Category Archives: Russia

Taiwan now biggest importer of Russian naphtha despite being Ukraine ally

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Island imported $1.3bn of crude oil product in first half of 2025 despite joining sanctions against Moscow, report finds

Taiwan has become the world’s biggest importer of Russian naphtha, a petroleum derivative used to make chemicals needed for the semiconductor industry, despite the fact that it has joined other sanctions against Russia and considers itself an ally of Ukraine.

In the first half of 2025, Taiwan imported $1.3bn worth of Russian naphtha, and average monthly imports reached a level nearly six times higher than the 2022 average, according to a report published on Wednesday. Compared to the first half of 2024, Taiwan’s naphtha imports this year increased by 44%.

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Zelenskyy sounds alarm over unprecedented power outage at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant

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Ukrainian president says Russian shelling is preventing work to restore links to grid and that one of the plant’s diesel generators has failed

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday said the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant has been off the grid for seven straight days, warning of the potential threat of a “critical” situation.

It is the longest outage at Zaporizhzhia since Russia invaded and seized the nuclear plant, Europe’s largest.

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Germany seeks to extradite Ukrainian over 2022 Nord Stream gas pipeline attack

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Man held in Poland on suspicion of causing explosions that damaged undersea pipelines between Russia and Germany

Germany is seeking to extradite a Ukrainian man arrested in Poland on suspicion of diving down to the Baltic sea bed to plant explosives in the 2022 Nord Stream gas pipeline attack.

The man, identified in Polish media reports as Volodymyr Z and by Germany as Vladimir Z, is described as a trained diver and is sought by investigators in Germany, who believe he was part of a group that sabotaged the pipeline, consisting of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines.

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Moldova’s pro-European party on course to retain majority in key election

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PAS leads with 46% of vote in ballot that will decide whether country steers closer to EU or Russia

Moldova’s ruling pro-European party is on course to retain its parliamentary majority after Sunday’s pivotal election, seen as a test of the president’s push to keep the country of 2.4 million on track for EU membership rather than drifting back towards Moscow.

With more than 90% of the ballots counted, Maia Sandu’s pro-western Action and Solidarity party (PAS) led with 46% of the vote, while a Moscow-leaning alliance of Soviet-nostalgic parties headed by former president Igor Dodon had 27%.

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‘Hundreds’ of Russian missiles and drones hit Ukraine in deadly strikes as Poland scrambles jets

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At least four people were killed in the overnight attacks on Kyiv and other regions as Poland takes preventive measure to secure airspace

Russian strikes involving “hundreds” of drones and missiles have killed at least four people, including a 12-year-old girl, and wounded at least 10 people in Ukraine on Sunday, as Poland scrambled fighter jets to secure its airspace.

An air raid alert was in place over the Kyiv region, with the local military administration saying Russia was attacking with drones and missiles.

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Putin preparing to attack another European country, Zelenskyy says

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Ukraine’s president says Kremlin checking Europe’s capacity to protect its skies following new drone sightings

Vladimir Putin will expand his war in Ukraine by attacking another European country, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has predicted, and accused Russia of recent drone incursions that he said were an attempt to test Nato’s defences.

Speaking in Kyiv after his meeting with Donald Trump at the UN in New York, the Ukrainian president said Russia was preparing for a bigger conflict. “Putin will not wait to finish his war in Ukraine. He will open up some other direction. Nobody knows where. He wants that,” he said.

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EU to move forward with plans for drone wall amid Russian incursions

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Ministers aim to bolster defences after spate of airspace violations, amid rising momentum for €140bn loan to Ukraine

The EU has agreed to move forward with plans for a drone wall at the heart of its eastern defences as momentum grows for a €140bn loan to Ukraine based on Russian frozen assets.

After a meeting with ministers from 10 mostly central and eastern European member states plus Ukraine, the EU’s defence commissioner, Andrius Kubilius, said a drone wall to protect against incursions from the skies was an immediate priority and core element of the bloc’s eastern flank defences.

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Iran snapback sanctions loom as UN security council set to vote on nuclear programme

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Russian efforts to delay the return of sanctions is expected to fail during vote on Friday

A final Russian attempt to defer the snapback of large-scale UN sanctions on Iran is expected to fail at the UN security council on Friday after European countries rejected last-minute Iranian offers to give UN weapons inspectors limited access to its bombed nuclear sites.

Russia will call for the reimposition of the sanctions to be deferred for six months to give more time for diplomacy, but European diplomats are confident that Russia will not get the nine votes it needs on the security council for the snapback to be deferred. The last time Russia put the same issue to a vote it received only four votes.

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Denmark airport closes due to drones, two days after incursions in Copenhagen and Oslo

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Police say the drones over Aalborg airport followed a similar pattern to the ones that had halted flights at Copenhagen airport a few days earlier

Denmark’s Aalborg airport was closed due to drones in its airspace, local police said early on Thursday, two days after the country’s main Copenhagen airport was shut over drone sightings that rattled European aviation.

Danish national police said the drones followed a similar pattern to the ones that had halted flights at Copenhagen airport for four hours a few days earlier. The country’s armed forces were also affected, as Aalborg airport is used as a military base, they added.

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Trump says he believes Ukraine can regain all land lost to Russia since 2022 invasion

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US president claims Russia is in ‘big economic trouble’ as he calls for Nato countries to stop imports of Russian oil

Donald Trump has said he believes Ukraine can regain all the land that it has lost since the 2022 Russian invasion in one of the strongest statements of support he has given Kyiv.

The US president delivered his upbeat assessment by claiming Russia was in big economic trouble in a post on Truth Social after meeting the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in New York.

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Is Copenhagen drone incursion further evidence of Russian interest in allied airspace?

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Sudden boldness of Kremlin is new territory for Nato, which is enhancing air policing over eastern Europe with extra fighter jets

It is disturbingly easy to shut down a commercial airport, as last night’s events in Copenhagen show. Three large drones, Danish authorities said, flew close enough to the runway to force the airport to close for four hours in an incident that inevitably raises wider questions about the security of the skies above Nato countries at a time when Russia has already shown it is willing to test the integrity of alliance airspace.

Videos published by local media show what appears to be relatively large but unidentified craft with green lights near the Danish capital. The drones came in from multiple directions and left in a similar fashion, suggesting, Danish police said, they were operated by a “capable actor”, one with an understanding of how to pilot drones in such a way as to maximise nuisance and cause alarm.

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Trump calls for nations to close borders and expel foreigners in UN speech: ‘Your countries are being ruined’

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US president accuses European countries specifically of ‘destroying your heritage’ by allowing migration

Donald Trump took the stage at the United Nations general assembly hall for the first time in six years to launch a full-on assault on the world body, which he described as a feckless, corrupt and pernicious global force that should follow the example of his own leadership.

In an inflammatory speech on the 80th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, Trump called for countries to close their borders and expel foreigners, accused the UN of leading a “globalist migration agenda”, and told national leaders that the world body was “funding an assault on your countries”.

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Danish PM: airport drone incursion a ‘serious attack’ on critical infrastructure

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Russia denies involvement after Copenhagen and Oslo airports forced to close after drone sightings

The Danish prime minister has said the country was subjected to the “most serious attack on Danish critical infrastructure to date” after a drone incursion shut Copenhagen airport for several hours.

Mette Frederiksen said authorities were still investigating who was behind the suspected hybrid attack, but she said she could not rule out Russia.

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UK and Poland vow to confront Russian aircraft violating Nato airspace

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Russia shrugs off criticism as Poland and Estonia speak about incursions at emergency meeting of UN security council

European allies have vowed to shoot down any Russian aircraft violating their airspace after Nato members accused Moscow of repeated incursions into the alliance’s territory in recent weeks.

“If another missile or aircraft enters our space without permission, deliberately or by mistake, and gets shot down and the wreckage falls on Nato territory, please don’t come here to whine about it,” Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, told an emergency meeting of the UN security council in New York on Monday that was called to discuss a Russian airspace incursion over Estonia.

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German jets scrambled after Russian military plane flies over Baltic Sea

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Russian Il-20M reconnaissance plane ignored requests to make contact, in latest of what are seen as provocative acts by Kremlin

Two German Eurofighter jets were scrambled on Sunday to intercept a Russian military aircraft above the Baltic Sea, as Estonia said it would call an emergency meeting of the UN security council after Russian planes violated its airspace.

Germany’s air force said the Russian Il-20M reconnaissance plane had switched off its transponders and ignored requests to make contact. The Eurofighters took off from the Rostock-Laage airbase to head off the aircraft as it flew in international airspace.

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China, India and Belarus line up for Russia’s rival version of Eurovision

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Intervision promises to be lighter on sequins and heavier on patriotic ballads than its European counterpart

Russia is gearing up to revive its Soviet-era alternative to Eurovision – the Intervision song contest – which kicks off in Moscow on Saturday, with performers from 23, mostly allied, countries set to take the stage.

But sequinned bodysuits, camp theatrics and Europop bangers will be in short supply. Instead, the Kremlin’s version of the spectacle promises “traditional values”, patriotic ballads and a Russian entry led by a fiercely pro-war singer, as Moscow attempts to refashion Europe’s glitter-soaked pageant in its own image.

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For comedians around the world, the laughs often end as democracy fades

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Silencing of Jimmy Kimmel sets US on course similar to that charted by authoritarian regimes from Egypt to India

The exiled Egyptian comedian Bassem Youssef has experienced firsthand how intolerant governments can silence political satire. And he had a short message this week for those living in an age of Donald Trump’s free speech clampdown: “My Fellow American Citizens,” he wrote on X. “Welcome to my world.”

In his attacks on the most prominent of American satirists, the US president has joined a cadre of illiberal and sensitive leaders around the world who will not tolerate a joke.

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Russia has network of 200 camps for ‘brainwashing’ Ukrainian children – report

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Investigation uncovers documents and satellite imagery that confirm children being taken to sites for patriotic indoctrination, weapons training and combat drills

Russia is running an extensive network of more than 200 camps to re-educate, Russify and militarise Ukrainian children, a new investigation has found.

The facilities, across Russia and occupied Ukraine, include camps as well as schools, military bases, medical facilities, religious sites and universities.

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RAF Typhoon jets ready to shoot down drones over Poland, UK says

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‘Nato is responding with unity and strength’ to Russian threats, says John Healey

RAF Typhoon jets will be deployed within days to shoot down drones over Poland and other Nato allies in eastern Europe if necessary, after last week’s incursion of 19 uncrewed Russian aircraft into Poland.

The British fighters, based at Coningsby in Lincolnshire, will join Nato’s new Eastern Sentry mission working alongside French, German and Danish counterparts who are acting as reinforcements for Dutch F-35s and Polish F-16s.

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Russian drone incursion into Poland ‘was Kremlin test on Nato’

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Polish minister says Moscow sought to gauge reaction without starting war as Romania reports new incursion

Poland’s foreign minister has said the Russian drone incursion into Polish airspace was an attempt by the Kremlin to test Nato’s reactions by incremental escalations without prompting a full-scale response, as Romania became the second Nato country to report an incursion in a matter of days.

Radosław Sikorski confirmed that while the drones that entered Poland last week were capable of carrying ammunition, they were not loaded with explosives. “Interestingly, they were all duds, which suggests to me that Russia tried to test us without starting a war,” Sikorski told the Guardian in Kyiv.

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