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POLITICO: An explosion rocked the Ukrainian port city of Odesa on Wednesday during a top-secret visit there by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. The blast, caused by a ballistic missile, took place a few hundred meters away from the leaders’ motorcade.

AFP: The Czech government said Wednesday it would not hold joint meetings with the Slovak cabinet in the coming months as their views on aid to Ukraine diverged.

Reuters: A top U.S. sanctions official will this week warn Austria and Raiffeisen Bank International of the dangers of doing business in Russia, piling pressure on the biggest Western bank there.

The Moscow Times: Armenia said Wednesday that it had officially asked Russia to withdraw its border guards from an airport in Yerevan. Under a 1992 agreement signed with Armenia, Russia maintains several border guard detachments at locations throughout the South Caucasus country.

Reuters: Czechoslovak Group, one of Europe's biggest ammunition producers, is looking to set up joint ventures to invest hundreds of millions of euros in Ukraine to boost the country's defence capacities.

Bloomberg: Ukraine’s allies have lined up nearly all the funding required for a Czech-led initiative to purchase hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds, according to a government official familiar with the arrangements (archive).

The Kyiv Independent: A woman who was helping the Russian government organize elections in occupied Berdiansk was killed in an apparent car bombing.

AP News: Russian and Belarusian athletes were barred Wednesday from marching in this year’s Paralympics opening ceremony in Paris, even if they are approved to compete as neutrals.

Reuters: Russia's financial monitoring agency, Rosfinmonitoring, has added former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, a prominent critic of the Kremlin, to its list of "terrorists and extremists".

AP News: Poland saw its most violent protest by farmers and supporters yet Wednesday as some participants threw stones at police and tried to push through barriers around parliament, injuring several officers, police said. Farmers are angry over European Union climate policies and food imports from Ukraine that they say threaten their livelihoods.

Reuters: A Russian missile strike on a village in Ukraine's northern Kharkiv region killed an 70-year-old man and injured seven more people, including four teenagers, local officials said on Wednesday.

The Times: Kim Jong-un has given 1.5 million artillery shells to Vladimir Putin after their meeting last year, but half of them are duds, a Ukrainian intelligence chief has said (archive).

The Moscow Times: A group of men from northern India who claim to have been tricked into fighting for Russia in its war on Ukraine are now calling on their government to help secure their release, Indian media reported Wednesday.

AFP: A Russian court on Wednesday sentenced a journalist to seven years in prison for criticising the Ukraine offensive in social media posts.

The Kyiv Independent: U.K. Foreign Secretary David Cameron said that London is prepared to loan Kyiv all the assets of the Russian central bank frozen in the U.K. on the basis that Moscow will be forced to pay reparations to Ukraine after the all-out war, the Guardian reported.

Reuters: Moldova and France will sign a defence cooperation accord on Thursday as part of the West's efforts to strengthen the former Soviet state's capabilities amid what they fear are increasing efforts by Russia to destabilise Moldova.

Bloomberg: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban wants to discuss how to end Russia’s war on Ukraine this week with former US President Donald Trump in Florida, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said (archive).

Meduza: Leaked documents from Putin’s administration show that a secretive government tech agency has been tasked with creating a Russia-wide surveillance system using a network of cameras equipped with artificial intelligence.

Ukrainska Pravda: Ukrainian special forces are participating in combat operations in Sudan against rebels and Russian military formations, as part of a strategy aimed at undermining Russia's military and economic operations abroad.

FT: Russia has aggressively relaunched its spy war with the west, and Moscow’s publication of a phone call in which senior German air force officers discussed sending cruise missiles to Ukraine is only the latest chilling example (archive).

Reuters: The widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said on Wednesday the scale of public support for him since his death was proof that his cause lived on, and called for a massive election day protest against Putin.

FT: Ukraine is prepared to accept restrictions on its trade with the EU to defuse a bitter political dispute with Poland, but is also urging the bloc to ban Russian grain imports, the Ukrainian trade minister has said (archive).

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