Connect with us

Published

on

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has arrived in Saudi Arabia ahead of his team having talks with America’s top diplomat on Tuesday.

Mr Zelenskyy will not be at the meeting with US secretary of state Marco Rubio, but Mr Zelenskyy’s team will try to improve relations following his disastrous 28 February visit to Washington, which descended into an Oval Office argument with President Donald Trump and vice president JD Vance.

Follow latest updates on Ukraine and Trump

In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, center left, meets with Prince Saud bin Mishaal, deputy governor of Saudi Arabia's Mecca region, center right, and Saudi Commerce Minister Majid bin Abdullah al-Qasabi in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Monday, March 10, 2025. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)
Image:
Mr Zelenskyy with Prince Saud bin Mishaal, and Saudi commerce minister Majid bin Abdullah al Qasabi. Pic: AP

Mr Zelenskyy is due to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman later on Monday, after the end of the daily fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

US secretary of state Marco Rubio is also in Jeddah. He is not due to meet Mr Zelenskyy – but he held talks with Prince Mohammed to discuss Yemen and threats to ships from Houthis, Syria, and the reconstruction of Gaza.

During talks on Tuesday the Ukrainian team will try to convince the US to restore military aid and intelligence that had helped Kyiv since Russia‘s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Speaking to reporters while travelling to Jeddah, Mr Rubio said if Ukraine and the US reach an understanding acceptable to Mr Trump, that could accelerate his administration’s push to peace talks.

More on Donald Trump

“What we want to know is, are they interested [in] entering some sort of peace conversation and general outlines of the kinds of things they could consider, recognising that it has been a costly and bloody war for the Ukrainians,” Mr Rubio said.

“They have suffered greatly and their people have suffered greatly. And it’s hard in the aftermath of something like that to even talk about concessions, but that’s the only way this is going to end and prevent more suffering.”

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

‘We want Ukraine to be serious’ about peace

He said: “I’m not going to set any conditions on what they have to or need to do. I think we want to listen to see how far they’re willing to go and then compare that to what the Russians want and see how far apart we truly are.”

He added: “The most important thing that we have to leave here with is a strong sense that Ukraine is prepared to do difficult things, like the Russians are going to have to do difficult things to end this conflict.”

Meanwhile, British prime minister Sir Keir Starmer spoke to Mr Trump on Monday ahead of the US-Ukraine meeting.

Read more:
How Trump has upended millions of lives in his first 50 days
Trump says Ukraine ‘may not survive’ war against Russia
Rating the president’s second term so far

A Downing Street readout of the call said that Sir Keir told the president that “UK officials had been speaking to Ukraine officials over the weekend and they remain committed to a lasting peace”.

“The prime minister said he hoped there would be a positive outcome to the talks that would enable US aid and intelligence sharing to be restarted,” the statement said.

“The two leaders also spoke about the economic deal they had discussed at the White House and the prime minister welcomed the detailed conversations that had already happened to move this forward. Both leaders agreed to stay in touch.”

The European Union agreed last week to boost the continent’s defences and free up hundreds of billions of euros for security in response to the Trump administration’s shift in policy towards Ukraine.

A US intelligence official said a pause on sharing US intelligence that can be used for offensive purposes by Ukrainian forces remains in effect.

The official suggested that progress could be made towards reinstating intelligence sharing with Ukraine during the Saudi talks.

Continue Reading

World

Four more arrests made over Louvre heist as £76m haul remains missing

Published

on

By

Four more arrests made over Louvre heist as £76m haul remains missing

Four more arrests have been made by French police investigating the Louvre museum heist.

Two men and two women from the Paris region were detained on Tuesday, prosecutor Laure Beccuau said.

Ms Beccuau’s statement did not say what role the quartet are suspected of having played in the robbery. The two men are aged 38 and 39, and the two women are aged 31 and 40.

They are being interrogated by police, who can hold them for questioning for 96 hours.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Louvre: How ‘heist of the century’ unfolded

The latest arrests come after investigating magistrates filed preliminary charges against three men and one woman who were arrested last month.

Some of the French Crown Jewels, worth an estimated £76m, were stolen in the audacious October raid.

The haul – which included a diamond and emerald necklace Napoleon gave to Empress Marie-Louise, jewels linked to 19th-century Queens Marie-Amelie and Hortense, and Empress Eugenie’s pearl and diamond tiara – has not been recovered.

The heist was pulled off in mere minutes last month – and took place while the Louvre was open to visitors, raising doubts over the credibility of the world’s most-visited museum as a guardian for its priceless works.

On Sunday 19 October, two men used a stolen furniture lift to access the second floor Galerie d’Apollon.

They then cracked open display cases with angle grinders before escaping with their loot and fleeing on the back of two scooters driven by accomplices.

Read more:
Louvre director offers to resign
Gallery closed as structure in ‘dire state’

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Moment thieves escape Louvre in jewel heist

The Paris prosecutor previously said the robbery appeared to be the work of small-time criminals rather than professional gangsters.

Speaking shortly after the heist, art detective Arthur Brand told Sky News that detectives faced a “race against time” to recover the stolen treasure.

“These crown jewels are so famous, you just cannot sell them,” Mr Brand said. “The only thing they can do is melt the silver and gold down, dismantle the diamonds, try to cut them. That’s the way they will probably disappear forever.

“They [the police] have a week. If they catch the thieves, the stuff might still be there. If it takes longer, the loot is probably gone and dismantled. It’s a race against time.”

Continue Reading

World

Zelenskyy is racing to beat Donald Trump’s peace plan deadline – but what will Russia do?

Published

on

By

Zelenskyy is racing to beat Donald Trump's peace plan deadline – but what will Russia do?

Washington woke up this morning to a flurry of developments on Ukraine.

It was the middle of the night in DC when a tweet dropped from Ukraine’s national security advisor, Rustem Umerov.

He said that the US and Ukraine had reached a “common understanding on the core terms of the agreement discussed in Geneva.”

He added that Volodymyr Zelenskyy would travel to America “at the earliest suitable date in November to complete final steps and make a deal with President Trump”.

Ukraine latest: ‘Delicate’ deal details must be sorted, White House says

By sunrise in Washington, a US official was using similar but not identical language to frame progress.

The official, speaking anonymously to US media, said that Ukraine had “agreed” to Trump’s peace proposal “with some minor details to be worked out”.

More on Donald Trump

In parallel, it’s emerged that talks have been taking place in Abu Dhabi. The Americans claim to have met both Russian and Ukrainian officials there, though the Russians have not confirmed attendance.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Peace deal ‘agreement’: What we know

“I have nothing to say. We are following the media reports,” Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, told Russian state media.

Trump is due to travel to his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago tonight, where he will remain until Sunday.

He set a deadline of Thursday – Thanksgiving – for some sort of agreement on his plan.

We know the plan has been changed from its original form, but it’s clear that Zelenskyy wants to be seen to agree to something quickly – that would go down well with President Trump.

Read more:
US hails ‘tremendous progress’ on Ukraine peace plan

In full: Europe’s 28-point counter proposal

My sense is that Zelenskyy will try to get to Mar-a-Lago as soon as he can. Before Thursday would be a push but would meet Trump’s deadline.

It will then be left for the Russians to state their position on the revised document.

All indications are that they will reject it. But maybe the secret Abu Dhabi talks will yield something.

Continue Reading

World

Controversial US and Israeli-backed aid operation the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to close

Published

on

By

Controversial US and Israeli-backed aid operation the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to close

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a controversial US and Israeli-backed aid distribution group, has said it will permanently cease operations.

Set up as an alternative to United Nations aid programmes in May, GHF’s executive director John Acree said on Monday that it “succeeded in our mission of showing there’s a better way to deliver aid to Gazans”.

The foundation had already closed down aid distribution sites after US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan was agreed by Hamas and Israel in October.

The GHF which began operations in Gaza after an Israeli blockade of food deliveries, lasting nearly three months, was criticised by Palestinians, aid workers and health officials who said it forced people to risk their lives to reach the sites.

File pic: Reuters
Image:
File pic: Reuters

According to witnesses and videos posted to social media, Israeli soldiers repeatedly opened fire at the sites, killing hundreds. The IDF denied this, saying it only fired warning shots as a crowd-control measure or if its troops were in danger.

In July, analysis from Sky News’ Data and Forensics team found that aid distributions by GHF were associated with a significant increase in deaths.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Gaza deaths increase when aid sites open

MSF – also known as Doctors Without Borders – said in a report in August that the GHF sites “morphed into a laboratory of cruelty,” and described scenes there as “orchestrated killing”.

More on Gaza

‘We are proud,’ says GHF director

Mr Acree said in a statement through the GHF’s website that “from the outset, GHF’s goal was to meet an urgent need” and to hand over a successful aid operation to “the broader international community”.

The GHF would hand over its work to the US-led Civil-Military Coordination Center in Israel overseeing the Gaza ceasefire.

“We are winding down our operations as we have succeeded in our mission of showing there’s a better way to deliver aid to Gazans,” Mr Acree said.

File pic: Reuters
Image:
File pic: Reuters

The GHF director added: “At a critical juncture, we are proud to have been the only aid operation that reliably and safely provided free meals directly to Palestinian people in Gaza, at scale and without diversion.

“From our very first day of operations, our mission was singular: feed civilians in desperate need. We built a new model that worked, saved lives, and restored dignity to civilians in Gaza.”

According to the GHF website, the group distributed more than three million food boxes, totalling 187 million meals, and supplied 1.1 million packs of Ready-to-Use Supplementary Food (RUSF) for malnourished children.

Read more:
Sky’s Adam Parsons sees Gaza destruction
Israel launches strikes on Gaza
Israel strikes Beirut for first time in months

Hamas welcomes GHF closure

In a statement, Hamas welcomed the closure of GHF and accused it of being a project that “engineered starvation” in partnership with Israel.

A Hamas spokesperson said: “Since its entry into the Gaza Strip, this foundation was part of the occupation’s security system, which adopted distribution mechanisms entirely disconnected from humanitarian principles, and created dangerous and degrading conditions for the dignity of the starving Palestinian people during their attempts to obtain a piece of bread, resulting in the killing and injury of thousands, through sniper operations and deliberate killing.”

They also called on international legal bodies to hold “this foundation and its officers accountable for their crimes against our people”.

US state department deputy spokesperson Tommy Piggot also said on X that the aid group “shared valuable lessons learned with us and our partners”.

“GHF’s model, in which Hamas could no longer loot and profit from stealing aid, played a huge role in getting Hamas to the table and achieving a ceasefire,” he added.

Continue Reading

Trending