Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, is in China on Tuesday for talks on how officials there might help end the war with Russia. China presents itself as a neutral party in the war, however its deepening “no limits” partnership with Russia led Nato members to declare it a “decisive enabler” of the invasion, which Beijing has never condemned. The US and Europe have accused Beijing of sending components and equipment used to keep Russian military production going.
Hungary will not be allowed to host a strategic EU meeting next month because of Viktor Orbán’s self-proclaimed “peace mission” trips to Moscow and Beijing without the union’s authority, Jennifer Rankin reports. “We have to send a signal, even if it is a symbolic signal,” said the EU foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, explaining that he had decided the upcoming foreign and defence ministers’ meeting would take place in Brussels instead of Budapest. Hungary holds the rotating EU presidency, and as such would normally host the annual late August gathering.
Ukraine’s top commander said on Monday that Russian forces were staging relentless assaults to try to advance towards the town of Pokrovsk, a logistics hub in the east, and that there was active fighting taking place along the entire frontline. Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi said fierce battles raged near several eastern villages and towns, including Krasnohorivka and Chasiv Yar, a strategic hilltop town whose capture would bring Russia closer to threatening important Donetsk region cities.
A Russian court has sentenced Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), to more than six years in prison for spreading false information about the Russian army. Her husband, Pavel Butorin, who also works for RFE/RL, said her arrest was related to a book that she had edited entitled Saying No to War: 40 Stories of Russians Who Oppose the Russian Invasion of Ukraine. “My daughters and I know Alsu has done nothing wrong. And the world knows it too. We need her home.” The RFE/RL president and CEO, Stephen Capus, called Kurmasheva’s rapid, secretly held trial and conviction “a mockery of justice”. Kurmasheva, 47, is based in Prague but was arrested while visiting family in Tatarstan, Russia.
Ukraine’s government said on Monday it had struck a preliminary deal with international creditors to restructure government debt worth more than $20bn.
Several thousand people have attended the funeral in Lviv of Iryna Farion, a former Ukrainian MP who was assassinated on Friday. Farion was best known for her campaigns to promote the speaking of Ukrainian and expunge the Russian language from Ukrainian officialdom. She criticised Russian-speaking members of Ukraine’s Azov regiment who defended Mariupol in the first days of the Russian full-scale invasion. Ukrainian police are searching for the unidentified assassin.
The EU has extended sanctions against Russia for a further six months, until 31 January 2025.
