US President Donald Trump has blamed Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky for Moscow’s invasion, and said he could meet Russia’s Vladimir Putin before the end of the month.

Trump has also increased pressure on Zelensky to hold elections – echoing one of Moscow’s key demands to strike a deal.

Odessa’s governor says a large residential area has been left without power after a “massive” Russian strike on the Ukrainian port city. One person has been hospitalised.

Russia says Ukraine has attacked an oil refinery in the city of Syzran. No casualties have been reported.

Latest developments

Trump says he could meet Putin before the end of the month

US not opposed to European peacekeeping troops in Ukraine

Russia, US to name negotiators on ending Ukraine war

Culled from France 24

The sight of senior Russian and American officials back around a giant negotiating table is extraordinary.

For many, most of all Ukrainians, it will have been very hard to take.

In Saudi Arabia, Moscow achieved something major: after three years of all-out war on its neighbour and isolation by the West, it was back at the “top table” of global diplomacy.

Not only that, Russia looked for all the world like it was the one calling the shots.

Even as air raid sirens continue to sound across Ukraine, that’s exactly the image Moscow wants to project.

This was not a defeated Russia, forced to the negotiating table. It was more like the US inviting the aggressor to set out its terms.

True, US officials went into the process saying they wanted to feel out Russia, check whether it’s serious about peace.

But Donald Trump had already drawn his conclusions. Last week, after he spoke to Vladimir Putin by phone, he announced that the Russian leader “wants to see people stop dying”.

Trump could have responded by telling him to withdraw all his troops.

Instead, he clearly wants to cut a deal with Moscow to end the war, as he promised voters, and move on.

After more than four hours of talks in Riyadh, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio emerged to the press and announced the first steps towards negotiations had been agreed, with teams to be formed on both sides.

He’d concluded that Russia was ready to engage in a “serious process” to end the war.

But why was he so sure?

Across the table was Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, still under sanctions for what the US Treasury called Russia’s “brutal war of choice”.

When Lavrov met the Russian media, he told them the US had proposed a moratorium on attacking energy infrastructure.

“We explained that we have never endangered the civilian energy supply and only target what directly serves Ukraine’s military,” was the minister’s reply.

That’s not true.

I have personally walked through the ruins of civilian power plants that have been directly targeted by Russian missiles.

This is the country that the US is attempting to engage with, although there is ample evidence that it can’t be trusted.

Russia has also shown zero sign of conceding any ground: why would it, when the Trump administration has already agreed that Ukraine will never join Nato, as Moscow demands, and won’t get its occupied land back?

That’s why, for Ukraine’s allies, it won’t only be the image of US and Russian officials seated at the shiny Saudi table that jarred. It’s also how they talked.

“Laying the ground” for future investment sounds like a promise of dropping sanctions: no reckoning for Russia’s war of aggression, then, just reward.

These are, of course, the earliest of early days.

But in Moscow, officials and state media sense the start of Russia’s return to where it believes it belongs: face to face with the US, as an equal.

Source: BBC

South Korea’s impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol has been charged with insurrection after he attempted to declare martial law in December.

His ill-fated attempt to impose military rule plunged the country into an unprecedented political crisis and he becomes the first sitting president in South Korean history to be charged with a crime.

The indictment comes after a court in Seoul rejected a request to extend Yoon’s detention on Saturday, which meant prosecutors had to make a decision on whether to charge or release him before Monday.

“The punishment of the ringleader of insurrection now begins finally,” Han Min-soo, a spokesman from the main opposition Democratic Party told a press conference.

Fear, fury and triumph: Six hours that shook South Korea

Separately, the Constitutional Court has begun deliberations on whether to formally dismiss Yoon as president or reinstate him.

The impeached president has largely refused to co-operate with the criminal investigation over the martial law declaration.

Yoon is set to stand trial along with his former defence minister and senior military commanders, who are accused of helping him plan and carry out the attempt to seize total power.

In an unprecedented televised announcement on 3 December, Yoon said he was invoking martial law to protect the country from “anti-state” forces that sympathised with North Korea.

At the time, the embattled leader was in a deadlock over a budget bill, dogged by corruption scandals and several of his cabinet ministers were under investigation.

The military announced all parliamentary activity was suspended and sought to impose controls on media outlets.

The opposition’s Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung urged people to protest at the National Assembly and asked his fellow lawmakers to immediately vote to repeal the order.

Less than two hours after Yoon’s declaration, 190 lawmakers who gathered – including some from the president’s party – voted unanimously to block it.

Soldiers equipped with rifles were seen entering the parliament building through smashed windows as a dramatic confrontation ensued.

Thousands of civilians gathered in front of the assembly and tried to block the soldiers.

Yoon was was impeached by parliament and suspended from his duties on 14 December.

The affair has triggered South Korea’s worst political crisis in decades and has polarised the country.

Many of his hard-line supporters have rallied around him. On Friday, tens of thousands gathered to protest, demanding he be released and returned to office.

If Yoon is removed from office, a presidential election would be held within 60 days.

The prosecutors’ office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Source: BBC

U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith concluded that Donald Trump engaged in an “unprecedented criminal effort” to hold onto power after losing the 2020 election, but was thwarted in bringing the case to trial by the president-elect’s November election victory, according to a report published on Tuesday.

The report details Smith’s decision to bring a four-count indictment against Trump, accusing him of plotting to obstruct the collection and certification of votes following his 2020 defeat by Democratic President Joe Biden.

It concludes that the evidence would have been enough to convict Trump at trial, but his imminent return to the presidency, set for Jan. 20, made that impossible.

Smith, who has come under relentless criticism from Trump, also defended his investigation and the prosecutors who worked on it.

“The claim from Mr. Trump that my decisions as a prosecutor were influenced or directed by the Biden administration or other political actors is, in a word, laughable,” Smith wrote in a letter detailing his report.

After the release, Trump, in a post on his Truth Social site, called Smith a “lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the election.”

Much of the evidence cited in the report has been previously made public.

A second section of the report details Smith’s case accusing Trump of illegally retaining sensitive national security documents after leaving the White House in 2021.

The Justice Department has committed not to make that portion public while legal proceedings continue against two Trump associates charged in the case.

Smith, who left the Justice Department last week, dropped both cases against Trump after he won last year’s election, citing a longstanding Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president. Neither reached a trial.

Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges. Regularly assailing Smith as “deranged,” Trump depicted the cases as politically motivated attempts to damage his campaign and political movement.

Trump and his two former co-defendants in the classified documents case sought to block the release of the report, days before Trump is set to return to office on Jan. 20. Courts rebuffed their demands to prevent its publication altogether.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who presided over the documents case, has ordered the Justice Department for now to halt plans to allow certain senior members of Congress to privately review the documents section of the report.

Prosecutors gave a detailed view of their case against Trump in previous court filings. A congressional panel in 2022 published its own 700-page account of Trump’s actions following the 2020 election.

Both investigations concluded that Trump spread false claims of widespread voter fraud following the 2020 election and pressured state lawmakers not to certify the vote, and ultimately, also sought to use fraudulent groups of electors pledged to vote for Trump, in states actually won by Biden, in a bid to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s win.

The effort culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed Congress in a failed attempt to stop lawmakers from certifying the vote.

Smith’s case faced legal hurdles even before Trump’s election win. It was paused for months while Trump pressed his claim that he could not be prosecuted for official actions taken as president.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority largely sided with him, granting former presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution.

Source: Reuters

Justin Trudeau resigns as leader of Canada’s governing party after nearly a decade as prime minister

Trudeau says in a news conference in Ottawa that he will stay on as PM until a new Liberal Party leader is chosen

“This country deserves a real choice” at the next election, he says, announcing that parliament will be prorogued until 24 March

Trudeau had been under growing pressure from within his party and elsewhere to step down

Who could replace Trudeau as Liberal Party leader? Ex-Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland and former central banker Mark Carney are among the potential successors.

Source: BBC

South Korea’s impeached president Yoon Suk Yeol has written a letter urging his supporters to stand by him, declaring that he will “fight until the end”, as authorities seek to arrest him over his brief martial law imposed last month.

Back on December 3, heavily armed troops stormed the National Assembly building after Yoon ordered a martial law to be imposed, the first of its kind in more than four decades, but lawmakers managed to rush to the parliament to vote down his martial law declaration.

He gave the military extraordinary powers in order to end the political deadlock within the capital, and stop what he dubbed “anti-state forces.” However, the martial law lasted only six hours before being revoked by the parliament.

After being impeached by lawmakers and having his powers suspended, Yoon was replaced by Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, who briefly led the country as acting president.

“I am watching on YouTube live all the hard work you are doing,” Yoon addressed a letter late Wednesday to the estimated hundreds of supporters gathered near his official residence in protest of his investigation.

“I will fight until the end to protect this country together with you,” he added in the letter, a photo capture of which was sent to Reuters by Seok Dong-hyeon, a lawyer advising Yoon.

The opposition Democratic Party, which holds a majority in the parliament and spearheaded Yoon’s impeachment on December 14, stressed that the letter demonstrated Yoon’s purported delusion and his continued commitment to carry out what they call his “insurrection.”

“As if trying to stage insurrection wasn’t enough, he is now inciting his supporters to an extreme clash,” said party spokesman Jo Seoung-lae in a statement.

On Tuesday, a court issued an arrest warrant for Yoon, potentially making him the first sitting president to be detained in connection with investigations into accusations that he orchestrated an insurrection by attempting to impose martial law.

Insurrection is one of the rare criminal charges for which a South Korean president does not enjoy immunity.

The Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO), heading a joint investigative team that includes police and prosecutors, has until January 6 to carry out the arrest warrant.

South Korean lawmakers impeached Han for his refusal on December 27 to appoint three judges to fill vacancies in the Constitutional Court, the body that will be deciding whether to reinstate or remove Yoon permanently from office.

Now, Deputy Prime Minister Choi Sang-mok has assumed the role of acting president.

The opposition argued that Han had actively participated in Yoon’s insurrection and violated his duty to uphold the law by avoiding investigations.

Opposition politicians also called for launching a special probe into Yoon’s martial law declaration.

On Thursday, Yoon’s lawyer warned that police officers would be at risk of arrest by “the presidential security service or any citizens” if they attempt to detain Yoon on behalf of the CIO, stressing that their authority is restricted only to crowd control and maintaining public order.

Source: Press TV

Bashar al-Assad, the ousted president of Syria, has reportedly arrived in Moscow along with his family after his government fell to militants.

Citing a source in the Kremlin, several Russian media outlets reported on Sunday that the Russian government has granted Assad and his family asylum.

“President al-Assad of Syria has arrived in Moscow. Russia has granted them (him and his family) asylum on humanitarian grounds,” the Interfax news agency quoted an unnamed source as saying.

There was no immediate comment from the Syrian presidency about his whereabouts.

Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali said he had not spoken with Assad since Saturday. Jalali said that he would stay in Syria and was ready to work with whomever the Syrian people choose as their leader.

Militants, headed by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), declared a curfew in Damascus on Sunday until the following morning, after seizing the capital following a lightning offensive launched last week.

Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the HTS commander, said Sunday that Syrian state institutions would be supervised by Jalali until a transition of power takes place.

The HTS said it would work with the prime minister and called on Syrian military forces in Damascus to stay away from public institutions.

President Assad reportedly departed Syria on an airplane earlier in the day, bringing an end to more than five decades of his family’s rule over Syria.

Source: Presstv

Biden welcomed Trump to the White House on Wednesday for an Oval Office visit that is a traditional part of the peaceful handoff of power – a ritual Trump himself declined to participate in four years ago.

“Donald, congratulations,” Biden said, greeting Trump with a handshake and adding that he looked “forward to a smooth transition.”

“Thank you very much,” Trump said. “Politics is tough. And it’s, in many cases, not a very nice world. But it is a nice world today and I appreciate it very much.”

The president-elect touched down in Washington on Wednesday, arriving near the Capitol with billionaire Elon Musk in tow, for a meeting with House Republicans and then an Oval Office session with Democratic President Joe Biden as Trump prepares for a potentially unified Republican government and sweep of power.

Back in Washington for the first time since his election victory, Trump told the GOP lawmakers, “It’s nice to win.”

It’s a stunning return to the US seat of government for the former president, who departed nearly four years ago a diminished, politically defeated leader after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol but is preparing to come back to power with what he and his GOP allies see as a mandate for governance.

The White House meeting between a president and president-elect is one Trump himself declined to participate in four years ago after he lost to Biden.

Trump disputed his 2020 election loss to Biden, and he has continued to lie about widespread voter fraud that did not occur. He didn’t invite Biden, then the president-elect, to the White House and he left Washington without attending Biden’s inauguration. It was the first time that had happened since Andrew Johnson skipped Ulysses S. Grant’s swearing-in 155 years ago.

Biden insists that he’ll do everything he can to make the transition to the next Trump administration go smoothly, despite decrying Trump as a threat to democracy and the nation’s core values throughout the election campaign.

In the wake of the election, the president has abandoned his dire warnings about Trump, saying in a speech last week, “The American experiment endures. We’re going to be okay.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden is committed to “making sure that this transition is effective, efficient and he’s doing that because it is the norm, yes, but also the right thing to do for the American people”.

“We want this to go well,” Jean-Pierre added. “We want this to be a process that gets the job done.”

Traditionally, as the outgoing and incoming presidents meet in the West Wing, the first lady hosts her successor upstairs in the residence, but her office said Melania Trump wasn’t attending, saying in a statement that “her husband’s return to the Oval Office to commence the transition process is encouraging, and she wishes him great success”.

Source: AP

Donald Trump declares victory in the US election as he addresses jubilant supporters in Florida

“America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,” he says to cheering crowds

The Republican has picked up the battleground states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia, leaving Kamala Harris with only a narrow path to victory

Just before Trump began speaking, Fox News projected that he had won the election; other US TV networks are yet to do so

A return to the White House would be an extraordinary comeback for Trump after he lost to Joe Biden in 2020

Harris says she won’t speak today, as dejected supporters left her watch party earlier

Meanwhile, Republicans are projected to have taken back the Senate.

Source: BBC