
Fuel shortages are pushing hospitals in Gaza to the “brink of collapse”, with people facing dehydration, disease and starvation, the charity ActionAid has warned.
Dr Mohammad Salha, acting director of al-Awda hospital in northern Gaza, said a lot of services at the hospital were affected by the lack of fuel. In a voice note message, he told ActionAid:
The [World Health Organization] [was] providing fuel and medical supplies and medication.[But] from 22 April [until] now they are not providing because the Israeli [military] refused to [let] the fuel and medical supplies [enter]. So, [for] more than 50 days the hospital is without fuel and medical supplies and the fuel that they are bringing is only [enough] for two weeks.
[As a result] we are decreasing our intervention and we are not running the big generators. We are running the small generators only to recharge the batteries. And [on this] we are doing the surgeries related to life saving.”
Salha said a lot of services, including the hospital’s maternity and gynaecology services, had been affected by the lack of fuel. He described the hospital’s operating theatre as “not running at the full capacity”.
Our laboratory is also affected. We can’t do many analyses, related to orthopedic analysis [and] we are dealing with many patients … 70% of people who [are] affected from the Israeli aggression need orthopedic surgery.”
ActionAid report that only 17 of Gaza’s hospitals are now partially functioning, and the Palestinian ministry of health has warned these could go out of service if they do not receive more fuel immediately. The charity
According to the Palestinian news agency Wafa, medical sources have warned that the only oxygen station in the Gaza City area is at risk of being shut off due to a lack of fuel.
Riham Jafari, advocacy and communications coordinator at ActionAid Palestine said:
Fuel is absolutely crucial to keep the infrastructure needed to sustain life operational in Gaza. It is shocking that hospitals are having to reduce their services due to shortages and that life-saving equipment could be forced out of action.
The trickle of aid currently entering Gaza is nowhere near enough to meet the enormous and ever-growing humanitarian need.
We demand that the Rafah crossing is reopened immediately, that more aid and fuel is permitted to enter Gaza unhindered and that the safety of humanitarian workers distributing aid is guaranteed. We continue to urge all parties to agree to a permanent ceasefire now.”
The G7 leaders warned Iran on Friday about advancing its nuclear enrichment programme and said they would be ready to enforce new measures if Tehran were to transfer ballistic missiles to Russia, according to a draft communique reported by Reuters.
“We urge Tehran to cease and reverse nuclear escalations, and stop the continuing uranium enrichment activities that have no credible civilian justifications,” the statement seen by Reuters said.
Israeli emergency services reported dealing with a string of fires in northern Israel on Friday after dozens of missiles were fired from southern Lebanon into the area around the border town of Kiryat Shemona.
According to Reuters, the military said that warning sirens had sounded in northern Israel and emergency services said teams were searching the area where they reported there was property damage but no casualties.
The UN’s relief agency for Palestinians, the largest aid organisation operating in Gaza, has said Israeli authorities are frequently preventing it from delivering aid and hampering its operations in the territory.
“We are getting very few positive responses to our requests for aid delivery and permits to move around Gaza,” said Tamara Alrifai, the director of external relations for Unrwa.
Alrifai said the organisation maintained contact with Cogat, the Israeli body that oversees the Palestinian territories and coordinates with aid groups, but “this contact doesn’t always bring positive results – as we can see, from the obstructions to delivery, to our ability to receive [aid] trucks”.
Israel has accused some of Unrwa’s employees of taking part in Hamas’s 7 October attack and of being members of terrorist organisations. In April an independent review led by the former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna concluded Israel had yet to provide evidence for the membershipclaim.
Attacks on the UN and Unrwa by Israeli officials predate the current war in Gaza but have intensified since October. Israel officials said in March that they would “no longer work with Unrwa”, although contact continued.Last month the Israeli ambassador to the UN said the entire organisation had become “a terrorist entity”.
A Cogat spokesperson said the organisation had daily communications with Unrwa,before repeating accusations about the organisation’s relationship with Hamas.
Alrifai pointed to a slow response by the Israeli authorities after an attack by settlers on the Unrwa compound in East Jerusalem, and increasing visa restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities on its staff, including the commissioner, Philippe Lazzarini, as evidence that its operations were being hampered.
You can read the full piece by Ruth Michaelson and Kaamil Ahmedhere:
The University of Sydney has ordered students protesting Israel’s war in Gaza to leave an encampment which has been on the campus since April, reports the Australian Associated Press (AAP).
A university spokesperson said on Friday that it had told the encampment’s leadership “we require them to vacate the encampment to allow other students to use the space”.
The spokesperson said in a statement that the front lawns are a shared space and “our shared spaces should be welcoming and inclusive to all members of our community”. The shared space had been taken over by the encapment “to the exclusion of others”, they added.
The order comes after mounting tensions at the prestigious university between students at the pro-Palestine camp and university management.
According to the AAP, the University of Sydney vice-chancellor Mark Scott in May apologised to students and staff who felt unsafe around the encampment but stopped short of ordering them to disband.
Several Australian universities have recently ramped up action against pro-Palestine protesters who refuse to disband encampments with Melbourne’s La Trobe University starting misconduct proceedings against students.
Meanwhile, camps at the University of Melbourne and western Australia’s Curtin University disbanded last month after concessions from management.
The University of Sydney Students’ Representative Council was contacted by the AAP for comment.
Here are some of the latest images on the newswires:
An Israeli court has confirmed and extended for 35 days the government’s shutdown of Qatar-based television news channel Al Jazeera, the justice ministry said on Friday, according to Reuters.
Al Jazeera, which broadcasts in Arabic and English, went off the air in Israel under an initial 45-day order early last month.
Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has had a long-running feud with Al Jazeera that has worsened over recent months.
“The Tel Aviv district court confirmed the communications minister’s instructions to stop Al Jazeera channel broadcasts, close its bureaus in Israel, block access to its websites and seize the equipment,” the justice ministry said.
The order, issued Thursday after a prosecutor’s request for its confirmation and extension, was for an additional 35 days, the ministry said on its website.
Reuters reports that the shutdown does not affect broadcasts from the Israeli-occupied West Bank or the Gaza Strip, from which Al Jazeera still covers Israel’s war with Hamas.
Communications minister Shlomo Karhi reacted in a statement, calling Al Jazeera “a mouthpiece for terrorism in the service of Hamas”.
“For absurd legal reasons, we are forced [to request] its closure in Israel every 45 days. We will continue to do whatever is necessary to cleanse the region of terrorism and incitement” to violence, he added.
In January, Israel said an Al Jazeera staff journalist and a freelancer killed in an airstrike in Gaza were “terror operatives”.
The following month, another journalist with the channel who was injured in a separate strike was accused of being a “deputy company commander” with Hamas.
Al Jazeera denied the allegations.
Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) had called for a reversal of the ban. The UN, US and Germany also opposed it.
Israeli tanks rolled into the western part of Rafah on Thursday as the city came under intense helicopter, drone and artillery fire in what residents described as one of the worst bombardments of the area so far.
The assault on Rafah has driven out more than a million Palestinians who had been sheltering there, forcing them into areas with little or no access to food, water or shelter. The UN has warned that more than a million people are expected to “face death and starvation by the middle of July”.
Joe Biden had warned he would cut off the supply of US weapons if Israel went ahead with an attack on Rafah, in part because of the lack of an adequate humanitarian plan for all the civilians who would be displaced, but the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his war cabinet launched the attack anyway over a month ago.
The Biden administration has yet to slow the flow of arms in response, arguing that Israel had yet to carry out “major operations”.
People living in Rafah described the level of fighting as devastating, however.
“There was very intense fire from warplanes, Apaches [helicopters] and quadcopters, in addition to Israeli artillery and military battleships, all of which were striking the area west of Rafah,” a resident told Agence France-Presse.
Hamas said its fighters were battling Israeli troops on the streets of the city, which lies on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.
You can read the full report by Julian Borger here:
A senior Hamas official has said that “no one has an idea” how many of the 120 remaining hostages in Gaza are alive. The comment was made in an interview with CNN.
In the interview with CNN, Hamas spokesperson and political bureau member Osama Hamdan said:“I don’t have any idea about that. No one has an idea about this.” CNN reports that he alleged – without providing any evidence – that the Israeli operation to free four hostages on Saturday resulted in the deaths of three others, including a US citizen.
Hamdan was asked about the testimony of a doctor who treated the released hostages, in which it was reported that they had suffered mental and physical abuse and were beaten every hour. He replied:
I believe if they have mental problem, this is because of what Israel have done in Gaza. Because [no one can] handle what Israel is doing, bombing each day, killing civilians, killing women and children … they saw that [with] their own eyes.”
Hamdan said that any deal to release the hostages held in Gaza would need to include guarantees of a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
Hamdan also told CNN that the latest US-backed proposal did not meet Hamas’s demands, with a key concern being the duration of a ceasefire. Hamas wants written guarantees from the US for a permanent ceasefire, plus a withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, in order to sign off on the truce proposal, two Egyptian security sources told Reuters earlier this week.
Hamdan also refuted reports that Hamas’s chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, suggested the deaths of thousands of Palestinians were “necessary sacrifices”. Hamdan told CNN the messages, reported by the Wall Street Journal, “were fake.”
According to CNN’s report, “Hamdan repeatedly deflected any questions about Hamas’s role in the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza” and called the 7 October attacks, which sparked the current war in Gaza, “a reaction against the occupation”.
It has gone 10.30am in Gaza and Tel Aviv. This is our latest live blog on the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis.
A senior Hamas official has told CNN that “no one has an idea” how many of the 120 remaining hostages in Gaza are alive. He added that any deal to release them would need to include guarantees of a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
In the interview with CNN, Hamas spokesperson and political bureau member Osama Hamdan said the latest US-backed proposal did not meet Hamas’s demands, with a key concern being the duration of a ceasefire.
Hamdan also refuted reports that Hamas’s chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, suggested the deaths of thousands of Palestinians were “necessary sacrifices”. Hamdan told CNN the messages “were fake.”
According to CNN’s report, “Hamdan repeatedly deflected any questions about Hamas’s role in the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza” and called the 7 October attacks, which sparked the current war in Gaza, “a reaction against the occupation.”
More on that in a moment but first, here is a summary of the latest developments:
Israeli tanks rolled into the western part of Rafah on Thursday as the city came under intense helicopter, drone and artillery fire in what residents described as one of the worst bombardments of the area so far. The assault on Rafah has driven out more than a million Palestinians who had been sheltering there, forcing them into areas with little or no access to food, water or shelter. The UN has warned that more than a million people are expected to “face death and starvation by the middle of July”.
Missiles fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebels struck the Palau-flagged Verbena cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden on Thursday, sparking a fire and severely injuring one of her crew, US Central Command said.
The UN’s relief agency for Palestinians, the largest aid organisation operating in Gaza, has said Israeli authorities are frequently preventing it from delivering aid and hampering its operations in the territory. “We are getting very few positive responses to our requests for aid delivery and permits to move around Gaza,” said Tamara Alrifai, the director of external relations for Unrwa.
G7 Leaders, who are meeting at the summit in Italy, have released a draft statement on the Israel-Gaza war. Part of the draft statement reads: “We are concerned about the consequences of the ongoing ground operations in Rafah on the civilian population and the possibility of a large-scale military offensive that would have further disastrous consequences on civilians. We call on the government of Israel to refrain from such an offensive, in line with its obligations under international law.”
At the G7 summit, US president, Joe Biden, called Hamas “the biggest hang-up so far” to a deal on a Gaza truce and hostage release. “I’ve laid out an approach that has been endorsed by the UN security council, by the G7, by the Israelis, and the biggest hang-up so far is Hamas refusing to sign on even though they have submitted something similar,” he told reporters. “Whether or not that comes to fruition remains to be seen,” he said.
Support for armed struggle as the best means to end Israeli occupation and achieve statehood rose among Palestinians while backing for the militant group Hamas also increased slightly in the last three months, according to an opinion poll. The poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) showed support for armed struggle climbed by 8 percentage points to 54% of those surveyed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has launched its biggest salvo of rockets at Israel since the war in Gaza began in retaliation for the killing of a senior field commander, bringing the two sides closer to all-out conflict. An Israeli airstrike on the village of Jouaiya in southern Lebanon late on Tuesday night killed three Hezbollah operatives as well as Taleb Abdallah, the most senior commander to be killed since hostilities began eight months ago.
The US, France and Israel have agreed to work together to step up efforts to push forward a roadmap presented by Paris earlier this year to defuse tensions between Hezbollah and Israel, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday.
The heads of six UN agencies and three international humanitarian organisations issued a joint appeal Thursday to Yemen’s Houthi rebels for the immediate release of 17 members of their staff who were recently detained along with many others also being held by the Iranian-backed group. The Houthis said Monday they had arrested members of an “American-Israeli spy network,” days after detaining the staffers from the U.N. and aid organisations.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has denounced an agreement by Western countries to provide Ukraine with a loan package using frozen Russian assets and pledged retaliation.
Speaking at a meeting on Friday with officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Putin said leaders in the West were trying to come up with “some kind of legal basis” for the asset freezes, “but despite all the trickery, theft is still theft and will not go unpunished”.
He added that Moscow’s treatment was proof that “anyone” could be next and punished by an asset freeze.
Putin’s comments came after the Group of Seven (G7) members agreed at a summit in Italy on an outline deal for a $50bn loan package for Ukraine to help it acquire weapons and rebuild destroyed infrastructure using interest from Russian sovereign assets frozen after Putin sent his troops into the neighbouring country in February 2022.
The G7 comprises Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. The European Union also participates in all discussions.
Following the deal’s announcement at the annual summit in Puglia (Apulia), US President Joe Biden said the frozen assets agreement was a “significant outcome” and “another reminder to Putin that we’re not backing down”.
The details of the agreement are expected to be finalised in the coming weeks, and the money is expected to reach Ukraine by the end of the year.
However, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova dismissed the deal on Friday, saying it was “just pieces of paper”.
“These agreements are about nothing. They do not have legal force,” Zakharova was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying.
‘Point of no return’
In separate comments, Putin said the world had reached a “point of no return”, adding that the collapse of the “Western model” of global security required a new and more stable system in its place.
“Obviously, we are witnessing the collapse of the Euro-Atlantic security system. Today it simply does not exist, it needs to be essentially created anew,” Putin said.
“All this requires us, together with our partners, with all interested countries, and there are many of them, to work out our own options for ensuring security in Eurasia, proposing them then for wider international discussion.”
The Russian president added that his country was open to discussing a new security system with everyone, including the US-led NATO military alliance.
“It is important to proceed from the fact that the future security architecture is open to all Eurasian countries that wish to take part in its creation. ‘To all’ means European and NATO countries too, of course,” he said.
“We live on the same continent. No matter what happens, you cannot change the geography, we will have to coexist and work together one way or another.”
Ukraine war
Putin also laid out a series of conditions to end the war in Ukraine, including the country dropping its NATO ambitions and the withdrawal of its forces from the four Ukrainian regions that Russia claimed in a referendum that the West and Kyiv called “illegal”.
“The conditions are very simple,” the Russian president said ahead a Ukraine peace summit starting on Saturday in Switzerland that is due to be attended by representatives of more than 90 nations and organisations.
“As soon as they declare in Kyiv that they are ready for such a decision and begin a real withdrawal of troops from these regions [including Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia], and also officially announce the abandonment of their plans to join NATO – on our side, immediately, literally at the same minute, an order will follow to cease fire and begin negotiations,” he said.
“I repeat, we will do this immediately. Naturally, we will simultaneously guarantee the unhindered and safe withdrawal of Ukrainian units and formations.”
“It’s all a complete sham. Therefore – once again – get rid of illusions and stop taking seriously the ‘proposals of Russia’ that are offensive to common sense,” Podolyak wrote on social media.
Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy will sign a 10-year bilateral security agreement at the G7 summit in Italy, as arguments continued on the sidelines about how the west can provide a Donald Trump-proof $50bn loan to Ukraine.
Kyiv has signed 15 bilateral security agreements with other countries since the full-scale Russian invasion began in 2022, including with the UK, France, Germany and Italy. The US-Ukraine agreement does not require the authorisation of Congress and could be undone by a future Trump administration. Biden has said previously that guarantees for Ukraine would be equivalent to those to Israel, covering financial and military assistance as well as the possibility of the joint weapons production.
The two leaders will hold a press conference later on Thursday, where differences over a timetable for Ukraine’s bid to join Nato and the introduction of foreign military trainers inside Ukraine are likely to be on view. The bilateral agreements have been seen in Ukraine as a stopgap on the road to joining Nato.
Ukraine will also sign a bilateral deal with Japan on Thursday.
“The document with the United States will be unprecedented, as it should be for leaders who support Ukraine,” Zelenskiy said.
As with the other bilateral pacts, the agreement with the US will not require America to come to Ukraine’s defence if attacked. But it could make it easier for Ukraine to enter into peace negotiations with Russia, as Kyiv would have some assurance about the help it would receive in the event of a further Russian attack.
Ukraine has had bitter experience of such agreements. Signatories to the Budapest memorandum in 1994, which called for respect for countries’ independence and sovereignty, did not come to Ukraine’s defence when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
The bilateral security agreements state that in the event of a future Russian attack against Ukraine, the parties will consult within 24 hours to determine measures to counter and deter the aggression. A future attack is not defined.
Previewing the US-Ukraine bilateral agreement, the US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said: “By signing this, we’ll also be sending Russia a signal of our resolve. If Vladimir Putin thinks that he can outlast the coalition supporting Ukraine, he’s wrong. He just cannot wait us out, and this agreement will show our resolve and continued commitment.
“Through this agreement, we’re also securing commitments from Ukraine on reforms and on end-use monitoring for weapons we provide.”
Sullivan emphasised that Ukraine had lessons for the US military, including in the use of drone warfare. In deepening cooperation with Kyiv, Sullivan said the US would “benefit from Ukraine’s insights and experience, its battlefield innovations and its lessons learned from the front”.
Leo Litra, visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said it was important to be clear about the limitations and purpose of the security guarantees. “The security cooperation agreements are designed to make support for Ukraine predictable and quantifiable, but they do not come close to providing instruments that could substitute Nato’s article 5 on collective defence,” Litra said.
Relations between Biden and Zelenskiy are improving, with Biden apologising for the delay in getting extra cash for Ukraine through Congress and pleasing Kyiv by finally agreeing it was legitimate to hit military targets inside Russia responsible for attacking Kharkiv.
Zelenskiy will also be grateful for the large sanctions package announced by the White House on Wednesday designed to close loopholes used by financial institutions trading with Russia. The US justifies broadening sanctions on the basis that Russia has turned its entire economy over to a war economy.
Britain has announced a sweeping round of sanctions against Russia including ships in Putin’s “shadow fleet”.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak also sanctioned institutions at the heart of Russia’s financial system and suppliers supporting Russia’s military production.
The measures are designed to bear down on Russia’s ability to fund and equip its war machine.
The “shadow fleet” is a group of over 780 vessels with mysterious ownership designed to obscure their transport of sanctioned Russian oil since the start of the war.
It first emerged in response to the international sanctions imposed on Russia following the invasion and is vital to funding Moscow’s war effort.
Tax on oil production collected by the Kremlin in 2023 amounted to 8.9 trillion roubles, or 31 per cent of Russia’s total federal revenues.
The sanctions came as G7 negotiators reached a deal to use profits from frozen Russian sovereign assets to help Ukraine.
Members will provide “approximately $50bn” to Ukraine as part of the centrepiece of the group’s annual summit in Italy.
